Queensway, Birmingham

Queensway, in Birmingham, England, most often refers to the Queensway Tunnel, a 1,798 feet (548 m) long road tunnel in the centre of the city.^[1] The tunnel forms part of the designated A38, which locally is a major carriageway that cuts through Birmingham city centre.^[2][3] "Queensway" as a suffix is also the name of several other roads and circuses in the city (such as Smallbrook Queensway); all these roads including the tunnel collectively made up what was once called the Inner Ring Road, an orbital dual carriageway which has now been dismantled.

The old Inner Ring Road, which was also referred to as the "Queensway" and designated as the A4400 road, was completed and opened in 1971. Described as an "urban motorway"^[4] (although it was not officially designated as a motorway), it featured largely grade separated junctions and most of them allowed vehicles staying on the road to pass over or under those using the junction. Pedestrians were kept physically separate from vehicular traffic and used subways to cross the ring road. Although seen as revolutionary when first opened, the 'Concrete Collar', as it became known, was viewed by council planners as an impenetrable barrier for the expansion of the city centre. By the 1990s, changes were made to the road as the council sought to improve pedestrian links,^[5] and vehicular movements were increasingly shifted out to the Middleway.^[6] The Inner Ring Road was effectively dismantled in the early 2000s, with many of its roads having been rebuilt and downgraded to surface-level streets, resulting in them resembling city streets far more.^[7] The Queensway Tunnel and St Chad's Tunnel, as well as the Lancaster Circus and Suffolk Street flyovers, are remaining relics of the ring road and make up most of the present A38 carriageway in this area.^[2]