M60 Junction 9 to Junction 8

The stretch of the M60 nearest Manchester United’s Old Trafford, and one of the ring’s busiest car routes — 138,661 vehicles a day, four in five of them cars. Live news for this stretch is below, followed by the official traffic counts and what a United home crowd of nearly 74,000 does and does not tell us.

How busy is the M60 between Junction 9 and Junction 8?

The Department for Transport counts traffic on this stretch, a length of 1.3 miles. These are the 2025 figures — an annual average of vehicles per day, both directions combined.

That makes it the 9th busiest of the M60’s 19 measured junction-to-junction stretches, and 11% above the M60 average of 124,808 vehicles a day per count point.

It is also, unusually for a road this busy, a car road rather than a freight road. Lorries are 4.4% of traffic here against 6.0% across the M60 as a whole — and against 12.0% on the J14–15 stretch, the ring’s freight route. Four in every five vehicles through Junction 9 to 8 is a car or taxi.

The neighbouring stretches

There is a practical point buried in that table. Approaching from the north you are directed off at Junction 9, having come through J10–9 — one of the quietest stretches on the whole ring. Approaching from the west you leave at Junction 7, having come through J7–6, the 7th busiest. Same destination, noticeably different roads.

Manchester United at Old Trafford, and what it means for this stretch

Manchester United play at Old Trafford, which sits just off this section of the M60 in Trafford, west of Manchester city centre. It is the largest club ground in the United Kingdom, and the club has played there since 1910. For a driver, that means one of the biggest regular gatherings of people anywhere in the country happens a short distance from this stretch of motorway, nineteen times a season in the league alone.

Manchester United’s own travel directions send drivers off the motorway at Junction 9 (then the A5081) when approaching from the north, and at Junction 7 (then the A56 through Stretford) from the west.

Two things stand out. The ground runs at about 98.6% of capacity, and the average has moved by 440 in three seasons — so this is a predictable load on the local road network, not a variable one. Nineteen times a season, plus cup and European fixtures, the same very large number of people travel to the same place at roughly the same time.

Every visiting club is entitled to a minimum away allocation. Premier League Rule R.9 sets that at 3,000 tickets where the ground holds more than 30,000, which Old Trafford comfortably does. Estimated 57,000 away supporters a season visiting Manchester United — basis: the 3,000 minimum allocation multiplied by 19 home league matches. That is the minimum a club must offer, not a count of who travels, and it excludes cup and European fixtures. Most of those supporters travel in from outside Greater Manchester.

What we can honestly say about match days — and what we cannot

It is reasonable to expect this stretch of the M60 to be busier around a home fixture. Being straight with you: we cannot yet prove it, so we are not going to claim it.

The reason is that nobody publishes hour-by-hour traffic counts for this stretch matched against a fixture list. The Department for Transport figures above are annual averages — one number for the whole year, with no breakdown by day or hour. They cannot answer a match-day question, and any site presenting them as though they can is overstating what the data says.

Nor will we convert a crowd figure into a traffic figure. 73,975 spectators is not 73,975 vehicles. Old Trafford is served directly by Metrolink and is walkable from central Manchester, and no published count exists of how many arrive by car. Multiplying seats by a made-up occupancy would produce a confident number with nothing behind it.

What this page does give you is the live position. The traffic news at the top of this page is drawn from National Highways’ own feed and refreshed through the day, so whatever is actually happening on this stretch right now — match day or not — is reported above.

Where these figures come from

Traffic counts — Department for Transport road traffic statistics, 2025, annual average daily flow, both directions combined.
Attendances — published Premier League home league attendance records for the 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons.
Away supporter allocation — Premier League Rule R.9, which sets a minimum allocation to the visiting club.
Junction routes — as published in the clubs’ own travel directions.
Live incidents and roadworks — Powered by National Highways’ Transport Data Feeds.

Where a figure on this page is an estimate rather than a published count, the calculation behind it is shown next to it. We do not publish figures for how many spectators arrive by car, because no such count exists.