How busy is the M60? These are the official counts published by the Department for Transport — not estimates, and not our opinion. The M60 is measured at 40 separate points around the ring, and the figures below are the 2025 averages for an ordinary day.

The headline: one of the busiest roads in the country

Between Junction 13 and Junction 12 the M60 carries 201,196 vehicles a day. That is the fourth-busiest stretch of road in the whole of Great Britain — only three sections of the M25 are busier. For a motorway that is barely 35 miles round, that is remarkable.

The M60 is two different roads

The numbers show a ring road with two personalities. On the northern and eastern side, around Junctions 14 to 15, lorries make up 12.0% of all traffic. On the quieter side of the ring that figure falls to about 1.7%. Same motorway, very different mix — and it is why delays behave differently depending on where you join.

The twelve busiest stretches of the M60

Stretch	Vehicles per day	Lorries	Lorry share
J13 to J12	201,196	17,543	8.7%
J15 to J16	172,088	18,533	10.8%
J14 to J15	169,870	20,368	12.0%
J13 to J14	167,356	16,257	9.7%
J17 to J18	166,561	18,615	11.2%
J1 to J27	154,520	6,316	4.1%
J7 to J6	144,003	5,962	4.1%
J12 to J11	141,290	7,389	5.2%
J9 to J8	138,661	6,065	4.4%
J8 to J7	136,815	6,091	4.5%
J2 to J1	135,747	6,959	5.1%
J24 to JA6140	125,664	5,799	4.6%

See the M60 junction by junction »

Traffic news for the busiest junctions

• M60 Junction 13 to 12
• M60 Junction 14 to 15
• M60 Junction 17 to 18
• M60 Junction 15 to 16
• M60 Junction 1 to 27

What these numbers are, and what they are not

These are Annual Average Daily Flow figures — the average number of vehicles on a stretch of road on a typical day across the year. They tell you how heavily used a road is. They do not tell you what the traffic is doing right now. For that, see our live M60 traffic news.

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