Colonial Highway 3

Colonial Highway 3 (CH3), otherwise known as Aviation Parkway (Traditional Chinese: 翺翔公路), is an at-grade highway, part of the Port Run Colonial Highways Network. The highway provides a vital north-south route between Port Run International Airport and Lin Heung Wai in Port Run.

The highway is also known as Airport Road when running in Millsport.

History
Prior to being signed as a colonial highway, the road had existed in the pre-colonial eras, serving to link the three communities, now known as Millsport, Oxfordshire, and Gordon. This road was called The Millsway. The road has not much of a significance until Port Run was made into a Royal Watersauga Crown Colony.

In the 1970s, with the construction of the Port Run International Airport, a road link was urgently needed to connect the entire colony to the airport. When the site of the airport was chosen to be just west of Gordon, it was suggested to widen The Millsway into a dual carriageway (divided highway).

With the implementation of the Port Run Colonial Highways System in the 1980s, the highway was signed as Colonial Highway 3, and had its northern terminus at the Cosmoplay - Port Run border, and southern terminus at a junction with Colonial Highway 1 in Millsport.

The highway underperformed in terms of traffic, as most airport users and commuters would come in from the more populated western side of the colony (The Greater Capitol City Area), and CH3 deemed inconvenient for these users. In the 1990s, with the redesigning of the highway, the highway was shortened and lanes were reduced so that CH3 becomes an at-grade highway. Land has been reserved, however, on both sides of the colonial highway, for future expansions.

With this fix, the portion north of Cheong Wan Road is no longer signed as CH3, but rather as Aviation Parkway, and provides a link to the Principality of Gordon and the neighbouring Cosmoplay Region.

Due to the establishment of Lin Heung Wai, a new town as part of the Port Run Satellite Cities Project, the Colonial Highway was extended south beyond Colonial Highway 1 in mid-2012. Its current southern terminus is at a junction with Colonial Highway 4, just south of Lin Heung Wai, near Governor's Control Point.

Route Description
The entire highway is paved. For the bulk part of the highway, it is a two-laned at-grade highway.

In the northern end of CH3, the roadway is widened into a brief four-laned divided highway. This is a remnant part of the pre-1990 era of the highway, and still exists for a brief 550 m, beginning at Cheong Wan Road, before becoming a two-laned at-grade highway.

After bypassing the Principality of Oxfordshire, the colonial highway crosses a railway crossing and enters the Principality of Millsport as a city road. The principality locally maintains this road despite it is still signed as part of CH3. This section has quite a few traffic-light signalled intersections. However, upon its junction with Colonial Highway 1, the junction is not signalized, and has been a controversial of posing danger to motorists.

The new extension of the highway continues to be a two-laned at-grade highway, beginning just south of the principality. The highway stretches for several kilometers and ends at a signalled intersection with Colonial Highway 4.

Usage
It is noteworthy that Colonial Highway 3 is the second least used highway (used to be the least) in terms of Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) counts, second to the newly-opened Colonial Highway 106 in South State.

A possibility for its low usage is due to the relatively low population along the corridor. As well as since most residents in the colony reside to the west of this highway, when they need to access the airport, they would tend to use Colonial Highway 4 (Quinte Highway), which is a more direct route from the Greater Capitol City Area.