Dunnings Bridge Road, A59.
The first stretch of the Litherland to Maghull Highway was opened by Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha on 4 December 1934, by which time the Great West Road had been retrofitted with cycle tracks so perhaps his seeing this road without such tracks spurred the local authority to add them?
Add them they did. By 1938 the Dunnings Bridge Road part of the highway was a “2.5 miles dual roadway with cycle tracks,” reported the Liverpool Echo on the highway’s opening day, 19 July, 1938.
Couple walking on the footway next to the cycle track beside Dunnings Bridge Road. Liverpool Echo, 19 July 1938.
The ribbon was cut by the Earl of Sefton (the road crossed his land, which he donated to the council), added the newspaper.
“Just beyond Maghull … we came upon sample of the much discussed cycle tracks,” wrote ‘Wingnuts,’ a local newspaper’s cycling correspondent before the road’s official opening.
“Opinions on the usefulness or otherwise of these appeared to vary,” continued the writer, “[but we] seemed to be of the opinion that the way in which we were disgorged back into the main flow of traffic was suicidal and was in great need of reconsideration.”
However, for National Clarion Cycling Club touring cyclist Mr. W. Aldred, the cycle track was “perfect.”
A month after the road was opened he told the Nelson Leader that “if all cycle paths could be like these I would be satisfied.”
The cycle tracks on the road were, he said, “found to be well nigh perfect, being wide, good surfaced paths, and on both sides of the road.”
