Автодорога A34 в Англии

Major road in England

The A34 is a major road in England. It runs from the A33 and M3 at Winchester in Hampshire, to the A6 and A6042 in Salford, close to Manchester City Centre. It forms a large part of the major trunk route from Southampton, via Oxford, to Birmingham, The Potteries and Manchester. For most of its length (together with the A5011 and parts of the A50, and A49), it forms part of the former Winchester–Preston Trunk Road. Improvements to the section of road forming the Newbury Bypass around Newbury were the scene of significant direct action environmental protests in the 1990s. It is 151 miles (243 km) long.

The road is in two sections. The northern section runs south through Manchester and Cheadle, and bypasses Handforth, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, before passing through Congleton, Newcastle under Lyme, and the southern suburbs of Stoke on Trent. It then continues south via Stone, Stafford, Cannock and Walsall, passes through the middle of Birmingham (where it briefly merges with the A41), before meeting the M42 motorway at junction 4 south of Solihull. The northern section of the road in effect combines with the motorway network and then resumes with the southern section. The southern section begins 45 mile (72 km) SSE of the northern section, at junction 9 of the M40 motorway. It continues south as the western part of the Oxford Ring Road, crossing the River Thames on the A34 Road Bridge. It then bypasses Abingdon, Didcot, and Newbury before finishing at junction 9 of the M3 motorway. This part of the A34 forms the E05 European route. It is a dual carriageway throughout. Together with parts of the M3 and the M40, the A34 forms an important route carrying freight from Southampton to the Midlands. Because of the volume of traffic, bypasses were built along this route – at Newbury on the A34, and at Twyford Down near Winchester on the M3 – but these were controversial for environmental reasons. Notably instead of cutting a short road tunnel through Twyford Down, the escarpment was carved out for the road traffic of the motorway, though the route of the old A33 closed as a result. In 2004, the junction with the M4 motorway was re engineered from a roundabout to free flowing grade separated junction.

The idea that the cancelled Oxford–Cambridge Expressway (linking the current A34 near Oxford to the A14 near Cambridge) would have been designated as A34, did not have any official status.