page_title: M62 motorway
section_title: Traffic
hierarchical_section_title: M62 motorway / Traffic
context_page_description: The M62 is a 107-mile-long west–east trans-Pennine motorway in Northern England, connecting Liverpool and Hull via Manchester and Leeds; 7 miles of the route is shared with the M60 orbital motorway around Manchester. The road is part of the unsigned Euroroutes E20 and E22.
  The motorway, which was first proposed in the 1930s, and conceived as two separate routes, was opened in stages between 1971 and 1976, with construction beginning at Pole Moor and finishing at that time in Tarbock on the outskirts of Liverpool. The motorway absorbed the northern end of the Stretford-Eccles bypass, which was built between 1957 and 1960. Adjusted for inflation to 2007, its construction cost approximately £765 million. The motorway has an average daily traffic flow of 144,000 vehicles in West Yorkshire, and has several sections prone to gridlock, in particular, between Leeds and Huddersfield and the M60 section around Eccles. The M62 coach bombing of 1974 and the Great Heck rail crash of 2001 are the largest incidents to have occurred on the motorway.
  Stott Hall Farm, situated between the carriageways on the Pennine section, has become one of the best-known sights on the motorway.
context_section_description: The section between junctions 18 (with the M60) and 29 (with the M1) through Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire has been identified as one of the most congested roads in Britain. The motorway provides a direct link between three of the five largest metro areas in England, and is the most practical route for HGVs and other commercial traffic between Manchester and Leeds. There are a significant amount of warehouses in these urban areas, which require commercial delivery to the ports at Merseyside and around the Humber, all of which are transported via the M62.
  Annual average daily traffic flows of 100,000 cars were recorded east of the Pennines (junction 22) in 2006 and 78,000 cars west of the Pennines. The figures were increases from 90,000 and 70,000 respectively in 1999. By way of comparison, the UK's busiest motorway, the M25 carried 144,000 cars between junctions 7 and 23 in 2006.
caption: 1999–2006 traffic flow graph