page_title: A34 road
section_title: Route
hierarchical_section_title: A34 road / Route
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographer: User:Ballista Talk
context_page_description: The A34 is a major road in England. It runs from the A33 and M3 at Winchester in Hampshire, to the A6 and A6042 in Salford, close to Manchester City Centre. It forms a large part of the major trunk route from Southampton, via Oxford, to Birmingham, The Potteries and Manchester. For most of its length, it forms part of the former Winchester–Preston Trunk Road. Improvements to the section of road forming the Newbury Bypass around Newbury were the scene of significant direct action environmental protests in the 1990s. It is 151 miles long.
context_section_description: The road is in two sections.  The northern section runs south through Manchester and Cheadle, and bypasses Handforth, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, before passing through Congleton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the southern suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent. It then continues south via Stone, Stafford, Cannock and Walsall, passes through the middle of Birmingham (where it briefly merges with the A41), before meeting the M42 motorway at junction 4 south of Solihull.
  The northern section of the road in effect combines with the motorway network and then resumes with the southern section.  
  The southern section begins 45 miles (72 km) SSE of the northern section, at the Bicester /ˈbɪstə/ (listen) junction 9 of the M40 motorway. It continues south as the straightest (western) part of the Oxford Ring Road, crossing the River Thames on the A34 Road Bridge. It then bypasses Abingdon, Didcot, and Newbury before finishing at the southern Winchester turning of the M3 motorway, junction 9. This part of the A34 forms the E05 European route.  It is a dual carriageway throughout.
  Together with parts of the M3 and the M40, the A34 forms an important route carrying freight from Southampton to the Midlands.  Because of the volume of traffic, bypasses were built along this route – at Newbury on the A34, and at Twyford Down near Winchester on the M3 – but these were controversial for environmental reasons. Notably instead of cutting a short road tunnel through Twyford Down, the escarpment was carved out for the road traffic of the motorway and fledgling A34.
  In 2004 works were carried out, at a cost of £38 million, continuing the road without being interrupted by a roundabout at junction 13 of the M4 motorway, which had caused a "bottleneck".
  In Drayton, near Abingdon (Oxfordshire) a junction used by construction vehicles to gain access onto the A34 during its construction still exists as a "closed road", a few miles from the nearest alternative accesses. Plans are in discussion regarding possible re-opening of this closed access point.
caption: The A34 looking North towards Didcot, in Oxfordshire, with the now demolished Didcot power station cooling towers visible
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