Safe Speed Forums

This could possibly spawn an entire thread of its own.

(topic split by moderator)

The Highways Agency had a plan to built the A6(M) Stockport North-South bypass (including bypassing Hazel Grove) - along with the A555 extension from its current eastern end to meet the A6(M); extension of the A555 west to meet the M56 at Junction 5, and an A523 Poynton bypass. All of the roads were to be dual carriageways with grade-separated (i.e. motorway style) junctions throughout. Also in the pipeline was a bypass for Disley and High Lane on the A6.

The A555 currently built was finished in 1995 along with the A34 Wilmslow-Handforth bypass - the rest was shelved by John Prescot in 1998 as part of the "trunk road review", along with many other schemes around the UK.

SEMMMS (South East Manchester Multi-Modal Study) recommended using the protected corridor for this route, but with the roads built "to a more appropriate standard" - i.e. with traffic lights instead of motorway style junctions, a 40mph design speed, and a single-carriageway A523 bypass. THe Disley-High Lane bypass was shelved completely. This in my opinion is madness and is bound to be under-capacity. A public consultation happened quite some time ago, but it's now gone strangely quiet for about the last year - last I heard that there were some funding issues.

If anyone wants to see where the A6(M) would have gone, then then try here
link to the wider site

Richard - Ahh yeah I remember hearing something about the downgrading of the scheme. Why is it that all the grand plans in this country end up as half-baked under-capacity done-on-the-cheap schemes?! Is the A555 that white-elephant road? The motorway to nowhere? I remeber thinking this just doesn't feel right when I first used it recently.

Yes, the A555 is the road to nowhere. The whole of the rest of the route was to be at or better than the standard of the currently built section, but it doesn't look like we'll get anything nearly as good.

They have done the same with the Mansfield by-pass, single carriageway all the way, yet they have taken enough land to have dualled its entire length.
Don't get me wrong, it is a pleasure to use it in a truck, removes the nausea of having to go through Mansfield itself.
But I give it 5 years and they will have to rip it up and dual it, like they should have done in the first place.

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