How the people of Hollingworth feel about a 14-mile Pennine tunnel

Walking through the village of Hollingworth, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘I could do without all those HGVs rattling past’. Imagine living there.

To put it into the words of 77-year-old Brenda Hardy – ‘it’s chaos’. The village sits on the Greater Manchester border with Derbyshire and has the pleasure of being the thoroughfare to Sheffield for juggernauts too big to go on the Snake Pass.

Traffic has been a problem in the not-so-sleepy village for decades. This is because you have to pass through to get onto Woodhead Pass (A628), if you exceed the 7.5 tonne weight limit to go on the Snake Pass.

The solution to the problem, the Mottram bypass, is actually under construction down the road. But the bypass ends right on the doorstep of Hollingworth and pays them zero benefit.

So when the idea that could sort the issue – a 14-mile tunnel under the Pennines – came about, there was excitement. Earlier this year an organisation called Future Works devised a strategy to build the tunnel, containing a dual carriageway and railway line, beneath the Peak District mountains.

The scheme – called Trans-Pennine Connect – is estimated to cut journey times between Manchester and Sheffield by 30 minutes and take traffic away from the National Park. Although it is just an idea at the moment, there is excitement in the village that it could become a reality.

Brenda said: “I am very keen on that. My husband and I said it was the worst mistake to close that rail line.

“The bus is alright but it’s not easy. We have no car and we have a bus pass.

“To get to gigs we get the bus and then the tram, it’s a trek. We only got home at 12:30 after going to a concert in Manchester.

“I like going to concerts, but it’s a lot of effort to get there, especially in winter.

“I think this tunnel idea would be brilliant for the area. I’m all for it.

“I’ve been here for 50 years. Me, my dad and my husband said we’d never see the bypass. But now it’s chaos. I know for a fact people have moved from the village because of it.

“If we do have something like this again, we need to benefit from it.”

The Mottram bypass – officially known as the A57 link roads scheme – has also been designed to reduce congestion and improve journey times and reliability across the Pennines. Despite the £228m price tag, the bypass only goes around Mottram and ends at Woolley Bridge – meaning traffic to the Woodhead Pass still has to go through Hollingworth.

Russell Edwards has lived in Hollingworth for more than 20 years. He said: “The traffic is a nightmare. It’s just constant.

“I live next door to the pub and this is 24 hours a day this traffic. I don’t believe that bypass is of any use whatsoever.”

The 69-year-old thinks the tunnel plan is good, but doubts it will ever happen. Now they’ve spent millions on the bypass there is unlikely to be more cash for another major infrastructure project.

He added: “My first thought on the tunnel was ‘never in a million years will it get done’. They’ve been talking about this bypass for decades, you see.

“Because of the history I have no hope it would happen. Going on past experience I think I’d be dead by the time it comes about. I’ve just got used to it now.

“The cars are getting bigger and these roads aren’t made for them. I don’t think these wagons going between will get any better with the bypass.

“They need to stop wagons coming through and force them through the tunnel, if it does happen, otherwise they’ll just carry on.

“Everyone has gotten used to it. Most people here are elderly and don’t go out a lot. Those that do use the car, taxi or the bus if it ever turns up.”

Despite Russell’s pessimism, Future Works co-founder Michael Dnes is hopeful the project can work. His estimate to do the work is around £2bn – significantly cheaper than the £10bn suggested in a government study when they looked into the idea a decade ago.

Mr Dnes and his team were inspired by Norwegian engineers, who built the world’s longest road tunnel, the 24.5km Lærdal in Norway, for around £130m. This was done using a ‘drill-and-blast method’, rather than the standard British approach of a tunnel-boring machine, according to Dnes.

The critical point of using this method is that it’s significantly cheaper to do. But the return on investment would be huge.

Government studies from 2016 suggested this tunnel would inject hundreds of millions into the regional economy and drastically improve connectivity between Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire.

The people of Hollingworth aren’t naive. They know their plight about traffic won’t entice the government to shell out billions of pounds.

This is why they are pushing the economic benefits – a railway that could link ports at Liverpool and Hull via Manchester and less delays on the roads between Manchester and Sheffield. It is proven that poor transport links increase supply chain costs and reduce productivity, negatively impacting the regional economy.

Allen Battersby believes Hollingworth always gets forgotten about, he even said Greater Manchester Police didn’t come out once because they thought the village was in Derbyshire.

He has been pushing for the tunnel because he thinks it’s what is best for the village. But the 75-year-old knows the idea needs to make sense economically and from a business point of view for it to ever come to fruition.

Allen explained: “This tunnel is ultimately what’s good for Hollingworth. It can be a nice place to live – if they can rid the village of this traffic; people don’t have to worry about taking their kids to school; and blind people don’t have to worry about obstacles on the pavement.

“This idea sees the problem and agrees it needs to be solved. The freight industry has decided coming through here is the best way to go from Liverpool to Hull.

“This Mottram bypass will help freight by reducing the number of traffic lights it has to go through, but it won’t help the village. If the route becomes better for freight, logic dictates that freight traffic will actually increase.

“You only need one problem on the roads and the HGVs have to find different ways through. It must cost millions each year when these roads are closed, like with the wildfires.

“The immediate beneficiary of the freight going on that railway line is Hollingworth. But it would also save billions for the freight industry.

“Everyone recognises there has to be a solution to the problem. I think this has to be it.”

He went on to say that the railway connection between Manchester and Sheffield is poor. He said ‘you can grow a beard in the time it takes to get from Manchester Piccadilly to Sheffield’.

“The benefit of the tunnel is linking to South Yorkshire and all the industry there,” Allen said. “That’s what it was designed to do in the first place – it was the fast line to transport coal from the mines.

“It was the wrong decision to close it then and it still is now. There is an appetite in Yorkshire for it as well. This idea has brought out all the nostalgia on social media.”

Local MP and government minister Jonathan Reynolds has long advocated for better transport connectivity around the eastern corner of Tameside. He has laid out the next steps for the project and how it could actually become a reality.

Mr Reynolds was instrumental in securing the Mottram bypass scheme currently under construction. But he believes Future Works’ plan now needs to undergo work to understand if it is actually deliverable and the actual benefits it could bring.

The MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, said previously: “Residents in Hollingworth have been waiting for years to see real progress on the issue of traffic passing through the village, so any credible proposal that could reduce congestion and improve connectivity deserves to be looked at seriously.

“I’ve been keen to support Future Works by speaking to stakeholders, and the priority now is to undertake the detailed work needed to establish whether it can be delivered, how it could be financed, and what benefits it could bring to local communities and the wider region.”

The plans would see one of the current Woodhead tunnels, which currently transport electricity lines for the national grid, be used for the new road and railway.

Rather than using the standard British approach of a tunnel-boring machine, Future Works has looked into the drill-and-blast method applied to tunnels in Norway. This system replaces giant machinery with more traditional mining techniques, the natural strength of the rock and small expert crews.

Although this would not work in many areas of the UK, the expert teams believe this ‘drill-and-blast’ method could work here due to the geology of the Pennines. This is because the tunnels built in Norway go through mountains with a similar rock type.

The previous model of going for direct government funding through the Department for Transport never materialised after appetite for big road projects waned, according to Mr Dnes. So his team believes the project could be funded by either big pension funds or the local authorities and paid back over time through tolls on the tunnel.

Mr Dnes explained that tolls could actually work out cheaper than paying for fuel costs to go around an alternative route, particularly if the vehicle is larger, such as a HGV.

A spokesperson for Future Works said previously: “High demand for the route means that the project could pay for itself, without the need for Westminster funding.

“Scandinavian tunnels are often owned by local councils, who recover the costs through tolls. Equally, northern pension funds have hundreds of billions in investment capital that could be mobilised to build the project.

“Many options exist – public, private and partnership. Future Works was set up by infrastructure experts Michael Dnes and Alex Griffiths, with a combined expertise in more than £100bn of infrastructure projects. They aim to create a shovel-ready scheme, and to bring this through the planning system faster than the 10+ year processes that have become the norm in UK planning.

“Work could begin before the end of the decade, with the road and railway open in the mid-2030s.”