Barnsley businessman Tony Hickton’s new proposal to build a tunnel to link Sheffield and Manchester should be looked at, says South Yorkshire MP Angela Smith.
The Penistone and Stocksbridge Labour MP said, “The economic impact of improving the link between Sheffield and Manchester should not be underestimated.”
Mr Hickton said, “A new road and rail tunnel from the M1 Junction 36 to the M67 would be a boost for the economy. When you stand above the Woodhead Pass and look down at all those HGVs it’s a real blight on that beautiful landscape. Anyone who uses Woodhead knows how difficult it is to use. A new tunnel could be built using a mixture of private and state funding.”
i needs improving !!! but fear a tunnel will not be the way forwards!
be cheaper to build a new road with tunnels and dual carriageway no impact on nature! only ever seen burned out cars and sheep up there anyway !!
shytalk:
Theres allready a tunnel not in a good state…but could be reused without too much hassle.
I thought National Grid owned that and ran massive electric cables through it.
Just putting on my pedants hat on!
There are 3 tunnels at Woodhead. Number 1 has the cables, number 2 caved in about halfway through and number 3 is being refurbished so the cables can be run through that.
Pedants hat off.
This idea first came up in the late 70’s I think when the railway was being considered for closure. An extension of the M67 through the Woodhead tunnel and continuing on the the M1. All we ended up with was the Stocksbridge bypass as the rest of the project was too expensive back then. God knows what it would cost now.
One of the key problems in reusing any Woodhead Tunnel, is that they were built for electric trains and therefore have no ventilation.
Not a huge cost, but just another cost to add in.
It would be a brilliant idea but in my opinion it would costs a ■■■■ site less to simply improve the road that’s already there, make more/longer crawler lanes/duel carriage ways.
I suppose it would help greatly in making journey times quicker and it would certainly benefit during bad winter periods, but surely unless they had some kind of private funding (no doubt turn it into a toll road), then I can’t see the government contributing much considering the state of the economy at present.
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