M55 motorway

The M55 is a motorway in Lancashire, which can be referred to as the Preston Northern Bypass. It connects the seaside resort of Blackpool to the M6 at Preston. It is 12¼ miles in length.

Route

The M55 has three lanes in both directions for most of its length. After leaving the M6 at junction 32, the road immediately interchanges with the A6. It then crosses the West Coast Main Line and Lancaster Canal before passing north of Wesham to meet the A585 at junction 3. It then continues west in a rural setting to meet junction 4, where the motorway ends and becomes the A5230. The western part of the M55, and the first few hundred yards of the A5230, occupy the route of the old Blackpool Branch railway line.

History

• M6 to Junction 1 opened as part of the M6 Preston Bypass in 1958.
• Junctions 1 to 4 opened in 1975.

The first motorway constructed in Great Britain was the M6 Preston Bypass, opened in 1958. This ran from the current M6 junction 29 to the M55 junction 1. It was built as a two-lane route. In 1965 the M6 was extended north from what is the current day junction 32 to meet the Lancaster Bypass, and the M6 junction was rebuilt to its current design to connect the A6 at the now M55 junction 1. Due to increasing traffic, it was decided to provide a motorway link to Blackpool and this road was opened in 1975.

Some of the material for backfilling the new M55 was obtained from a nearby disused airfield at RNAS Inskip, where the runways were broken up and the land returned to agriculture. More material came from the Tootle Heights quarries in Longridge.

Future plans

The motorway has no Junction 2. A proposed South Ribble link road would have involved the extension of the M65 motorway around the west of Preston to link to the M55 at the missing junction. The link road proposal has been dormant since the mid-1990s. Between 1993 and 1995, the M6 around the east of Preston was widened to four lanes, making the link road proposal less likely.

Junctions

M55 motorway
mile	Eastbound exits (A Carriageway)	Junction	Westbound exits (B Carriageway)
16.2	The North West, The Lakes, Lancaster M6 The South, Birmingham, Manchester (M61), Liverpool (M58)	M6, J32	Start of motorway
15.0	Preston, Garstang A6	J1 Broughton Roundabout	Preston, Garstang A6
8.1	Kirkham A585	J3 Wesham Circle	Kirkham, Fleetwood A585
4.0	Start of motorway	J4 Marton Circle	Blackpool (North) A583
	Blackpool A583, Fleetwood (A587) Non-motorway traffic		Road continues as A5230 to Blackpool, Airport and Lytham St Annes

Outside links

• CBRD Motorway Database - M55
• Lancashire County Council - Historic Highways - M55
• The Motorway Archive - M55