A perennial subject of debate on here, so what do you think? Assume cost is no problem.

Could we have a few more options? I'd say "no" to a D3M, but that doesn't mean I don't want to do anything with the road.

I deliberately couched this in "all or nothing" terms. But there can be little doubt that a D3M would rapidly justify itself in terms of usage.

No. Even if we had the money, I think D3M is excessive because :
i) I very much doubt we have the road capacity at either end to take the extra traffic.
ii) I have concerns that the environmental impact would be too great. I agree that the landscape is mostly not conventionally beautiful, but it has an attractive desolation about it and it's of quite high ecological significance.
iii) I could be proved spectacularly wrong on this, but I rather doubt that demand for road capacity will be much greater in 10 or 20 years time than it is now, and it may well be lower. I'm simply not sure we need a D3M or ever will. Maybe, money no object, a more sensitve D2 or maybe the M1/M62 Flockton link to cut the corner?

Given the annual daily average traffic flow I about 12,000 per day and a opening day flow of up to 41,000 is fine for D2M (using UK standard) I also think that D3M is just silly.

I'm a firm advocate of D3M for new motorways, but the real problem with adding more capacity over the Woodhead isn't the actual road, but what it feeds into each end - the M60 and M1 at each end are already over capacity, in particular to the south of M1 J35A and M60 south of J24 - imagine pumping another let's say just 10,000 vehicles per day onto both, which even then would perhaps translate into say a AADT of 25,000 over Woodhead, which is D2AP territory.

Whilst I can visualise a D3M viaduct through Londendale, I'd rather see something done to fix the M62 past Leeds - a parallel M62 either south of Dewsbury or north of Leeds with a quality S2+1 over Woodhead (Stockbridge to Tintwistle) and a D2AP Hollingworth bypass and D3AP to the west (A57-M67) would be just peachy ! Plus grade separate Tankersley !

So that's a no from me !

I voted yes. Although I understand the points Owen and Haydn made about capacity at each end, the M62 is currently the only decent transpennine route between the A50 and A66. Building the M67 would no doubt take some pressure off the M62, especially when the M62 is closed and traffic has to use the mountainous S2's. As for the number of lanes, D2M always suffers the perennial problem of elephant races and with the gradients necessary over the Pennines, unless you build expensive viaducts and tunnels, there would have to be crawler lanes so it may as well be D3M from the start.

I voted yes because I want everything--D3M alternate route over the Pennines with improvements to routes at termini to handle generated traffic, quadruple carriageways on the M62 (subject to feasibility--what about the Huddersfield reservoir?), and pretty much everything else Haydn suggested except I would replace "quality S2+1" with D2M and require comprehensive grade separation over long lengths of route rather than grade separation at specific locations. I don't foresee it being possible to avoid environmentally sensitive areas and provide a reasonable level of mitigation without extensive use of viaducts and tunnels, so I suggest a Woodhead route be planned on the basis that it have high structure content from the start.

This is a flying pig farm, I know.

The difficulty is that at over 400m Woodhead is an even higher level route than the M62 (about 380m), and being only about 12 miles from the M62 as the crow flies the chances are that when the M62 is shut the M67 will be shut also. If you want a low level route you're looking at an M65 extension project, or more improbably something on the A646 Burnley - Halifax corridor.

I thought the M62 was very rarely, if ever, closed due to weather? I'd have thought in the worst of conditions you wouldn't necessarily need to keep both roads open anyway.

I'm not sure if it was weather related but it was shut one night a year or two ago and there was about a two mile queue on the A640 approaching Denshaw. This was about 1am. I dread to think what a daytime closure would be like.

Regarding Owen's comments - the problem in this country as mentioned on here countless times is the lack of redundancy. I think another D3M transpennine route south of the M62 would be more useful than one to the north. If the A628 is unsuitable then an alternative could be to use part of the A6(M) at Stockport but instead of a link to the M56 have it run along the A6 corridor to Chapel-en-le-Frith and then along the A623 and A619 to Chesterfield and the M1. That would make journeys between the East Midlands and Lancashire a lot easier and could possibly even relieve the M6 between J15-J20.

I agree with Truvelo, the M65 route as Owen mentioned isn't suitable (ATM) for another crossing really as that's not where the traffic catchment area is for the routes across the Pennines

I see the logic, but :
i) It's a much longer route, so much more expensive. I think you'd also have to provide a D2 spur to Sheffield or else there'd be horrendous rat running on the A621, A625, B6054 etc.
ii) It doesn't solve the altitude problem. The A623 rises to >370m.
iii) It doesn't just tip toe round the edge of the National Park, it slices right through the middle of it and would be even more problematical environmentally than the Woodhead solution.

The MoT as it was had vague ideas for looking at sorting out the A646 corridor. Ultimately the only solution there would be to remove every town on the route... Although I'd love to see a high-level bypass along the Long Causeway and over the Hebden Water at Heptonstall - you'd have a massive Millau style bridge there if you did it

The A623/A619 has much more development and runs through a much wider and more attractive part of the Peak District. It would also be getting quite close to the A50 which would be an easy motorway upgrade route to serve the East Midlands to Cheshire link.

The core cross Peak District desire is commuting, but there is a fair goods trade going of, but Sheffield isn't the only place of note east of Manchester, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster are massive places with lots of industry and warehousing, going further the multidrop to Manchester via South Yorks from ports like Hull and Immingham... So the A628 is a desirable route, but flawed as I said earlier.

Lets not dismiss the attraction of a north Leeds bypass to the M65, for East Riding/Lincolnshire trade to Lancs, Cumbria, Western Scotland, the M65 cross pennine route would miss two nasty congestion spots on the M62 near Leeds and the M60 north of Manchester.

I don't think it would be necessary. Plus I agree with Owen regarding the environmental impact.

What would make more sense would be to reopen the Woodhead railway line. This would take traffic off the roads, especially freight traffic.

Only if most of the freight traffic is very large place-to-place movements. Remember railways don't do smallish freight these days, whereas lorries are ideally suited to it.

Most of the HGV's running the Woodhead are going it empty too...

The Woodhead route survived for many years as a freight only line didn't it and I guess one reason for its closure was due to the reduced freight although I also believe that way the line had been electrified was also a major reason for its closure.

Many of us probably don't have the skills to build a D3M anywhere and we don't have enough of a workforce to do such, so I voted against. And, why would anyone here want to if we (apart from me obviously) already have a career in anything else? Sabre shouldn't become a road construction unit.

You speak for yourself, I've worked on a few new ones it's just a bigger scale traffic calming scheme with some geological work and a few structures

In fact, by the time you get to the design process, there is less hassle on a motorway scheme because the design team is so big and the locals have resigned themselves to the thing being built - I'm terms of man design hours vs money spent, a motorway is more efficient to design than a small safety scheme.