M60 Traffic.co.uk

M60 Traffic is dedicated to all the latest M60 traffic news — M60 traffic reports and information about M60 delays, M60 roadworks, M60 accidents and incidents, updated through the day. Whether you are going clockwise towards Stockport and the airport or anticlockwise towards Salford and Bury, check the M60 before you set off.

The M60 is Manchester’s orbital motorway, and this site is one road in a wider picture. It sits within our Traffic News England network, which follows every major road in England — so when your journey leaves the M60, the news does not stop there.

Latest M60 traffic news

About the M60 motorway

The M60 is Manchester’s orbital motorway, running around 36 miles right around the city in a complete ring. It is one of the busiest motorways in the country — the section around Junctions 12 to 18 shared with the M62 is among the most congested stretches of road in the UK — so delays, roadworks and incidents are frequent. Because it is a ring, checking the latest M60 traffic news before you travel can save a lot of time.

How busy is the M60?

The Department for Transport counts traffic on the M60 at 40 separate points around the ring. Between Junction 13 and Junction 12 it carries 201,196 vehicles a day — the fourth-busiest stretch of road in the whole of Great Britain. Only three sections of the M25 are busier.

The mix of traffic is not the same all the way round. On the northern side, around Junctions 14 to 15, lorries are 12.0% of all traffic; on the quieter side of the ring that falls to about 4%. Same motorway, two very different roads — which is why a lane closure in one place behaves nothing like the same closure in another.

See the full M60 traffic statistics » · The M60 junction by junction »

Traffic count figures on this page are from the Department for Transport road traffic statistics, 2025.

M60 travel news, and what this site is for

M60 Traffic carries live M60 travel news for drivers using Manchester’s orbital motorway — current incidents, M60 accidents, M60 delays, lane closures and planned M60 roadworks, updated through the day from National Highways’ own feed. If you want everything on the motorway in one place, the latest M60 traffic news page carries the full list with a filter; this page is the overview and the way in to the rest of the site.

Why M60 Traffic exists, and the scale it covers

M60 Traffic is here for the people who use this motorway regularly — the commuters, the drivers crossing Manchester every day, and the visitors arriving for work, a flight or a match. Our job is to tell you what is happening on the M60 now, and to explain the road well enough that you can plan around it. For traffic news across all of England’s motorways and major roads we run Traffic News England as a central hub; this site is the one dedicated to the M60.

The scale of what the M60 has to carry is the reason we cover it junction by junction rather than as one road. The City of Manchester has a population of roughly 550,000, and the conurbation the M60 rings is home to approximately 3 million people. Those figures are here to put M60 traffic levels into context: this motorway is the ring road for all of them.

Visitors add to it. Manchester Airport handled just over 32 million passengers in 2025, and it matters to the M60 because the M56 that serves the airport joins this motorway on its southern side — so airport journeys and M60 conditions run into each other. The city’s two Premier League grounds draw around 2.4 million spectators a season between them, and both are reached from M60 junctions, which is why we cover the Old Trafford stretch and the Etihad stretch in detail.

The population and visitor figures above are approximate and given for context. They are here to show the scale of population and visitor numbers the M60 motorway has to absorb, and the effect that is likely to have on M60 traffic levels — they are not offered as precise counts. Sources are named below.

The traffic itself is measured, and those figures are exact

The Department for Transport counts the M60 at 40 separate points, which resolve to 35 distinct measured stretches. The average across them is 124,808 vehicles a day, and the busiest measured stretch of the whole motorway — between Junctions 13 and 12 — carries 201,196. The M60 itself is 36.1 miles long with junctions averaging just 1.3 miles apart, which is unusually tight for a motorway and part of why incidents here spread quickly.

Where to go next: latest M60 traffic news · how busy is the M60, junction by junction · all M60 junctions and maps · M60 closures tonight

Population: City of Manchester 549,853 (2021 Census, ONS); Greater Manchester approximately 3,009,664 (2024 estimate). Airport passengers: Manchester Airport, 2025. Attendances: published Premier League home league records, 2023/24 to 2025/26. Traffic counts and road length: Department for Transport road traffic statistics, 2025, annual average daily flow.