The M60: junction 7, Stretford & Altrincham

Turn off to stay on

At Simister Island the through lanes carry on as the M62. To stay on the M60 you leave by the slip road and loop round the interchange.

J18
Two motorways, one road

From Eccles to Simister the M60 and the M62 share the same carriageways. The junction numbers you see are the M60's.

J12 J18
The airport, two ways

Clockwise, the M56 for the airport leaves at J4. Anticlockwise there is no exit at J4, so the signs send you off at J5.

J4 J5
Half junctions

Seven junctions only let you off in one direction: 4, 20 and 26 clockwise, and 2, 14, 16 and 27 anticlockwise.

J2 J4 J14 J16 J20 J26 J27
One junction, two roads

Both directions are signed for Ashton-under-Lyne, but by different roads: the A635 clockwise and the A6140 anticlockwise.

J23
The A56, twice

Chester Road crosses the ring at J7 and Bury New Road at J17. Both are the A56, which runs straight through the city between them.

J7 J17
Busiest in Britain

In 2004 the stretch through Clifton and Whitefield carried about 181,000 vehicles a day, more than any other road in the country.

J16 J17
Where the numbers start

J1 is beside Stockport's blue glass pyramid, an office block that has become the ring's best-known landmark.

J1

History

The M60 is 36.1 miles long and wholly inside Greater Manchester. Its junctions sit on average 1.3 miles apart, close together for a British motorway, and are numbered clockwise from Stockport. Clockwise traffic uses the outer carriageway and anticlockwise traffic the inner one.

The oldest part is the Stretford–Eccles bypass, opened in 1960 with the Barton High Level Bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal. The ring was stitched together from parts of the M62, M63 and M66 and renumbered as the M60 in 1998. The last stretch, from J19 to J23, opened in October 2000 and closed the loop.

In 2004 the section between J16 and J17 was the busiest road in the country, at about 181,000 vehicles a day. Since 2018 the road from J8 round to J18 has run as a smart motorway with variable speed limits.

Drag the map to move it, and scroll or pinch to zoom. ← → step round the ring and D flips the direction.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Destinations and mileages from the Wikipedia junction list; miles for J3, J4, J15 and J25–27 are estimated from the map.