100 miles of extra lanes coming to North West motorways
Highways England is announcing details on four new smart motorway schemes.
Last updated 5th Jul 2018
Drivers in the North West are being promised over 100 miles of extra lanes on the region’s motorways to tackle congestion and improve journey times.
Highways England is announcing details on four new smart motorway schemes, worth around £500 million, which are due to start construction work within the next 18 months.
Contractors will begin work on the first one later this summer – on a 9-mile-stretch of the M62 which links the M6 near Warrington to the M60 near Eccles.
Drivers have already been able to use over 10 miles of extra lanes on the M62 near Rochdale since December last year, and a stretch of smart motorway has also been completed on the M60 near the Trafford Centre.
The final temporary narrow lanes were removed earlier this week on the Manchester smart motorway scheme, and more than 200 electronic signs are due to be switched on later this month later this month on a 9-mile-stretch of the M60 between Trafford Park and the M62/M66 interchange at Simister Island.
Mike Bull, from Highways England, said:
"I recognise and thank people for their patience as we complete the schemes. As you can hear today, there's a lot of traffic here, there's congestion on the motorway already. What we're seeking to do is to add that extra capacity as soon as possible to alleviate that.
"I appreciate people are frustrated by the works, we're trying to do them as quickly as possible and to learn from mistakes and what we need to improve on.
"For this scheme, we're going to be starting in sections, we're going to be keeping all lanes running throughout the day in both directions and therefore we can reduce the number of diversions we'll need to make people take."