M56 to close for all of Mother's Day weekend for smart motorway work

A section of the M56 is to close in both directions between the night of Friday, March 25 and the morning of Monday, March 28, which is the same weekend of Mother's Day.

The eastbound carriageway will be closed between Lymm and Manchester Airport, while the westbound carriageway will be closed between Manchester Airport and Bowdon.

This is to allow for the installation of two 60-tonne gantries which span all lanes of both carriageways, as a part of the motorway's multi-million-pound transformation into a smart motorway.

According to National Highways, this weekend in March was chosen after talks with Manchester Airport and Transport for Greater Manchester as a weekend with little in the way of events.

Clare Bond, project manager, said: "We only close a motorway for a weekend in exceptional circumstances, but doing the work this way will mean we can avoid multiple separate overnight carriageway closures at other times.

The hard shoulder is to become an additional lane.

"Getting a crane on site and installing the two gantries will be the most visible feature of the weekend’s operation, but we will be squeezing in as much other work as possible."

At the start of 2022, the transformation of motorways into smart motorways was paused by the government to allow for five years' of safety figures to be collected.

It came after safety concerns arose from fatal incidents where broken-down cars were hit from behind due to the lack of a hard shoulder, which will also be the case on the M56 due to the conversion of the hard shoulder on both carriageways into an additional lane.

The work on the M56 is continuing as it is more than half complete, and leaving the current traffic management measures in place for five years is not seen as an option.

Over the weekend, a diversion will run on the M6, M62 and M60.

For information, go to nationalhighways.co.uk/our-work/north-west/m56-junction-6-to-8-smart-motorway/.