Gravelly Hill Interchange

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Gravelly Hill Interchange, better known as Spaghetti Junction, is junction 6 of the M6 motorway where it meets the A38(M) Aston Expressway in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Its colloquial name was coined to describe its complex system of intertwined loops and ramps. It provides access to and from the A38 (Tyburn Road), the A5127 (Lichfield Road/Gravelly Hill), and local roads.

The junction covers 30 acres (12 hectares), serves 18 routes and includes 4km (2.5 miles) of slip roads, but only 1km (0.6 miles) of the M6 itself. It has 559 concrete columns, reaching up to 24.4 metres height.

Construction started in 1968 and the junction opened in 1972. It has undergone major repair work several times since, due to the very heavy traffic through the junction, and some alleged cost-saving measures during its construction.

1 Co-located junctions
2 Cultural influence
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Co-located junctions

The junction from the Tame Valley Canal, 2002

Underneath the motorway junction are the meeting points of local roads; the rivers Tame and Rea; electricity lines; gas pipelines; the Birmingham Cross-City and Walsall railway lines, and Salford Junction where the Grand Union Canal, Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and Tame Valley Canal meet. The importance of the site for so many services led to the belief that it was a strategic target for a Soviet nuclear weapon during the Cold War.