Weston Link ‘loop’ slip road to Southern Expressway to close permanently from 11 April
The ‘loop’ slip road that connects the eastbound Weston Link to the eastbound Southern Expressway, heading towards Preston Brook, will close permanently from Monday 11 April.
A signed diversion will be in place until the summer of 2016, taking traffic north along the Central Expressway before heading round the eastern side of Runcorn Shopping Centre, past Halton General Hospital and rejoining the Southern Expressway at the Hallwood Link Road roundabout.
The ‘loop’ slip road due for demolition is part of the Lodge Lane Junction, which is being modified to provide a primary access route between the M56 Junction 12 and the Mersey Gateway bridge. This will remove the existing tight bends and create a freeflowing approach to the new crossing.
At the same time, the Mersey Gateway team will re-open the slip road from Weston Link to Central Expressway northbound. When this route reopens, traffic will be diverted via Halton Lea junction and back onto the Central Expressway, until further notice.
Once work in this part of the route is complete this summer the final route for drivers (shown below) looking to travel from Weston Link on to the Southern Expressway towards Preston Brook will be to head north alongside the Central Expressway before turning at the Halton Lea junction and rejoining the Southern Expressway.
Hugh, O’Connor, General Manager for Merseylink, said: “Whilst this is a major piece of highway infrastructure that we are removing to build a more effective road network for the future, this route is actually not used by very many drivers, so we hope there will not be any major issues caused by the diversion.”
He added: “However, we do recognise that there wil be some drivers who will be inconvenienced, and as ever I’d like to urge people to drive safely and allow extra time to reach their destination if this diversion does affect them.”
Drivers can keep up to date with traffic management issues around Widnes and Runcorn by watching out for new alerts on road signage and social media, or by visiting the Down Your Street section on the Mersey Gateway website.