A55 Road

The A55, also known as the '''North Wales Expressway''', is a major road in Britain . Its entire length is a Dual Carriageway Primary Route , with the exception of the point where it crosses the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait .

It runs west from its junction with the M53 Motorway near Chester , where it is known as the Chester southerly bypass, crossing the River Dee and the Welsh border before passing close to Broughton then passing north of Buckley and Northop . The road then climbs up onto the flanks of Halkyn Mountain passing to the south of Holywell . This section of road is notorious for poor weather conditions including fog, ice and snow in winter months. In fine weather this section provides extensive views over the Dee estuary to Liverpool and beyond. The descent towards St Asaph is down Rhuallt hill which also provides the first views of the mountains of Snowdonia in the distance. The road bypasses St Asaph and runs along the North Wales coast passing Abergele , Colwyn Bay , Rhos On Sea , Conwy , Penmaenmawr , Llanfairfechan and Bangor before heading onto the island of Anglesey , where it ends in Holyhead where ferries connect with the Irish ports of Dún Laoghaire and Dublin .

The construction of the coastal section of the road involved major civil engineering works, with hard rock tunnels passing through the cliffs in two places. In the Eastbound direction, the road still uses the original cliffhugging route. Plans to rectify this by building another tunnel parallel to the current Wesbound tunnels are in motion.

The crossing of the estuary of the River Conwy is by means of a Tunnel that was constructed as pre-formed Concrete sections and then floated into position over a pre-prepared trench in the bed of the estuary. The use of a tunnel followed an extensive public consultation which ruled out another bridge on aesthetic ground since it would have damaged the view of the world heritage site Conwy Castle and the two bridges by Robert Stephenson and Thomas Telford . Because of the valuable fishery in the river and also because of the history of Heavy Metal Mining in the catchment of the river, extensive Ecological assements were made both prior to the construction of the tunnel and subsequently . These studies finally concluded that no significant environmental damage had been caused.

Part of the route through Colwyn Bay is signed as a 70 mph speed limit (as opposed to most of the other sections of the A55, which are the National Speed Limit ) and is a non-motorway Special Road , which has restrictions on access by pedestrian and other traffic, similar to the restrictions applied to a Motorway . There is also a stretch in this area signed as a 50 mph limit. These restrictions are imposed as added safety precautions because the slip-roads in this stretch are unusually short because of the difficulty of fitting the road into a very narrow area of land.

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A55 Road