M61 motorway

It runs from the A580 near Wardley and heads northwest past Bolton, Horwich and Chorley to join the M6 near Bamber Bridge, just north of the junction between the M6 and M65.

The Horwich to Worsley section began on Wednesday 1 January 1969, costing £12.4 million, to open by the end of December 1970, built by the Alfred McAlpine and Leonard Fairclough & Son consortium.

However, due to the relatively short length of the M61 and wealth of alternative nearby facilities, it suffered from low traffic and footfall.

[citation needed] At the southeastern end at junction 2, the Worsley Braided Interchange, a stretch of the road on Linnyshaw Moss, earns a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most traffic lanes side by side (17), spread across eight almost-parallel carriageways, in a "basketweave interchange" design.

[2][3][4] The carriageways cross each other at shallow angles and make use of tunnel-like structures to spread the load, avoiding the need for skew bridges.

The complex of inter-connected junctions
2 Junction number
1 Former junction number
A666 and A6053
M61 slips to Kearsley Interchange
M61 to Preston
A666(M) Kearsley Spur
A666(M) to M60
M61 to A580 east
M60 outer ring road
M60 slip roads to A580 west
A580 East Lancs Road
Entrance to a tunnel-like structure that carries the M60-to-M61 spur under one carriageway of the M61-to-A580 spur, approaching Junction 2 from the southeast
Part of the Swinton Interchange, showing carriageways of the M61-to-M60 spur crossing the M60 (left) and the A580-to-M60 link road (centre)