Kingsway Tunnel
road tunnel under the River Mersey, England
The Kingsway Tunnel (signposted as the Wallasey Tunnel or W'sey Tunnel) is a toll road tunnel under the River Mersey between Liverpool and Wallasey. It was built because the existing Queensway Tunnel was unable to cope with the rise in postwar traffic. The 1.5 mi (2.4 km) tunnel carries the A59. Locally, it is often referred to as the "new tunnel", to distinguish it from the older Queensway Tunnel (1934), which serves Birkenhead and carries public transport services.
History
Annual vehicle usage of the Queensway Tunnel had exceeded 11 million by 1959, causing severe traffic congestion at peak commute times, partially as a result of low toll costs. It was evident that a significant capacity increase was required, with considerations on various bridge and tunnel schemes ultimately concluding with a second tunnel as the favoured option, funded by tolls. Legal powers were granted by Parliament in 1965 for construction of a new two-lane tunnel, approximately 1 mile downstream from the existing tunnel. A further bill for the tunnel's construction was promoted in 1967 with approval given in 1968, upon which construction started immediately.
Construction
The project was authorised by the Mersey Tunnel (Liverpool/Wallasey) &c. Act 1965 (c.
“Kingsway Tunnel” enters the record as road tunnel under the River Mersey, England. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kingsway, Tunnel and road can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kingsway Tunnel” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kingsway, Tunnel and road provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6413735. Authority coordinates are 53.413, -3.010. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1959, 1965 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kingsway Tunnel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.