SJ8497 : Brook Street
taken 9 years ago, near to Manchester, England

Taken from a pedestrian island in the middle of the A34. On the right are two southbound lanes for traffic travelling on to Upper Brook Street and a third lane for traffic turning right into Grosvenor Street. On the left there is a lane for traffic into the city centre and another leading to a slipway on to the westbound Mancunian Way, A57(M). There is no access to the eastbound A57(M).
The Mancunian Way, officially the A57(M), is a two mile long motorway in Manchester. It is part of the A57, which runs east-west through Greater Manchester and links the M602 and M67 motorways.
The A34 is a major road which runs from the A33 and M3 at Winchester in Hampshire, to the A6 & A6042 in Salford, Greater Manchester. It forms a large part of the major trunk route from Southampton, via Oxford, to Birmingham, The Potteries and Manchester.
The road is in two sections. The northern section runs south through Manchester and Cheadle, and bypasses Handforth, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge, before passing through Congleton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the southern suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent. It then continues south via Stone, Stafford, Cannock and Walsall, passes through the middle of Birmingham (where it briefly merges with the A41), before meeting the M42 motorway at junction 4 south of Solihull.
The southern section begins some 50 miles (80 km) to the south, at junction 9 of the M40 motorway, 10 miles (16 km) north of Oxford. It continues south as the western part of the Oxford Ring Road, crossing the River Thames on the A34 Road Bridge. It then bypasses Abingdon, Didcot, and Newbury before finally finishing just east of Winchester, at junction 9 of the M3 motorway. This part of the A34 is dual carriageway throughout.
Together with parts of the M3 and the M40, the southern section of the A34 forms an important route carrying freight from Southampton to the Midlands. Because of the volume of traffic, bypasses were built along this route; at Newbury on the A34, and at Twyford Down near Winchester on the M3, but these were controversial for environmental reasons and were the scene of significant direct action environmental protests in the 1990s. Instead of cutting a short road tunnel through Twyford Down, the entire escarpment was carved-out and the motorway placed through it.
(abridged from Wikipedia Link)
