Mancunian Way 30mph limit could be here to stay
Concerns around congestion and collisions have prompted Manchester City Council to take permanent action to make the motorway safer and save lives.
The speed limit on Mancunian Way, which runs for two miles from Egerton Street and Fairfield Street, was reduced from 50mph to 30mph 12 months ago in response to the amount of accidents occurring.
Between May 2016 and May 2021 there were 47 verified collisions with 58 confirmed victims who had been injured as a result.
In January 2022, one person died and two others were seriously injured in car accident on Mancunian Way.
Cllr Tracey Rawlins, executive member for environment and transport, said: “The Mancunian Way, which was first opened in 1967, is no longer designed to cope with the levels of traffic it sees daily.
“We have gone from an age that saw tens of thousands of cars on the road to millions, yet this road is still operating under the same principles it launched under 50 years ago.
“Ultimately we are hoping to prevent injury and potentially save lives by introducing this change.”
A consultation on the proposed change is now live.
Manchester City Council’s decision to lower the speed limit on one of its busiest roads follows similar moves by councils and governments elsewhere bidding to improve the safety of its roads.
The Welsh Government’s decision to impose a 20mph speed limit on the nation’s roads has proved hugely controversial, while a similar initiative in London has cars forced to slow down on 65km of highways.
The overall stopping distance is calculated at 23 metres when travelling at 30mph. At 50mph, the stopping distance is 53 metres.
To learn more about the future of infrastructure in the North West, including our highways network, you can attend Place North West’s Transport + Infrastructure event next January.
Absolutely no reason for there to be a motorway here at all. Should be converted to an urban boulevard
By Anonymous
It’s not like anyone follows the speed limits in this country anyway. They need a lot more speed & red light cameras around the city centre. Maybe even making the inner ring road one directional clockwise could relieve some congestion?
By Anonymous
It should be either removed or tunnelled and built over. It’s an awful relic of the 1960s holding the city back.
By Anonymous
30 mph? .. pah! way too fast still. Yes an urban boulevard full of Unicorns and …grass ideally.. also bikes, but not fast ones, very slow bikes. Yes I think that’s it.
By Bigwheel
Can we have a law which bans these clowns on scooters from riding on the pavements and the wrong side of the road?
By Elephant
It’s the only road for miles that provides direct east-west connectivity south of the city centre due to the university and hospital corridor, one of the reasons for the congestion.
By Anonymous
Would be fine if it was like the photo – where are the cars?!
By Boom
Get some enforcement in and we’ll never need to talk to HM Treasury ever again
By Anonymous
The mancunian is a safe way to travel its the irresponsible drivers that cause accidents when they come on to the road from the slip roads and don’t give way to oncoming traffic resulting in accidents
By Anthony
40mph is fair. 30mph causes unnecessary traffic in both lanes. Agree 50mph isn’t optimal.
By Verticality
Should of made it wider years ago but gave allowed private development to be built right up to its edge.
And now with all the new road designs around town its made it even more of a bottle neck too get from oneside of town too the other which creates more standing traffic.
Miss a good opportunity too improve an old and out of date transport route.
Does it mean tgst now its a 30 mph road then is it ok to ride a bicycle on it as ive seen a few times this year.
By Anonymous
Just close the upper brook st anticlockwise junction and reduce 50 to 40 mph problem solved.
By Routemartin
Has anybody ever stuck to the speed limit here? It would be dangerous to drive less than 30 outside of rush hour
By Gilly
And how many accidents have there been on our so called Smart motorway in the same 5 year period?
Is the M60 going to be reduced to 30mph also?
It’s a shame some of these councillors have nothing better to do than come up with schemes to milk motorists.
Metrolink, which doesn’t link the metro area, has it ever been in profit, let’s see if we get an answer to this?
By Anonymous
It is no surprise that accidents have increased following the decision to divert traffic onto the Mancunian Way from Upper Brook Street without considering the lack of visibility on joining the road.
By L
Take the M off the A57M. It is not a motorway. It confuses drivers unfamiliar with the area.
By Carole Nixon
Well if they want it to be 30 mph it needs to be enforced somehow. It’s actually dangerous to go 30 mph very early in the morning as some cars and vans are going 70 mph. There is a lot of road rage at 6am!
By Anonymous
Be good if people actually stuck to the 30mph speed while driving over the Mancunian Way. Very few drivers are observing the new limit.
By Anonymous
I use the Mancunian Way every working day – I do 30mph and I’m the slowest on it – I get tailgated and about in danger by the majority of drivers ignoring the speed limit. Drivers try to queue jump the exit to Higher Cambridge St exit by flying up the middle lane and then indicate and stop in the middle of the flyover.
There is no enforcement and it’s a joke – it’s made worse by surrounding congestion caused by council endorsed road or lane closures as a result of long term high rise property building.
Overall a shambles of city management and driver behaviours.
By Jeff
It’s always congested so I doubt a lot are travelling at 50!
By Levelling Up Manager
Good. Always thought that it was dangerous with short on and off ramps in the middle. Idiots often drove as fast as possible 70+ at times.
By Roberta Upton
It’s very rare I say this but 50mph was definitely too fast, I’m happy with 30mph (or 40mph), but that is only going to work if speed cameras are installed as I’ve seen cars, vans and even lorries still going 50mph, which makes it hard for joining vehicles to judge a gap and causes safety issues.
Obviously I’d much rather see the whole thing demolished and turned into a tunnel but this’ll do for now.
By MC
Surely 40mph with speed camera would be better?
By Anonymous
Not even the police stick to the speed limit on this road.. It encourages road rage keeping it at 30Mph. They are either going to have to put up average speed cameras or increase the limit.
By Anonymous
It should be back at 50mph. If people really need to drive, get them out of the city as quickly as possible.
By Observer
It’s become such a pain driving around the city centre I’ve invested in a hot air balloon.
By Peter Chapman
The traffic on the Mancunian way has increased because most roads in the city centre are closed to traffic, been made one way or been cut down to 1 lane instead of 2 to allow the empty buses to pass or make cycle lanes that nobody uses because they are not maintained and cyclists get punchers. We are on the verge of doing the total opposite of what the council set out to do. Politics of cutting carbon emissions down by reducing road use looks great on the news and to all the residence who believe this. The reality is of course, totally different. Sitting traffic causes more carbon emissions from sitting cars than moving ones. They are sitting because the routes in and around the city centre are designed to make the cars do so. Open the roads, synchronise the traffic lights properly and get the traffic flowing. We are not London, the public transport system and links are slow, over crowded and unreliable. thats why people drive and thats why people will always drive. We need to accept this and work with it not against it. Obviously this won’t happen because its not right politically. While we use Political science rather than actual facts and common sense this will keep happening and we will never achieve the carbon neutral goal. We will triple it instead.
By Common Sense
Always a pleasure to see someone claiming that speed limits milk motorists. Motorists can easily find a way not to be milked by these conniving authorities and their nanny state approach to things. I wonder if ‘Anonymous’ can work out what it is…
By Unlevelled for balance
40 mph is fairer with better speed cameras and technologies whatnot. 30mph
just increases the chance of motorists breaking the limit and cause havoc with individuals on the road
By Anonymous
This Council starters this on the East Lanks, pinching points So people switched to The Mancunian Way to get into town, and now they want to start pinching points on Regent Road which they are. The next pinching point will be on the M60 ring road
By Anonymous
Manchester City Council will probably want to flatten the Mancunian way and build apartments on it that’s their way of thinking
By Anonymous
I walked around Manchester yesterday and it is a cosmopolitan European regional capital now. That Manc way needs bulldozing and Hulme Park extending to Deansgate Square.
By Elephant
“It encourages road rage” – maybe motorists need to learn to control their emotions? Walking, cycling and getting some fresh air would help with this. We cannot undermine safety simply because some motorists are adult babies.
By Anonymous
And where would you suggest they move the entire daily population of the city centre Observer? You ask them, see if they’ll go. Meanwhile, better roads, a Metrolink that links more places around the city as well as into it and some kind of high speed inter city rail thingy that links the north to…to…oh hang on, forget that last one…the Government already has.🙄
By Spectator
Nobody adheres to any particular limit goin at 30mph is asking for more trouble 🤔
By Kev p
Ah Cycling, of course, was wondering when the men in tights would appear. Just what the world needs less of especially on the pavements of Manchester, although on reflection the Mancunian way would be a good place to home them, especially in rush hour.
By Anonymous
Good! It’s far safer and doesn’t take any longer to get anywhere as going faster only causes bunching up at the lights at either end.
The 1968 Concrete Society Award plaque is one likely to stir some strong polarized feelings in this thread…
Listing application anyone?
The glory days of feeling like you were driving through LA are long gone though thanks to that awful car park/hotel next to the Mancunian Way that looks like a very poor value engineered sibling of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie having a really bad wardrobe malfunction after a few too many cocktails at Hatch / Not Hatch.
By Anonymous
A more appropriate solution would be to introduce dynamic speed limits of 30, 40 and 50mph depending upon the flow and queues, like on the M60 J8-18. The M should be removed from its classification title, as it was de-trunked decades ago and has never met motorway design standards. It’s not like there is a parallel section of the A57 to confuse it with. Ideally tunnel it to the M602, but can’t see where funding for that would come from.
By Albert
If more roads in the city centre are closed, it’s bound to increase traffic on the Mancuniun Way. If the speed restriction is to be reduced 40mph should be sufficient. Remove the designation of motorway.
By Anonymous
Spectator: “And where would you suggest they move the entire daily population of the city centre Observer?”
The “entire daily population of the city centre” isn’t driving in. Those who do should try cycling, walking or public transport a little more than they do.
Anybody who drives into a city centre needs their bumps feeling. No good complaining about the problem when they are part of the problem.
By Beano
Well when you are prime minister Beano you can enforce that, for now back in reality people do drive in and through the city so let’s work on meaningful reasons like those suggested above. Lycra doesn’t suit everyone. or anyone .
By Dandy
I’ve seen so many crashes/bumps and near misses on the westbound sliproads from the A34. I hope they put traffic lights before some of the sliproads to better manage merging. A traffic light pedestrian crossing between Mayfield and Ardwick would also help the people who run across the carriageway currently.
By Great news
Safety on The Mancunian Way is made more difficult caus of the awful signage. Is it 50? Is it 30?
WHO KNOWS.
Some days the signs are up. Some days down.
MAKE A DECISION.
STOP DITHERING.
It must be costing lives and injuries.
By Brian Jacobs
Sure, if we all used public transport there wouldn’t be a problem but that assumes we’ve all got a nearby train, tram or bus. Not all congestion however is caused by the traffic. Poor road management in Manchester has been adding to the problem for some time. Access restrictions and frequent roadworks, often on adjacent routes simultaneously, blight this city and mean that the same amount of traffic has fewer routes to use. Congestion is inevitable. A cynical person might wonder if this is a deliberate plan to bring the city to a standstill in order to justify a congestion charge that was so strongly rejected the last time it was proposed. Clearly using alternative travel where possible is essential but unless the council starts to manage the road network in a far more sensible and intelligent way, the problem will only get worse.
By Anonymous
Out of 44 comments only 2 realised the upper brook st junction is the problem and Manchester highways department.
By Routemartin