Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
Construction has officially begun on a landmark upgrade of the Simister Island interchange, located north of Manchester, England — one of the most strategically critical and chronically congested motorway junctions in the North West. According to Safer Highways, the project marks the start of a multi-year programme designed to dramatically improve capacity, enhance safety, and reduce delays for the thousands of motorists who rely on the junction every single day.
The works centre on Junction 18 of the M60 motorway — the precise point at which the M60, the M62, and the M66 all converge. National Highways, the government-owned company responsible for England’s major motorways and A-roads, is leading the delivery of the scheme, which received formal backing from the Department for Transport prior to entering its current construction phase. As Safer Highways reports, years of planning and development work preceded the first contractor activity now visible at the site.
The headline infrastructure change in the scheme is the construction of a brand-new northern loop road. This loop is specifically intended to allow a significant proportion of vehicles to bypass the existing signal-controlled roundabout at Simister Island — a piece of infrastructure that has long acted as a bottleneck during peak hours. By diverting traffic around rather than through the roundabout, National Highways expects to substantially reduce queue lengths and improve journey reliability for motorists travelling between Greater Manchester, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the broader national motorway network.
Alongside the loop road, sections of the M60 between Junctions 17 and 18 will be widened to provide five lanes in each direction. This stretch of motorway is noted for experiencing heavy traffic volumes throughout the day, and the additional lane capacity is designed to absorb demand that currently exceeds what the existing four-lane configuration can comfortably handle. Together, the loop road and the widening programme represent what National Highways describes as a transformative intervention at one of the region’s most important road junctions.
The overall investment required to deliver the scheme is substantial. According to Safer Highways, the project is expected to cost between £255 million and £296 million, placing it firmly in the category of major national infrastructure spending. Completion of the full programme is currently targeted for 2030, meaning motorists, residents, and freight operators in the area should anticipate several years of construction activity, phased traffic management changes, and evolving site conditions as different elements of the project are delivered sequentially.
Early preparatory works are already underway. Contractors have taken advantage of overnight motorway closures to carry out a series of safety-focused installations around the interchange, including new safety barriers, updated road markings, and average speed enforcement cameras. National Highways confirmed that these measures are in place to protect both road users passing through the zone and the construction teams working within it. The organisation also acknowledged that some disruption and additional noise may be experienced by residents living near the interchange during the works, but stated that efforts would be made to minimise impacts wherever possible throughout the construction period.
Location & Road Context
Simister Island sits at the convergence of three of northern England’s most heavily trafficked motorways — the M60 orbital motorway around Greater Manchester, the M62 trans-Pennine route linking Manchester with Leeds and Hull, and the M66 corridor running northward toward Ramsbottom and Rawtenstall. The interchange has long been recognised by transport planners as one of the most congested and strategically important junctions not just in the North West, but across all of northern England. Its role as a gateway between Greater Manchester and the wider northern motorway network means that delays at Simister Island have cascading effects across multiple routes and regions. Drivers travelling between Long Island’s own major arterials and their counterparts in the UK may find instructive parallels in how high-volume interchange upgrades of this scale are planned and executed over multi-year programmes.
Broader Impact
The Simister Island scheme carries significance well beyond its immediate engineering footprint. Transport planners believe the completed interchange will support economic activity across Greater Manchester and the wider northern region by creating a more reliable and higher-capacity corridor through what has historically been a pinch point on the national road network. National Highways has emphasised that extensive planning went into the programme specifically to reduce disruption during construction — a challenge that will test that commitment over the coming years as the project moves through its various delivery phases toward the 2030 target.