Spaghetti Junction repairs start

Several concrete crossbeams need to be repaired

Work has started on a multi-million pound project to repair parts of Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction.

The work, under junction six of the M6, is expected to take about a year-and-a-half.

Several concrete columns and supporting crossbeams, which hold up the junction, are being fixed at a cost of more than £4m to the Highways Agency.

The complex interchange, where the M6, A38 and the A5127 meet, will be 35 years old this month.

But Rees Evans, of the Highways Agency, said the junction was not in imminent danger.

Concrete columns

He said: "These structures are designed to last in excess of 100 years. It is far from falling down."

The agency said it would try to keep disruption to a minimum during the repair works.

Officials said motorists on the M6 will not be delayed by the work carried out, but some roads beneath will be affected.

The work is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

Last summer motorists voted the junction as the UK's best-known sight seen from a motorway.

The junction was heralded as the future of motoring when it was opened in 1972 by the then environment secretary, Peter Walker.

It cost £10m to build and is held up by nearly 600 concrete columns.