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32-644: The Mancunian Way is a two mile long grade separated elevated motorway in Manchester , England. It is officially made up of the A57(M) and A635(M) motorways, although the latter does not appear on road signs for practical reasons. It is also part of two other roads: the A57 to the west, which runs east–west through Greater Manchester linking the M602 and M67 motorways, and a short section of non-motorway A635 to

64-452: A grade-separated junction may be referred to as a grade separation or as an interchange – in contrast with an intersection , at-grade , a diamond crossing or a level crossing , which are not grade-separated. Roads with grade separation generally allow traffic to move freely, with fewer interruptions, and at higher overall speeds; this is why speed limits are typically higher for grade-separated roads. In addition, reducing

96-416: A highway) that they cross. However, grade-separated pedestrian crossings with steps introduce accessibility problems. Some crossings have lifts , but these can be time-consuming to use. Grade-separated roads that permit for higher speed limits can actually reduce safety due to 'weaving' (see below) as well as a perceived sense of safety. The term is most widely applied to describe a road junction in which

128-414: A partial grade separation will accomplish more improvement than for a road), and because at-grade railway connections often take up significant space on their own. However, they require significant engineering effort, and are very expensive and time-consuming to construct. Grade-separated pedestrian and cycling routes often require modest space since they do not typically intersect with the facility (such as

160-419: Is fully grade-separated, i.e. traffic on one road does not have to stop at yield lines or signals on one road, but may have to do so when switching to the other: On roadways with grade-separated interchanges, weaving is a result of placing an exit ramp a short distance after an entry ramp, causing conflicts between traffic attempting to leave the roadway at the next junction and traffic attempting to enter from

192-730: Is known as a flying junction and one which is not a level junction . In 1897, the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) made use of a flying junction at Worting Junction south of Basingstoke to allow traffic on the Salisbury and Southampton routes to converge without conflicting movements; this became known as "Battledown Flyover". Also in Britain, the Southern Railway later made extensive use of flying junctions on other parts of its busy former LSWR main line. Today in Britain,

224-526: The Great Central Railway , built between 1896 and 1899, was the first fully grade-separated railway of this type in the UK. This also applies to light rail and even to street cars . Attempts have been made to increase the capacity of railways by making tracks cross in a grade-separated manner, as opposed to the traditional use of flat crossings to change tracks. A grade-separated rail interchange

256-607: The "highway in the sky". The scheme cost was £5.5   million (£126   million in today's figures). In 1992, the westbound junction was rebuilt to replace a temporary flyover , whereby the A56 passed over a roundabout where the A57(M) originally ended. At the same time, a new flyover was built at the eastern end, over the A6, but was legally designated as the A635(M) in 1995. Just before

288-583: The A4/M5 junction west of Bristol . Weaving can often cause side-on collisions on very fast roads with top speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour, as well as the problem of blind spots. Where junctions have unusual designs weaving can be a problem other than on the main road. An example of this can be found at Junction 7 of the M6, where traffic joining the roundabout from the M6 Eastbound off-slip must weave with

320-617: The Bunter sandstone ( Buntsandstein ). The road on the structure and kerbing was built by Wilson and Wilkinson of Worsley in Salford. The Mancunian Way was officially opened by Prime Minister , Harold Wilson , on 5 May 1967. In the 1970s, it was upgraded to motorway status as the A57(M) and the speed limit was raised to 50 mph (80 km/h). At the time of its opening the Manchester Evening News referred to it as

352-458: The Eastbound off-slip must leave. Weaving can be alleviated by using collector/distributor roads or braided ramps to separate entering and exiting traffic. In railway construction, grade separation also means the avoidance of level crossings by making any roads or footpaths crossing the line either pass under or over the railway on bridges . This greatly improves safety and is crucial to

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384-576: The Mancunian Way consists of two motorways, the A57(M) and the A635(M). Part of the easternmost non-motorway section of Mancunian Way collapsed into a 40 ft (12 m) sinkhole on 14 August 2015, after almost half a month's worth of rain fell in parts of Manchester in just six hours. The closure caused significant congestion on the remaining part of Mancunian Way and other nearby roads. It fully reopened on 15 June 2016 after 10 months of repair work. Grade separation In North America,

416-505: The Mancunian Way. The Mancunian Way was conceived to form part of the South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire (SELNEC) Highway Plan of 1962, although similar proposals were developed from 1959. A parliamentary bill to authorise the construction of the Mancunian Way was proposed and approved in 1961. During its design it was known as Link Road 17/7. The scheme lies over the geological West Manchester Fault. It would be

448-529: The bearings. Leonard Fairclough & Son were the contractors, and the prestressed concrete sections were made at its operations in Adlington , Lancashire. The contractor's site compound was in Loxford Street. The piling was completed by Pigott Foundations of Ormskirk with auger (screw) boring with reinforcement cages. The piling went 50 ft (15 m) deep through the boulder clay to

480-603: The box sections. Testing of the design was carried on a 1/12th model at the Research Station of the Cement and Concrete Association at Wexham Springs in South Bucks . The design was made by the consulting engineers G Maunsell & Partners , who had designed the similar Hammersmith flyover in 1961. The company was known for prestressed concrete flyovers. The design received a Concrete Society award. The designer of

512-795: The bridges would go on to design the Westway dual carriageway in London, which opened as the A40(M) in July 1970, losing its motorway status in 2000. The construction was carried out in two phases: the first stage involved the construction of a dual carriageway of 2,850 ft (870 m) to the east of the A6 road in November 1963 and was opened to traffic as part of the A635 road in November 1965. The second stage

544-515: The capacity of a road compared to an identical road with at-grade junctions. For instance, it is extremely uncommon to find an at-grade junction on a British motorway ; it is all but impossible on a U.S. Interstate Highway , though a few do exist. If traffic can traverse the junction from any direction without being forced to come to a halt, then the junction is described as fully grade separated or free-flowing . These junctions connect two freeways: These junctions connect two roads, but only one

576-411: The centre of the carriageway. At that time, the construction specifications had included cosmetic fairings to the tops of the support piers. These completely enclosed the roller bearings upon which the elevated roadway sits. However, the first time these bearings were serviced, the fairings were removed and never replaced. This leaves the poorer appearance seen today and also allows the ingress of dirt to

608-725: The complexity of traffic movements reduces the risk of accidents . Grade-separated road junctions are typically space-intensive, complicated, and costly, due to the need for large physical structures such as tunnels, ramps, and bridges. Their height can be obtrusive, and this, combined with the large traffic volumes that grade-separated roads attract, tend to make them unpopular to nearby landowners and residents. For these reasons, proposals for new grade-separated roads can receive significant public opposition. Rail-over-rail grade separations take up less space than road grade separations: because shoulders are not needed, there are generally fewer branches and side road connections to accommodate (because

640-571: The direct flow of traffic on one or more of the roads is not disrupted. Instead of a direct connection, traffic must use on and off ramps ( United States , Australia , New Zealand ) or slip roads ( United Kingdom , Ireland ) to access the other roads at the junction. The road which carries on through the junction can also be referred to as grade separated . Typically, large freeways , highways , motorways , or dual carriageways are chosen to be grade separated, through their entire length or for part of it. Grade separation drastically increases

672-703: The east. Part of this non-motorway section collapsed on 14 August 2015 due to a sinkhole . The road forms a major part of the Manchester–Salford Inner Ring Road and runs south of the city centre . Running eastbound, it starts as a two-lane dual carriageway and passes underneath the A56 . Following this, the road widens to three lanes. At the next junction which leads to the A5103 , the road reduces to two lanes and becomes an elevated highway. This section runs atop link roads and two roundabouts before reaching

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704-636: The faster speed requires grade separation. Therefore, many high speed lines are elevated, especially in Taiwan and Japan , where population density alongside high speed lines is higher than in France, Italy or Germany. In the United States, a flying junction on the Nickel Plate Road through Cleveland , Ohio , United States was completed in 1913. The most frequent use was later found on

736-636: The first elevated main road to be built outside London , and the UK's second aerial motorway after the Hammersmith flyover . The road is 3,232 ft (985 m) long and has 28 spans of 105 ft (32 m), and two spans of 60 ft (18 m). The spans are made out of precast concrete , with hollow box-units post-tensioned to form a spine beam. Each of the 105 ft spans is made out of 14 precast concrete hollow box-units 7 ft 3in long. Freyssinet (named after Eugène Freyssinet ) multi-strand prestressing cables were threaded through ducts in

768-508: The former Pennsylvania Railroad main lines. The lines are included as part of the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor now owned by Amtrak . The most complex of these junctions, near Philadelphia Zoo , handles railway traffic for Amtrak, SEPTA , New Jersey Transit , Norfolk Southern , CSX Transportation , and Conrail . In what is known as "area 1520" , which includes the former Soviet Union and other regions using

800-651: The junction with the A34 is an unfinished slip road ( stub ) that ends 20 feet in the air, although development next to Mancuian Way has meant much of the stub was demolished in October 2018. The last 1 ⁄ 2 mile (0.80 km) of the Mancunian Way in the east is part of the A635 , the A57 heading south east from the same junction as the A6, though it states A57(M) on the signage as one enters westbound. Department for Transport documentation states differently, so officially

832-608: The next junction with the A34 . At this point the road passes through the centre of the campuses of UMIST (now part of the University of Manchester ) and Manchester Metropolitan University . It then runs for around 3 ⁄ 4 mile (1.2 km) before reaching its junction with the A6 which it crosses on a bridge before dropping down to ground level. It then finishes on the A635 and continues eastbound, and also continues to be called

864-491: The previous junction. This situation is most prevalent either where the junction designer has placed the on-slip to the road before the off-slip at a junction (for example, the cloverleaf interchange ), or in urban areas with many close-spaced junctions. The ring road of Coventry , England , is a notorious example, as are parts of the southern M25, the London orbital motorway , the M6/M5 junction north-west of Birmingham , and

896-557: The safe operation of high-speed lines. The construction of new level crossings is generally not permitted, especially for high speed railway lines and level crossings are increasingly less common due to the increase of both road and rail traffic. Efforts to remove level crossings are done in the UK by Network Rail and in Melbourne as part of the Level Crossing Removal Project . The London Extension of

928-747: The same gauge, the most complicated grade-separation railpoint is found at Liubotyn in Ukraine . Footbridges and subways (called underpasses in North America as well as in the United Kingdom when referring to roads) may be employed to allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross busy or fast streets. They are often used over and under motorways since at grade pedestrian crossings are generally not permitted. Same can be said for railways. Though introduced to Central Park in New York City in

960-400: The tightly grouped nest of flying junctions to the north of Clapham Junction railway station —although technically a combination of many junctions—handle more than 4,000 trains per day (about one train every 15 seconds). Virtually all major railway lines no longer cross (forming an 'X' shape ) at flat level (although many diverge - i.e. 'Y' shape). On almost all high-speed railway lines,

992-548: The traffic already on the roundabout wishing to use the M6 Westbound on-slip. This is as a result of the slip roads on the west side of the junction connecting to the roundabout on the inside of the eastern arc rather than the outside of the western arc as is normal. The two slip-roads are connected by a single lane on the inside of the roundabout, which traffic wishing to use the Westbound on-slip must join, and traffic from

Mancunian Way - Misplaced Pages Continue

1024-480: Was the construction, from December 1964, of a 0.6 mi (0.97 km) long elevated highway of a motorway standard which ran between the A6 and A56 roads. The second stage was open to traffic as part of the A57 road in March 1967. The previous day it was opened to pedestrians, who were allowed to walk the whole of the high-level route as a sight-seeing publicity exercise. Many people brought picnics which they ate in

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