Lancashire four universities: Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire, Edge Hill University and the Lancaster campus of the University of Cumbria. Seven colleges offer higher education courses. The Lancashire economy relies strongly on the M6 motorway which runs from north to south, past Lancaster and Preston. The M55 connects Preston to Blackpool and is 11.5 miles (18.3 km) long. The M65 motorway from Colne, connects Burnley, Accrington, Blackburn to Preston. The M61 from Preston via Chorley and the M66 starting inside the county boundary near Edenfield, provide links between Lancashire and Manchester] and the trans-Pennine M62. The M58 crosses the
M61 motorway to and from the following: This complicated junction earns a place in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for having the most traffic lanes side by side (17), spread across several parallel carriageways at Linnyshaw. On its opening on 17 December 1970, it was already known locally as "Spaghetti Junction", 17 months before the opening of Gravelly Hill Interchange in Birmingham, nowadays most associated with that name in Britain. The M61 has one service station: Rivington services (formerly Bolton West services), located between Junctions 6 and 8 (as Junction 7 was never built). This motorway service area was used in