Govt press release 😯

Trans-Pennine Tunnel Study – study of the viability of a tunnel under the Pennines to link Manchester and Sheffield

Mottram moor link rd sounds good – be some happy E Manchester folk if that goes through.

There are three tunnels already at the end of Longdendale.

I thought we already had a tunnel that got abandoned 😉

Edit: beaten to it

Presumably they’ll consider using the old Woodhead rail tunnels, to “improve” the A628.
However, the A57 (Snake Pass) is a more direct route between the two cities.

I thought the bottom line was that the existing Woodhead tunnels simply aren’t suitable for use either for road traffic or rail. They’re now stuffed with electrical cables… The Tintwistle bypass is the gift that keeps on giving, it’s been mooted for years and never happens.

The last set of proposals included the siting of traffic lights at the Flouch (Langsett) end of things to deliberately create congestion and manage usage. Genius.

It was also going to rip through an SSSI.

You do have to wonder if there really is a genuine need for a faster road link between Manchester and Sheffield unless you’re a mountain biker looking for quick and easy access to the Peak District, obviously 😉

£800 million for 9 new road schemes in the north west of England will create an estimated 600 construction jobs.

A mere £1,333,333.33 per new construction job created! 😯

HS3 likely to claim back the Woodhead tunnels for high capacity train line into Sheffield Victoria.
TPT looking to be pushed to the margins.
A lot of folk’s back gardens may get a “haircut”.

I love reading about all of these massively expensive road and rail projects (HS2) that I will get to pay for and have absolutely no use of whatsoever.

Sheffield’s in pretty dire need of a decent link with Manchester- 25 miles covered in an 1hr45mins on a relatively quiet rush hour is pretty abysmal. My wife used to do this every day and only lasted 8 months before looking for a new job.

The country’s going to be in utter chaos with that amount of roadworks though- they really need to come up with a way for broken down vehicles to escape the motorway in the 50 zones more easily. If anything happens then things really grind to a hault.

£800 million for 9 new road schemes in the north west of England will create an estimated 600 construction jobs

compared to how many public sector posts losted? especially in front line services……………

But aren’t a lot of these “new” ideas from Gideon just resurrected Labour transport plans that were cut in the first round of austerity cuts?

The country’s going to be in utter chaos with that amount of roadworks though- they really need to come up with a way for broken down vehicles to escape the motorway in the 50 zones more easily. If anything happens then things really grind to a hault.

This. drives me insane as it seems every friday evening some numpty decides to drive up the M1 in their jaloppy and breaks down in the road works bringing the whole area to a standstill.

Back to the OP…

Where sheffield and Manchester really need better links is rail to the city centres via suburban commuter belts. Trying to drive a road link though a national park and some very rugged terain is madness but a rail link with a decent speed could see you in either city within 30 mins. This should encourage some businesses to locate within easy walk of the stations and mean people can abandon their cars.

I live in Sheffield and I’d quite happily work in Manchester city centre, it’s an easier commute than most people have into central London. But a lot of the employers are in out of town business parks and the only way to reach these is via very congested roads leading to the 1h45 commutes listed above.

Stop out-of-townism and life is better all round. Cycling is easier, roads are less congested, we rely less on the car for everything, pulic transport would be more viable etc.

How many Sheffielders really need to get to Manchester quickly? And vice versa? Just ignore the mileage as the crow flies and accept they’re on opposite sides of some chunky hills so getting there will take a while. Still don’t understand why Tintwistle hasn’t been sorted though.

hmmm.. it’s only a pledge by this Govt and planned to happen if they get in innit?

I’d agree with that- if the train didn’t also take way too long (1hr 25ish?) then that’d be viable.

What we need is a fast electric train link from Manchester to Sheffield. Oh. Wait…

El Shalimo- yep. “Aren’t we clever at sorting out the mess pinching all the good ideas that the last government made”

Why do we need better transport links between Manc and Sheffield anyway?

never gonna haapen

We moved away from Sheffield because I couldn’t find a job there. My wife still works there. There were plenty of jobs in what I do in Manchester, if I could have driven there in a reasonable time then I would have probably taken one. As it is it was going to take 3 to 4 hours of my life each day to do a short trip , and there’s nowhere really to live between the two that would lead to a decent commute to both Sheffield and Manchester. So I took a job near Nottingham and we moved to Matlock. Which is fine, but it’d have been nice for us to not move at all and stay close to our friends in Sheffield.

The same is probably true for a lot of people- Manchester is the biggest city in the area and has the most opportunities but not everyone wants to live there.

Sheffield’s in pretty dire need of a decent link with Manchester- 25 miles covered in an 1hr45mins on a relatively quiet rush hour is pretty abysmal.

Why do people expect that it should be easy to get from Sheffield to Manchester? There are big hills and beautiful countryside in between the two. Some things should just be accepted.

It is highly unlikely that the woodhead tunnels will ever be used again for car or train use.

I have worked in them twice in the past refurbishing them and 1 is full of service cables and both have major restrictions in them due to collapses and relining.

To remove the above and make big enough for modern rail or dual carriageway wouldn’t cost much less than building a new one.

I also did some design / feasibility work on the Tintwsitle bypass tunnel years ago, so I’m guessing this is being resurrected?

I also started working on the Stone Henge tunnel option last year 😉

Not seen any announcements, but another good one I did some feasibility on was a tunnel at Tarbet to cut out that narrow, twisty bit along the north of Loch Lomand.

I have used that route a lot over the years and the big problem is just getting from the end of the m67 to the start of the snake or woodhead – both flow reasonably when you get clear of the various towns. Yes there are slow people and it’s not ideal but a tunnel all the way to manchester would be a sledghammer to crack a nut.
If they could find a way to run a road around the town to the starts it would make the biggest differene.

Why do people expect that it should be easy to get from Sheffield to Manchester? There are big hills and beautiful countryside in between the two. Some things should just be accepted.

It’s essential that we cover as much of the UK in tarmac as possible so that business can thrive. The more tarmac there is, the easier it will be to transport the huge numbers of FMCG made in Sheffield to market in Manchester and vice versa.

Plus people who don’t like the idea of living in Manchester because they want to live in the countryside will have easy access to the new tarmac running over the countryside they want to live in. Which is ace.

Isn’t the idea that you can expand the road network to a point where you decrease congestion a busted flush? All that actually happens is that you change the parameters, more people use the newer roads and live further away from town, they get busier and you’re back to square one.

How about we invest some bloody public money in making the world work for people who don’t feel they should be driving everywhere?

The announcement also includes:

Mottram Moor: a new link road from the M67 to a new junction at the A57(T) at Mottram Moor

A57(T) to A57 link road: a new single carriageway link, bypassing the existing A628/A57, and the A57 Woolley Lane/Hadfield Road junctions

presumably to help drivers get past Mottram and Hollingworth

A mere £1,333,333.33 per new construction job created!
WOW

HS3 likely to claim back the Woodhead tunnels for high capacity train line into Sheffield Victoria.

I would be surprised if they can divert those NGET cables. Thems serious money.

presumably to help drivers get past Mottram and Hollingworth

The pressure locally is all about folk living in Hollingworth and Tintwhistle having huge artics rumbling past their front doors – a lot of houses face onto the Woodhead Road – rather than making driving easier. I have a certain amount of sympathy for that point of view.

That said, I suspect a lot of the traffic on that road isn’t going to Sheffield at all, but headed cross country to the M1 and its world famous traffic jams and pile-ups. 😉

Isn’t the idea that you can expand the road network to a point where you decrease congestion a busted flush? All that actually happens is that you change the parameters, more people use the newer roads and live further away from town, they get busier and you’re back to square one.

Yeah but with more traffic and goods flowing – which does boost the economy. Ok so there might be better less polluting ways of doing it, but that’s their reasoning.

How about we invest some bloody public money in making the world work for people who don’t feel they should be driving everywhere?

Yeah. How about a new high speed rail network?

It is highly unlikely that the woodhead tunnels will ever be used again for car or train use.

Do you know anything about the train tunnel in the Brecon Beacons? I’d dearly love to see that reopened..

I presume this is all about the so called ‘Northern Powerhouse’ which seems to be the latest bandwagon that everyone seems to be getting on.

No idea if it is worthwhile or not, but the premise is basically if you join up Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield properly then you get the ability to travel from one to t’other in less than the time that it takes to get from one side of that London to the other.

On the face of it, seems like common sense but I think they ought to be concentrating on rail links rather than roads, Shirley?

Why do people expect that it should be easy to get from Sheffield to Manchester?

Availablity of skilled labour really.

If I want to set up a business in either city then I need to able to recruit staff. I’m going to choose where to base my business based on where I can cast my net as wide as possible to get the people I need.

Right now it makes sense to choose to somewhere based in the South East because that is where I can get these people. But if there are decent links between places in the north then it becomes a much more viable place to do business.

But for this contectedness to not create a nightmareish vicous cirle of traffic hell it needs to not require people to drive to work. Fast trains and city centre business locations are the answer.

On the face of it, seems like common sense but I think they ought to be concentrating on rail links rather than roads, Shirley?

It’s a bit chicken and egg really.

Rail seems much more sensible but it would just be taking people to deserted city centres or hellish “parkway” stations where people can join the traffic chaos. This is because the north has become so reliant on out of town businesses served by the road network due to a lack of public transport. So we need more people to travel by rail as more roads is a hellish solution but it’s never going to be practical to travel via train to the places people currently need to go so the places they need to go need to move to near stations but these business will never move to near stations as nobody goes there becuase you can’t drive to city centres due to the traffic.

Within London public transport is the way everyone commutes. Outside London public transport is something people who can’t afford a car are forced to use since they don’t have a car.

That has to change.

This isn’t about linking Manchester and Sheffield, its about linking the east of the country to the west.

That has to change.

Yeah – and you’d need huge public investment for that. People would use it if it were there, I reckon, but you’d have to chuck a hell of a lot of money at it first.

Why do people expect that it should be easy to get from Sheffield to Manchester? There are big hills and beautiful countryside in between the two. Some things should just be accepted.

This x 1,000.

A road tunnel would need impressive big and wide feeder roads either end. Where would these go? As you can’t see the tunnel going from the exact end of the M67 to the Sheffield city centre. Which means houses etc etc raised.

For what?

A better rail link- yes but seriously, what a ridiculous idea.

A better idea would be JUST the Mottram bypass.

Mottram Moor: a new link road from the M67 to a new junction at the A57(T) at Mottram Moor

A57(T) to A57 link road: a new single carriageway link, bypassing the existing A628/A57, and the A57 Woolley Lane/Hadfield Road junctions

presumably to help drivers get past Mottram and Hollingworth

The land to the north of hollingworth has been sat idle for years waiting for this to happen but i believe there is a private estate in the way and no one is going to move a lord on, unless the price is high enough, at least i believe this is the issue

Rail seems much more sensible but it would just be taking people to deserted city centres or hellish “parkway” stations where people can join the traffic chaos. This is because the north has become so reliant on out of town businesses served by the road network due to a lack of public transport.

I agree entirely. However, this is what stuff like trams etc. is for. Lots of investment going on there at the moment? Plus folks would move businesses back into town centres, if the facilities and opportunity to attract the right kind of workforce existed and you could get into the town centre by public transport quickly and easily so as to avoid driving and sitting in traffic for 90mins?

I don’t think that any of this is perfect, but there does seem to be more of a master plan at foot here than the typical ‘one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing’ form of local government we are used to?

You can get from Manchester (Victoria) to Liverpool in 33 minutes since the latest round of works on that line. It currently takes an hour to get from Manchester to Sheffield, hence today’s announcements?

You can get from Manchester (Victoria) to Liverpool in 33 minutes since the latest round of works on that line. It currently takes an hour to get from Manchester to Sheffield, hence today’s announcements?

Eh?

I mean that having improved the journey times to get from Manchester to Liverpool, they seem to be thinking that it would be a good idea to do that for the other cities in the proposed “Northern Powerhouse”.

I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, I just think that explains the thinking behind why they might want to improve links between the cities in the north?

Apologies, wasn’t trying to be obtuse.

I just thought maybe there was some sort of odd mechanism where people were demanding that it shouldn’t take any longer to get to Sheffield from Manchester than it would to get to Liverpool. So if anyone was being obtuse it was probably me. 🙂