M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Moderator: Site Management Team
M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
- "We’ve developed a range of options for improving Simister Island Interchange, and we’ve now reduced these down to two options which will perform best against the project objectives".
- Cost £66m-£338m (!) - perhaps suggesting that the two options are drastically different in scale.
- Start date 2024, end date 2026.
- "The assessment so far indicates that the options are not expected to have significant impacts on the environment". As a junction improvement this is to be expected.
- "The junction is used by around 90,000 vehicles each day". Presumably this refers to the amount of turning traffic; including mainlines it would be ~250k.
https://highwaysengland.co.uk/projects/ ... terchange/
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
I had a quick look using Bing Maps, and the site is very constrained on the south east side, there is housing very close to the junction. Looking for free-flow, I suppose its not really required for the M66 approaches. I have passed this way quite often, but never at rush hours as I'm retired. I has all the look of a major bottleneck.
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
What are the major flows? My assumption is that M60-M62 is the biggest, which is already freeflow but I couldn't guess that well the others (I've not been through it regularly enough to get a feel).fras wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 11:06 Am I missing something, because I can't find any maps of the options.
I had a quick look using Bing Maps, and the site is very constrained on the south east side, there is housing very close to the junction. Looking for free-flow, I suppose its not really required for the M66 approaches. I have passed this way quite often, but never at rush hours as I'm retired. I has all the look of a major bottleneck.
OP's right about the range of costs! Does the timescale tell us anything, bearing in mind it'll have to be done whilst keeping the junction functional?
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
They will presumably be up when the consultation opens at the end of June.
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
* M62 west -> M66 = the actual constraint is the loss of the third M66 lane some distance away at J2, this queues back to Simister on a bad evening.
* M60 anti-clockwise = the constraint is this movement is a single lane that has to merge twice, directly into the path of traffic wanting to exit at J17. This weaving causes everything to back up in all directions.
* M60 clockwise = this movement isn't atrocious because there are two lanes of traffic and there is a degree of signal optimisation but it can be slow at peak times. The two lanes are a lane gain towards J19 which helps massively.
* M66 -> M60 anti-clockwise = two lanes through the roundabout, straight into the same problems with the anti-clockwise M60 movement and J17.
* M60 anti-clockwise -> M62 = two lanes through, has a merging problem but this has been eased since the ALR scheme was finished.
Ultimately, it does not matter what HE propose to do with Simister because until you sort out M60 J17 and the bottleneck on the M66 at J2, throwing upto a third of a billion quid at this junction makes absolutely jack all change to the surrounding problem spots.
Also you'd place even more stress on the 4 into 3 constraint at J15, which already queues back to - yep, you guessed - J18.
Given so many of the M60 movements are individual drivers commuting around Greater Manchester, could this third of a billion be spent on better ways to move these people thus freeing up the M60 for the freight and essential car users? I'd say yes.
Terminally cynical, unimpressed, and nearly Middle Age already.
She said life was like a motorway; dull, grey, and long.
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Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Mainline AADTs are:
M60W 160k
M62 125k
M60S 110k
M66 90k
So I would guess the heaviest right turn volumes in order are:
M60W to M60S
M66 to M62W
M60S to M62
M62 to M66
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Big and complex.
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Some of those movements are extremely tight and have excessive gradients, especially in the NW corner. There's quite a height difference between the top and bottom levels.Gav wrote:full freeflow
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
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Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
...and there’s no right turn from M66 to M60 anti-clockwise!
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Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
You have the M60 clockwise movement twice, once direct and again as a loop. I’d keep the direct one.JammyDodge wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 23:45 My idea, sorry about the awful drawing by me. Blue is motorway, red signals the start and end of bridges.
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Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
- JammyDodge
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Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Yes, i have just spotted that.Chris5156 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 23:57You have the M60 clockwise movement twice, once direct and again as a loop. I’d keep the direct one.JammyDodge wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 23:45 My idea, sorry about the awful drawing by me. Blue is motorway, red signals the start and end of bridges.
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Here's an alternative that stays closer to the existing weaving distance:
It keeps the M60 TOTSOs as they are appropriate to flows in this configuration.
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
Re: M60 Junction 18 Simister Island Interchange
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... ter_Island
Big and complex.
From the SABRE Wiki: Simister Island :
Simister Island - junction 18 of the M60, junction 18 of the M62 and junction 4 of the M66 - forms the north eastern corner of the M60 Manchester Outer Ring Road. Opened in 1971 as a standard two level roundabout with provision for an underpass onto the Bury Easterly Bypass (now M66) when constructed, it has since become vastly over-capacity.
In 1999 as part of the creation of the M60, the interchange was given free-flow sliproads for all left