For decades, motorists have been divided on junction 25 of the M60.
The Bredbury Interchange, to give its full name, is infamous on the motorway network as it is one of the places where traffic joins the road from a slip road on the right-hand side. That means vehicles using the slip road to get up to speed with traffic have to filter into what is often the fastest lane on the motorway.
It’s left drivers divided over the Stockport junction for years. Last year, M.E.N. readers reflected the difference of opinion, with one saying ‘someone was doing heavy drugs when they designed that one’.
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However, others said using the slip road is ‘basic stuff’ and ‘not dangerous at all’. Now, one man appears to have explained why the junction has its novel design.
That man is Jon Jefferson, who runs the YouTube channel Auto Shenanigans.
On the channel, Jon looks at issues affecting drivers like fuel prices, but is perhaps best-known on the platform for his Secrets of the Motorway series. In those episodes, he breaks down a motorway — retelling the history of how it was built, if any changes have been made since it was first completed, and if any interesting sights that can be seen from the road.
Last month, Jon covered the M60 — the UK’s only orbital motorway which is a complete circle — and got on to the thorny issue of junction 25. “What the f*** is that… is that a junction?,” he joked. “Apparently it’s junction 25, but something is amiss here, I suspect, and indeed it would appear that this junction is the result of a cancelled motorway.”
That motorway, he explained, was the never-constructed A6(M), first mooted in the 1940s. Jon went on: “[Building an A6(M)] was always on the low-priority list, and it stayed on this list throughout the 60s and 70s. Had this motorway been built, it would have run from junction 25 from the M60, round the back of Hazel Grove, before linking up with the A6. It seemed like a good idea, because it would have allowed traffic to avoid driving in and out of the already-congested Stockport.”
This was back in the days before the M60 existed, he added, with the then-under construction-M66 designed to join up to the Bredbury Interchange, where drivers could either head south on to the A6(M), or head west via the M63. However, the decision was made in the late-90s to renumber the southern section of the M66 as the M60, a move which also saw the M63 — running across south Manchester — subsumed into the M60, along with a section of the M62 from Eccles to Simister Island.
That created the M60 ring as we know it today. Jon described junction 25 as ‘dangerous’ but ‘not intentional’.
“Our dodgy slip road would potentially have been one of the main carriageways put in place for the A6(M),” he explained. “Following the project’s cancellation, I think they built it, and then just connected it to the roundabout as a last-minute thing. I’m not 100 percent sure, but it’s a sensible theory.”
From junction 25, the motorway continues into Stockport town centre, with junction 27 its final exit, before drivers carry on to junction 1 again. That means, in effect, the Stockport Viaduct acts as a start line for the motorway.
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