Leeds Inner Ring Road

A64(M) motorway
Road of the United Kingdom
Length	0.5 miles (0.8 km)
Direction	East-West
Start	Quarry Hill
Primary destinations	Leeds
End	Brunswick
Construction dates	1969 - complete route
Motorways joined

A58(M) motorway
Road of the United Kingdom
Length	2 miles (3.2 km)
Direction	East-West
Start	Brunswick
Primary destinations	Leeds
End	Armley
Construction dates	1964 - 1975
Motorways joined

By the Leeds International Pool.

Passing underneath the Nuffield Hospital.

The Leeds Inner Ring Road is a part motorway and part A road in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England which forms a ring road around the city centre. It has six different road numbers which are all sections of longer roads. Going clockwise the roads are the A58(M), a motorway section of the A58 road, the A64(M), part of the A64 road, the A61 between York Road and the M621, the M621 between junctions 4 and 2 and the A643 between the M621 and A58. The motorway section is in total is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) long and is subject to a 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) speed limit throughout.

Route

The motorway section of the ring road forms a semicircle around the north of the city centre. The motorway classification is used as a means of banning certain types of traffic plus pedestrians rather than as a sign of its design standards. For example, the road has no hard shoulders but many exits that modern planning would consider unworthy of a motorway, including a right-side (fast lane) slip road exit. Most of it runs in a concrete-walled cutting, but it goes into a tunnel under the Leeds General Infirmary. The motorway cuts through inner-city neighbourhoods such as Woodhouse, Sheepscar, and Buslingthorpe, formsing an important link in the road network by allowing traffic from the A65, A660, A58, A61 and A64 to bypass the city centre.

History

Leeds suffered severe traffic congestion as it was on the main route betweens Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford and Hull.^[1] In 1955 it was decided to build a dual carriageway to remove through traffic.^[2] It was during the final stages before construction began that the road was redesignated as a motorway in 1963, without any changes to the design.^[2] Construction began with the demolition of 365 homes and 174 other structures.^[3]

The motorway was built around the city centre in three stages in the 1960s and 1970s.^[4] Stage 1 opened was the route from the exit for the town hall to the A58 exit, stage 2 was the A64(M) section and stage 3 linked the road to the A58.^[5] Stages 4 to 6 featured upgrades to the A61 constructed in the 1990s to non-motorway standards featuring traffic light controlled intersections and non-grade separated junctions. When the motorway finally opened, Leeds used the motto Motorway city of the 70s.

The final stage of the inner ring road (stage 7) began construction in 2006 and opened in late 2008. Featuring a large elevated viaduct, it links the M621 at junction 4 with the previously constructed traffic light controlled interchange at Cross Green, Leeds is of a similar standard to sections 4-6.^[6].

The remainder of the Inner Ring Road is formed by using the M621 between junctions 2 and 4 and the A643 between Elland Road and the Armley Gyratory. It is not currently signposted as a complete route on the ground other than on the motorway section to the north of the city centre.

Motorway section junctions

See also

• Leeds Outer Ring Road

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: A58(M) motorway

• CBRD
  • Histories - Leeds Inner Ring Road
  • Motorway Database - A58(M)
  • Motorway Database - A64(M)
  • Videos - A58(M)
• Pathetic Motorways
  • A58(M)
  • A64(M)
• Leeds Construction Link - The building of the inner ring road in the 1960s
• The Motorway Archive - Leeds Inner Ring Road

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