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The vision of a dual carriageway along the length of Liverpool’s Edge Lane will be complete in March when roadworks on the creation of the widened road into the city centre will finish.

There is still no start date for house building on the key route, as developers Bellway Homes are waiting for the slump in the property market to end.

The expansion of the road between Botanic Place and Hall Lane will complete the two-lane link between the city centre and the M62 at the Rocket junction.

It will create a modern dual carriageway throughout the length of the key route.

The recently completed £19m Hall Lane bypass will mean that motorists will have a much quicker drive from the city centre to the M62.

Traffic lights will be phased to give motorists a run of green lights.

The completion of the road will be a key milestone in the project that has suffered delays due to legal battles, led by campaigning grandmother Elizabeth Pascoe, over the compulsory purchase order to buy homes.

Officials have long argued that the widening of the road was just part of a wider project to regenerate the area.

A new £5m health centre and a business park will be built alongside hundreds of new homes.

But the completion of a dual carriageway from the Rocket to the city centre marks a decades-long ambition for Liverpool.

The M62 was originally intended to continue into the city centre, but the plan was abandoned in the face of opposition.

In total, it has cost £57m to build the road and demolish homes along the route

Rob Monaghan, project director of regeneration agency Liverpool Vision, said: “We are aiming to finish at the end of March.

“We have got through the difficult bits now, and we are reasonably confident it will be done for the end of March or beginning of April.

“The hard bits are moving water pipes, electricity, gas, and communication networks.

“It is the best part of 10 years since we did the original masterplan that indicated we needed to upgrade all the highway from the Rocket junction up to Hall Lane.

“We finished the other aspects of Edge Lane two years ago.

“This element has taken three years longer than we expected, because of problems with one resident.

“The PCT has planning consent for the health centre and funding for its building and will start on site the first week in January. This was a community led initiative through Kensington Regeneration, and we have always extolled the virtues of the community saying we want something sorted.”