The Kingsway Tunnel is a road tunnel under the River Mersey in Merseyside, northwest England, and runs between Liverpool and Wallasey. It is one and half miles (2.4 km) long and is often called the Wallasey Tunnel to distinguish it from the older Queensway Tunnel which runs between Liverpool and Birkenhead.
The tunnel was constructed over a five-year period by Edmund Nuttall, after the Queensway Tunnel became unable to cope with modern volumes of traffic. It was opened in June 1971 by Queen Elizabeth II and consists of twin tubes, each having two 12 ft (3.7 m) wide lanes.
The entrance to the Kingsway Tunnel is used as the basis of a tunnel entrance in the video game Grand Theft Auto III — during the 1990s, several members of the game's development team had worked for the Merseyside-based development company Psygnosis.
The present fee for a single car journey through the tunnel is £1.50, payable at the Wallasey end of the tunnel for vehicles travelling in either direction.
In a study following the fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel in 1999, inspectors from the European Union rated the Kingsway Tunnel as "good", one of only eight to receive that rating in Europe.
Famous quotes containing the word tunnel:
“You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)