M62 motorway

M62
Lancashire-Yorkshire Motorway
Looking east at junction 22, the highest point on the English motorway network, from the Pennine Way, in May 2010
Route information
Part of E20 and E22
Maintained by National Highways Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council Liverpool City Council
Length	107 mi[1] (172 km) 7 miles (11 km) are part of the M60 motorway
History	Opened: 1960 Completed: 1976
Major junctions
West end	Liverpool
Major intersections	J6 → M57 motorway J10 → M6 motorway / J12 → M60 motorway/M602 motorway / J18 → M60 motorway/M66 motorway J20 → A627(M) motorway J26 → M606 motorway J27 → M621 motorway J29 → M1 motorway J32a → A1(M) motorway J35 → M18 motorway
East end	North Cave
Location
Country	United Kingdom
Counties	Merseyside, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, East Riding of Yorkshire
Primary destinations	Liverpool Huyton Warrington Manchester Oldham Rochdale Huddersfield Halifax Bradford Leeds Wakefield Pontefract Goole
Road network
Roads in the United Kingdom Motorways A and B road zones
← M61 → M65

The M62 is a 107-mile-long (172 km) west–east trans-Pennine motorway in Northern England, connecting Liverpool and Hull via Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield; 7 miles (11 km) of the route is shared with the M60 orbital motorway around Manchester. The road is part of the unsigned Euroroutes E20 (Shannon to Saint Petersburg) and E22 (Holyhead to Ishim).

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 near Huddersfield 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. The M62 has no junctions numbered 1, 2 or 3, or even an officially numbered 4, because it was intended to start in Liverpool proper, not in its outskirts.

Between Liverpool and Manchester, and east of Leeds, the terrain along which the road passes is relatively flat. Between Manchester and Leeds it traverses the Pennines and its foothills, rising to 1,221 feet (372 m) above sea level slightly east of junction 22 in Calderdale, not far from the boundary between Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.