Secrets of The Motorway - A57M 

I can say as an experienced and frequent user of the Sackville Street junction, that back in the days when the limit was 50mph, coming off there was *checks dictionary definition* fucking terrifying.

You forgot to mention that the entire length of the A57M is now a 30mph road.

You forgot to mention that the abandoned slip road is where the scene in Life on Mars where John Simm gets hit by a car

HeHe!! Love that line John ... "From Manchester to another bit of Manchester!" Got to love road planners.

I've had a good week. Now I've had a great week, because it's Secrets of the Motorway Day!

When I was at UMIST in the 90's, I heard (from an engineering prof) that the unbuilt sliproad would have gone straight through one of the university buildings as someone miscalculated the angles. Only when they started building it did anyone realise. Worth noting that the Sackville Street sliproads are of course almost always rainsoaked for extra entertainment. Absolutely terrifying in an overloaded 90's student car.

You forgot the best part about the Sackville Street Junction: the abandoned slip road was because, when it was being built, the road it leads onto was a one-way street. In the opposite direction. (It became bidirectional in the mid-2010s.) I'd love to have seen the person's face when they realised that. So if you've ever made a mistake at work, be thankful it wasn't as big as that.

John - Your videos are bloody brilliant, and you deserve a lot more than 108K subscribers!

Those slip roads are basically how every slip road in cities here in the U.S. Since we decided to plow through cities with motorways some of them are super short. Or have sharp curves, e.g. Exit 349 on I-76 in Pennsylvania.

Seemed like a slightly meta episode this week, with tram based out takes included, a quick reflected view of the camera, a random sunken narrow boat in evidence at around 6:18, and those two hi-vis guys interrupting the sign-off! All part of the special Auto-Shenanigans magic of course! I doubt I will ever need this level of knowledge of the A57M again, but anyway roll on the next one...😆

I think the A6 London Road slip onto the A635M was closed during the infamous Mancunian Way Sinkhole that happened back in 2016, to reduce traffic around it. They never got round to reopening the sliproad once it got fixed. The slip road that ended in the air just above Princess Street and Brook Street (now mostly hidden by the Circle Square multistorey car park) would have sent traffic the wrong way down Princess Street (a one-way street) had it been completed, which explains why the Sackville Street junction shortly after is such a compact and downright dangerous mess.

At 8:05 directly above the bowstring bridge are the buildings of Manchester's first railway station: Liverpool Road Station on the original Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830. Now part of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. Well worth a visit.

I've been horribly ill today and feeling shitty but it's always a good day when Auto Shenanigans uploads.

Ah, here we are! I use this motorway regularly to get from my home in Saddleworth to my job in Trafford. It's chaos (expecially the Chester Road roundabout) but it's still quicker than driving through town or, god forbid, picking through the maze of streets through Hulme. The slip road at Mayfield Depot was closed a while back following a sink hole closing half the A635, but I could swear it was reopened and then closed again when redevelopment of the depot started. But I could be wrong. The cutting at Chester Road used to be a rickety old flyover which linked up to what was the last bit of Regent Road, under the Castlefield viaduct. When the cutting was put in, it was immediately shrunk down to one lane in each direction as the original Regent Road hadn't been widened, which was utter chaos. Since then, they were able to use another arch, it was all widened out and now we have a humongous junction linking the Mancunian Way, Regent Road, Castlefield Road and Trinity Way, which if anything is even more chaos...

Oasis on the piano to finish the mancunian episode was a nice touch.

I can barely cope with the excitement another episode of Auto Shenanigans brings...🎉

I lived in Manchester for the best part of a decade, getting on to the A57M on that short junction, with most of the main traffic pulling left and having zero visibility was always a twitchy bum moment. It was a 50mph limit back then too. All good fun, but I don't miss trying to join the main carriageway there at all.

The Sackville Street junction is chaos because you also have to join a slip road that has traffic entering the motorway, people who want to go straight on to the Wilmslow exit whilst you go from 50 to 20mph to go fully left for the universities. Used to be my daily commute and I was terrified every time.

I used to live right next to this motorway and there's a couple of things you missed. To the south west of the Downing street junction there's something that looks like an electrical substation. It's actually an entrance to a tunnel system going under the centre of Manchester over to Salford. It was supposed to be in case of nuclear war but ended up being used to house a phone exchange. The other thing is that under the A57M flyover near the footpath next to Princess street there's a plaque because the flyover received an award from the concrete society.

Funny to see the Manchester rain arrive just as you were signing off... they used to reckon at the Old Trafford cricket ground that if you could see the Derbyshire hills it was going to rain and if you couldn't... it was already raining! 🙂

+100 points for the Granada logo.

love the piano renditino of half the world away at the end

You should have driven along it during rush hour and filmed the suicidal lottery of getting on and off the Mancunian Way on the crazy close and tight junctions: Though congratulations on managing to visit Manchester on one of the very rare rainy day. Usually, all year round it is over 20C and sunny here in Manchester. We wish.

I think it’s also worthy of note (that 20 years ago, not sure now) the Sackville Street junction exits as the entering traffic is filtering creating a chaotic experience of trying to filter off and on in the same lane

Random fact. The last series of Peaky blinders was filmed under the castlefield viaduct. You can see the overhead catenary for the electric trains on the bridge going over the garrison pub

Something about the Downing Street junction of the A57M - back in 2006 a police officer got hit by a car on the sliproad and inexplicably woke up in 1973! Was he mad, in a coma, or back in time?

The A57M does allow you to bypass slower cross city traffic when getting to Oxford Road and east, and the other direction though the A57 itself does clog up westbound with queues forming on the A57M. You can pretty much give that traffic report any weekday evening.

Also in a weird accident in the late 80s / early 90s a truck came over the barrier and landed on a taxi on the road underneath 😮 and also a giant sinkhole appeared at one end a few years ago

The eastbound A635 slip road has never been in use as far as I know. It was used as the filming location for Sam Tyler's car accident in the BBC series Life On Mars.

I'm from Australia, never been to the UK in my life but I really enjoy your videos and find them fascinating! You're like the Geoff Marshall of motorways (or maybe Geoff is the Auto Shenanigans of railways?)

You didn't mention that those on and off ramps are so batshit crazy that they had to change the speed limit and set it to 30 mph to avoid accidents. Also, being within a proximity to universities, I often see drunk students getting on that motorway on foot and trying to walk down it to get wherever the navigation system tells them

hi Jon, great a57 review and amazing to see you at work making it. hopefully yelling at you from the car wasn't too disturbing...

Love this one Jon. I enjoy the urban ones because you get the old / disused/ repurposed architecture as well plus a bit o' social history thrown in. Nice one 👍🏻

This is becoming my new Heatbeat/Antiques Roadshow theme tunes....It's Sunday!!!😅

Love that Manky Way. Back in the *0s, the 'Deansgate Interchange' was a roundabout that I loved to screw my bike around. Strange, red tarmac that was so slippy when wet - such fun. Odder than that was the bridge that crossed the roundabout joining Chester Road to Deansgate. Lashed together from a few girders and pretty steep too. Simpler times.

Love the piano at the end - sounds like a beautiful interpretation of Half the World Away? Do you have details on the artist please?

Another great video. one extra point. The Castlefield Viaduct was also access to Manchester Central passenger station, which saw passenger trains to London St. Pancras and is now the exhibition centre there (also formerly known as GMex)

Absolute nightmare of a thing that ruins the southern end of the city centre. Deansgate and Hulme feel totally cut off from one another and the weird hinterland round the uni sports centre never feels welcoming cos this giant concrete bridge is towering over you. You've got the Ordsall Chord in the outro there, too - George Osborne's 100 million pound gift to the city of a useless bit of track. Two trains an hour because nobody thought about how to run more trains into Piccadilly and Victoria without having more space.

The A66 running through Middlesbrough is similar to this. Built on a flyover that demolished half the original town centre in its construction. At least that has a 50mph limit with decent slip roads.

This is the best video I've ever seen about anything

Great video again Jon. If you ever have an hour to waste, try driving from the centre of Manchester to Stockport at 5pm. It's only 6 miles you can cycle it faster! I shall resist the urge to moan about HS2 again... As for what I get up to, this last week 3 points and a fine because of a very badly designed junction. It's not over!

Ahh the G TV logo at the end was a nice touch!

Nice Granada symbol at the end.

Back in the early 90s I worked on the Salford extension as an engineer. What an eye opener! Every so often you'd get some Manc scally kids walking along the carriageway with a trolley full of stuff. Any old iron? You bet!

Hi John, great video as usual, but you didn't mention the flyover bridge that used to cross the Chester Road (A56) roundabout before the rebuilding. Made of what appeared to be sub-standard Meccano it was narrow, only available for cars, and vibrated dramatically if taken at over the speed limit. It was known as the "big dipper" amongst other names. An engineering student I knew used to dump random bolts beside the supports, to confuse the road maintenance guys

I'm sure you could have stretched your video a little longer if you had mentioned the name "Mancunian way was chosen by 5 schoolchildren following a competition who had to share the prize. The design was so innovative that a documentary was made by the Cement and Concrete association. The Mancunian way was going to be named something else entity other suggestions were 'Highway 64', 'President Kennedy Way', and 'Busby Way'. The roundabout space underneath the motorway were originally designed to be miniature parks. Over two thousand trees were planted under the motorway but most died though lack of light. Though the years it's been the subject of photography exhibitions, used as a backdrop for film and TV, including 24 Hour Party People and Life On Mars and has even lent it's name to a song on the 2006 Take That album Beautiful World. It's name has also been adopted as a way to describe the city's attitude and outlook. The Mancunian Way, Manchester's Highway in the Sky...

Great Northern warehouse- (Jon wishing the railway niche wasnt taken again ;) ) Theres a chap trading as Flecky Bennet who does ghost tours in the undercroft of it where there are old air raid shelters and the lifts for the canal. A great scare trip for Halloween but also an impressive space to see. Those on/off ramps to upper brook st were crazy at the old speed limit. I used to use them all the time at uni going from my rental off upper brook street to go flying at raf woodvale near southport with manchester University air squadron.

The idea of including the blooper reel into the main video is just... funny 😄

5:50 I couldn't agree more.

Hiya. Love your videos. When I was much younger. I was really into the motorway network. Use to collect maps and draw motorway junctions when bored at school lol. I got an idea for ya unless you have already thought about it. Defunct motorways and what they use to be like. Bit like A102(M) or the A41(M) now known as the Tring Bypass

I think it wins the award for lowest semi-permanent speed limit of a motorway. The 30mph limit has been in place for more than 2 years I seem to recall - as the “barriers aren’t safe” with no sign of them being fixed.

Just love your videos and your presentation, so entertaining. Keep them coming John and thanks for your hard work with them Loved the "waiting for the tram" section, and note referring, that always makes me laugh

Love the lingering visual gag on the road layout of the sackville street sliproads

2:05 - just down the way from the Foundry. I've driven this a lot doing deliveries to some locations I can't talk about for security reasons!

Blink and you might miss the "Granada" logo at the very end of the outro. I thought Jon might taken a look at the former studios and their return to use as a studio complex.

The bit between Deansgate-Castlefield and Cornbrook is probably the single busiest section for trams so... good choice of filming location!

I always love it when you put it into historical building plan context

Is the outro music a piano rendition of Half the World Away by Oasis? If it is, I appreciate the nice and subtle homage to one of the greatest sitcoms ever, the Royle Family, of course set in Manchester. Another of my favourites is Ideal, which is also set in Manchester! You have good taste, John!

I'm not even from the UK but I keep watching these because of how amusing your presentation is

Watching these videos, I know now why I kept getting lost trying to find my way around the UK by road.

One damn traffic jam from end to end! They spent one year upgrading the Salford end in which one firm went into administration to relieve congestion and there is still congestion at the Salford end.

The western end of the Mancunian Way is very close to Salford. Hence you could almost say it starts Salford and ends in central Manchester. From 1969-1971 I was a student based in central Manchester and rode a motorbike from the Didsbury and Withington areas into college and back using part of the Mancunian Way. Then from 1972-1974 I drove a van then a car from Northenden to Oldham using part of the Mancunian Way. The reason I used the Mancunian Way was because even though it was only short it saved a lot of time than waiting to cross that part of the city centre by any of the alternatives.

From Mrs 6thDayBlue for putting up with our awful roads here in Greater Manchester x

Although the A57(M) technically goes down the east facing slips at Downing St it makes perfect sense to use the number on the A635(M) bit when you consider how easily confused some people can get.

Parts of the supports of the motorway are painted white, but not all are. This is because when the new university of UMIST was being opened by the Queen, it was decided that the grey concrete was ugly. So it was painted white. But only the parts that could be seen by the Queen during her visit were thus painted. So that's why bits are white, and boots aren't.

Great video, the research is good, the locations to film are nicely chosen, the videos flow, the duration is spot on and the Granada sign is perhaps the most enduring memory from my childhood.

It was helpful to see how the Mancunian Way ended up the way it did.

When I was a student studying civil engineering we where told a student engineer noticed one of the ghost slips would make cars go the wrong way down a one way street. The moral was we should always speak up if we spot somthing wrong. Thing is had the other motorways been built the the slip would have worked.

I often play your motorway videos while I eat, but they are so interesting that I cant even eat while watching it 😅😅

there's a guy in Manchester that does videos of tunnels, burried rivers , dissused raill tunnels etc called Martin Zero, you should hook up with him some time, that would be wicked, sweet awesome

Great episode one of those quirky little things..

This little guy was MEANT to be feeding the M67. With that bit unbuilt lump of motorway joining them, of course. I mean, not that I'm bitter that nobody can get into and out of Sheffield at all and that two of Britain's biggest cities are joined together by a dirt track, some sheep, and a closed road at the first sign of frost.

I appreciate that the UK hasn't got a lot of space, when compared to Germany. Looking at the German and the UK's slip-roads you're amazed how compact the UK's are and marvel at how there aren't more accidents on them! These roads on the A57M just highlight the problem!

Great but your very slightly more excited than normal. Please keep the tone to the normal dull level. Your videos are the best sleep remedy I’ve ever found. Love, a loyal subscriber.

I'm pretty sure Google Maps used to also label that flyover as the A635(M), though it doesn't now. Though it may seem insignificant and definitely below par for a motorway, the mancunian way is a vital link. You should see the chaos it causes when its closed!

Secrets of the motorway & railway history too although there was no mention of the former Central Station

regarding the design of the Sackville Street junction, this was probably a combination of it pre-dating modern safety standards (the motorway was planned in the 1950s), the fact it's an urban motorway, hence lower general standard of engineering required to fit it into a smaller space than a regular motorway, and the fact it's a local authority motorway rather than a trunk route basically the same set of reasons why A58(M)/A64(M) in Leeds has some frankly terrifying junctions

That’s easy! The motorway starts from where it begins at each end ha ha!

My Mums partner did the ground work for the car park where the slip road was he didn't know it was a Motorway despite the blue signs.

Love the out takes ! Please keep them coming ! 😊

Fascinating. All these chopped off slip roads remind me of travelling around Newcastle (upon Tyne) recently and what a right horlicks the A167(M) is. There would seem to be a larger question with all these projects in that does the infrastructure that has been built actually do anything? Sure, they get used but what about the bits that didnt get included and the half built half assed junctions and slip-roads that are left? In their grand schemes, what was the intention and have they made things better or actually worse. Whichever, your videos help to document it all. Well done.

The team scene reminds me of the Blues Brothers

I always thought as a very young boy before the underpass at deans gate was built, wasn't there a funny 'temporary' flyover thing there?

On one hand, when it's flowing well this is a great way of getting to Piccadilly from the west. On the other, the short sliproads and flawed design meaning most vehicles joining from Deansgate for the inner ring road need to cross three lanes of traffic to do so in around 100yds make it a nightmare.

The A635M bit blew my mind, born and bred manc i had no idea that was case! Thanks fot allowing me to impress (😂) all of my friends when i see them.

Haven't been on that motorway for a few years now , Great video Jon, Have a good one👍

Thanks John - your outro definitely shows the amazing infrastrucutre in the centre of Mancunium ... the Romans never built like that but the Victorians definitely did! 🤣

Brilliant video as always. Definately one of my very favorite y.t subs.

Brilliant :) very enjoyable episode

I think "What Difference Does it Make" by The Smiths might have been an appropriate tune as clearly 'it makes none' now that its a 30mph road. Does Mark Drakeford's brother work for the council there?

Every Sunday morning I wake up and wonder where Jon is going to take me. This week, Manchester. magic carpet ride

More outtakes please 😘

It would have been optional for a M602 motorway to go straight through Central Manchester just like the M8 Motorway that goes through Glasgow. But the A57(M) Mancunian Way isn’t really classed as a motorway but more of an expressway. Just like the A64(M) and A58(M) in Leeds and A38(M) Aston Expressway in Birmingham.

Ah the customary walk past, love it, nice one Jon

You missed the award plaque on the Sackville road junction from The Concrete Society.

A fun (not really) story about Mancunian Way and its un-numbered tightly-spaced junctions is that after taking the wrong junction and getting lost on three separate visits to Manchester, I finally dropped my longstanding opposition to using satnav.

Once again, brilliant😊

The roads around inner Manchester are insane. And that stretch when I have been doing work in that area is a bain.

Thanks for the exploration as always!

As always MUCH APPRECIATE this vid as with all your vids, especially your "on location" filming. Fear not the Trams for they sadly lack the flexibility of road vehicles.