Cumberland Highway

Cumberland Highway is a 34-kilometre (21 mi) long urban highway located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The highway links Pacific Highway and Pacific Motorway (M1) at Pearces Corner, Wahroonga in the northeast with Hume Highway at Liverpool in the southwest.

This name covers a few consecutive roads and is widely known to most drivers, but the entire allocation is also known – and signposted – by the names of its constituent parts: Pennant Hills Road, James Ruse Drive, Briens Road, Old Windsor Road, Hart Drive, Freame Street, Emert Street, Jersey Road, Betts Road, Warren Road, Smithfield Road, Palmerston Road, (New) Cambridge Street, Joseph Street and Orange Grove Road. The entire length of Cumberland Highway is designated part of route A28.

The name of the highway is derived from the Cumberland Plain and Cumberland County. The name Cumberland was conferred on the county by Governor Arthur Phillip in honour of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

Cumberland Highway commences at Pearces Corner – the intersection of Pacific Highway and Pennant Hills Road at Wahroonga – as Pennant Hills Road and heads in a southwesterly direction as a dual-carriageway, six-lane road, through Pennant Hills, narrowing to a single-carriageway, four-lane road through Carlingford, before reaching the interchange with James Ruse Drive.

Cumberland Highway then follows James Ruse Drive westwards as a dual-carriageway, six-lane road to the interchange with Windsor Road in Northmead, where it changes name to Briens Road and continues west until it intersects with and changes name to Old Windsor Road, shortly afterwards reaching the intersection with Hart Drive at Constitution Hill.

Cumberland Highway then follows Hart Drive in a southwesterly direction, changing name to Freame Street once it crosses under the North Shore and Western railway line in Wentworthville, and then intersects with and changes name to Emert Street shortly afterwards, before reaching the intersection with Great Western Highway. Cumberland Highway continues south as Jersey Road, then as Betts Road south of the intersection with Merrylands Road in Greystanes, then intersects with and changes name to Warren Road in Smithfield, heading in a southwesterly direction.

The Prospect Creek cycleway traverses underneath the highway at Smithfield. After crossing Prospect Creek it changes names again to Smithfield Road, before heading south along Palmerston Road and narrowing to a four-lane road in Fairfield West, changing name again to New Cambridge Street south of the intersection with Hamilton Road, then intersects with and changes name to Cambridge Street through Canley Heights, before it intersects with and changes name to Joseph Street in Cabramatta, before finally changing name to Orange Grove Road south of the intersection with Cabramatta Road West. The highway eventually terminates at the intersection with Hume Highway in the northern fringes of Liverpool.

Cumberland Highway was created from a series of pre-existing roads through western and north-western suburban Sydney, not all contiguous at the time, with Pennant Hills Road in particular already declared as a major arterial route 60 years before it was eventually incorporated into the modern-day highway. Kenyons Bridge, a low-level bridge over Prospect Creek that existed as far back as the mid 19th century, was widened for Cumberland Highway at Smithfield in the 1960s. Construction of a ring road around Parramatta and increasing traffic levels in western Sydney in the late 1970s became the precursor to today's highway.