Shotwick traffic lights

Image: © Peter Whatley Taken: 18 Jan 2011

Nowadays (Jan 2011) merely exercising control over slip roads to and from the remodelled A494 (opened 2009), but until the 1970s a bottleneck of notoriety throughout Lancashire and Cheshire. In the 1960s and 1970s, before overseas holidays became the norm, this was the point at which all holiday traffic from the Liverpool and Manchester areas converged en route to North Wales - a hugely popular destination to this writer's utter bafflement as a youth. Queues were of legendary proportions. Well into the 1970s the junction was utterly basic: two simple single carriageway roads met and formed a four-lane highway to the west. Coming east traffic had to weave into the appropriate single lane for Merseyside or Manchester, so traffic queues were not unknown heading east too. As befits the historic memory, the lights toward Manchester have just turned to red. They always did!

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