The A55 is the is the lifeblood of the North Wales economy. Also known as the North Wales Expressway and the Chester to Bangor Trunk Road,it is a major highway in Britain and Wales’ busiest expressway. It serves as a gateway to our beautiful region, which is frequented by local commuters and the thousands of tourists who visit North Wales each year.
The A55 is to North Wales what the M4 is to the South, yet while the Welsh Government plans to spend £1bn to relieve M4 congestion around Newport, North Wales is being fobbed off with a few emergency crossovers and lengths of hardened verge on the A55.
Yes, I don’t deny that investment in the M4 relief road is required, but this should certainly not at the expense of much-needed investment on the A55. This route has suffered from under-investment and congestion for far too long and quite frankly drivers are at the end of their tether.
We are constantly hearing of the need to improve transport links with England, but using the A55 to get to work is becoming an increasingly arduous battle each day for North Wales commuters.
Also it is not giving a good impression of North Wales. Instead of a welcome in the hillside, tourists are all too often greeted with traffic jams and long delays which ruin the start of their holidays and risk them choosing alternative locations to stay in the future.
Drivers are currently experiencing traffic chaos as a result of a rolling programme of roadworks to install emergency crossing points in the central reservation and hard shoulders. The work is being undertaken over three phases between this October and February next year, but is has been a cause of massive frustration for motorists who sit in their cars looking at miles and miles of cones with precious little work apparently going on.
Presumably these works were planned well in advance, including the dates on which different parts of the A55 would be affected, yet these dates have not been properly communicated to motorists and the result is long delays with people not being able to get to work on time and potential customers aborting their journeys causing local businesses to lose out.
People are fed up by holdups on this important dual carriageway and it is high time the Welsh Government listened to their complaints and granted the A55 with the investment it so desperately needs.