M57 motorway

Route

Starting at the Tarbock Interchange in Tarbock, at the end of the A5300, the motorway heads north to the east of Huyton and west of Prescot and crosses the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. It then runs across the north east of Huyton before running west of Knowsley Village. After meeting the A580 at a split junction (numbered 4 & 5), it continues north west between Fazakerley and Kirkby, passes under the Kirkby and Ormskirk branches of the Merseyrail Northern Line before ending on Switch Island near Aintree. The motorway provides one of the main access routes to Aintree Racecourse.

History

The M57 was planned to be a complete bypass of Liverpool, meeting each of the main roads out of the city. As is normal in the United Kingdom, the M57 was to be built in stages. The first two opened were:

Phase 1 was proceeded with more rapidly as there had been industrial growth in the area, and it was considered important to improve traffic connections as soon as possible. The original plans for the route anticipated an extension south to the A562.

At Switch Island, the junction was constructed to allow an extension of the M57 towards the A565 near Thornton and the end of the M58 has provision for slip roads to that extension to be constructed. Contemporary maps also showed a proposed southern extension, eventually constructed in the 1990s as the A5300. A new road was opened in August 2015 to join the A565 at Thornton to Switch Island junction at the M57 and M58 motorways respectively; the road was appropriately named the A5758 road.

At the southern end of the M57 where it meets the M62 (Tarbock Island) and also the A5300 southern extension, a £38 million improvement scheme to create a free-flow link with the M62 eastbound was completed on November 14, 2008. At the same junction a free-flow link from the M62 Westbound to the M57 northbound was completed on December 12.