Looking smart in its new fresh paint. It should do really, as this side of the bridge got painted THREE times !! The first two companies got it wrong.
Anyway, this bridge was first opened in 1961, it had a single carriageway each way, and it had a footpath / sidewalk on each side too, inside the arches.
Almost immediately it was realised it wasn't enough to cope with the ever growing volume of traffic.
The solution in the mid 1970s, was taking the footpaths away, and building an additional walkway/ cycle path on the outside of the bridge. You can see the entry to that on the left of the image.
They then squeezed inside the bridge itself, two carriageways in each direction, separated by a white line ! No room for a barrier.
These lanes were just about the legal minimum, and very narrow. If you had two HGVs side by side, meeting two HGVs coming the other way, their wing mirrors were literally inches apart.
There were constantly accidents on there, many very serious ones.
Traffic volumes continued to grow, and for at least 20 years there were calls for a new bridge.
By the time it was closed, in 2017, for 12 months, and the new one had opened, it was carrying 80,000 vehicles a day.
Exactly the same as the eight carriageway motorway M6, a few miles further up stream.
The plan now, slightly behind schedule , you might have spotted, is to use the outside walk way for pedestrians, the newly built lane on the left, as a cycle path, and reduce the main part back down to single carriageway each way.
There will be weight limit on it so no HGVs but local buses will be able to use it.
The Widnes approach is finished, the bridge deck isn't, and they are nowhere near finishing the new road system over in Runcorn.
OH !!! Plus after being open and FREE to use for nearly SIXTY Years, they plan to TOLL this one too !
