A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

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Rillington
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Rillington »

That would suggest that a road tunnel is being actively considered and it seems that a road tunnel is more likely to be built than the railway tunnel that would be necessary to reopen the Woodhead Line, which should never have been closed.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by JohnA14J50 »

It feels like a mistake to not bring back the M67 project.
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jackal
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

Last I heard (the summer) they were looking at a 5 mile tunnel under Woodhead and dualling of the A628/A616, with an extension north of Rotherham to the M18. It's not a committed scheme though and I can't see it happening this decade.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Ritchie333 »

The M67 is never going to happen. In the meantime, I really don't see the point of this scheme unless it can get as far as here, which will take HGVs entirely out of village traffic. It might make a minor difference, but you'll still get jams in Tintwistle regardless.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

Ritchie333 wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 15:34 In the meantime, I really don't see the point of this scheme unless it can get as far as here, which will take HGVs entirely out of village traffic. It might make a minor difference, but you'll still get jams in Tintwistle regardless.
The point is that traffic volumes are three times higher on Mottram Moor than in Tintwistle. It's one of those cases like A303/A358 where the strategic route itself is lightly trafficked and it's only seriously congested where it combines with high volumes of local traffic.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by fras »

Funny how the Italians have managed to bore motorway tunnels through mountains. These must have cost a lot, so where did they get the money, or, more to the point, why can't we do it despite being, (so we are told), in the top seven countries for GDP in the world.
Here are the portals on the A24 that runs across Italy from Rome to the Adriatic, although the A24 becomes a superstrada at Teramo.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@42.41730 ... 8192?hl=en
Some history: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traforo_del_Gran_Sasso
Construction period was very lengthy so maybe they also had money troubles !! However, at least they did start work. Plenty of other tunnels all over the place in Italy; perhaps we should invite their teams over here to speed things up a bit.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by KeithW »

fras wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 17:12 Funny how the Italians have managed to bore motorway tunnels through mountains. These must have cost a lot, so where did they get the money, or, more to the point, why can't we do it despite being, (so we are told), in the top seven countries for GDP in the world.
Here are the portals on the A24 that runs across Italy from Rome to the Adriatic, although the A24 becomes a superstrada at Teramo.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@42.41730 ... 8192?hl=en
Some history: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traforo_del_Gran_Sasso
Construction period was very lengthy so maybe they also had money troubles !! However, at least they did start work. Plenty of other tunnels all over the place in Italy; perhaps we should invite their teams over here to speed things up a bit.
And if we lived in a country with a large number of mountains over 3000 m high that may be a good idea but since the highest mountain in the UK is just 1,345 m high and the tallest in England is less than 1000 m that doesnt necessarily follow. The reason they build tunnels is that high altitude mountain surface roads are closed for half the year.

The highest pass in the Appenines is higher than the peak of the highest mountain in England, the highest road in the UK is a piddly 670 m, barely a pimple. Now in the USA I have driven over the the Beartooth Pass which is at an elevation of 10,947 ft (3,337 m) That road is typically closed in October and reopens in May. There is no tunnel, if the pass is closed you drive an extra 80 miles around the mountain base. The Tioga Pass over the Sierra Nevada is worse, it is typically only open for 4 months a year. Lee Vining to Mariposa is 107 miles in summer and 390 in winter.

Tunnels are expensive so they get built only when needed. Its perfectly possible to build an all weather surface road across the pennines and most in real terms already meet that criteria, the number of days per year roads such as the A628/A66/M62 are closed are minimal. The objections to doing so are based on aesthetic and environmental factors.

Given that the A66 is now in the pipeline to be dualled from the A1(M) to the M6 the main route that nneds to be addressed is Sheffield to Manchester , compared to the Trans Canada Highway from Calgary to Vancouver its a short drive along slightly hilly terrain , attached is a photo I took earlier - June 20th 2007. No tunnel required there is a snow shed at the highest point.

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Bryn666
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Bryn666 »

KeithW wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 18:18
fras wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 17:12 Funny how the Italians have managed to bore motorway tunnels through mountains. These must have cost a lot, so where did they get the money, or, more to the point, why can't we do it despite being, (so we are told), in the top seven countries for GDP in the world.
Here are the portals on the A24 that runs across Italy from Rome to the Adriatic, although the A24 becomes a superstrada at Teramo.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@42.41730 ... 8192?hl=en
Some history: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traforo_del_Gran_Sasso
Construction period was very lengthy so maybe they also had money troubles !! However, at least they did start work. Plenty of other tunnels all over the place in Italy; perhaps we should invite their teams over here to speed things up a bit.
And if we lived in a country with a large number of mountains over 3000 m high that may be a good idea but since the highest mountain in the UK is just 1,345 m high and the tallest in England is less than 1000 m that doesnt necessarily follow. The reason they build tunnels is that high altitude mountain surface roads are closed for half the year.

The highest pass in the Appenines is higher than the peak of the highest mountain in England, the highest road in the UK is a piddly 670 m, barely a pimple. Now in the USA I have driven over the the Beartooth Pass which is at an elevation of 10,947 ft (3,337 m) That road is typically closed in October and reopens in May. There is no tunnel, if the pass is closed you drive an extra 80 miles around the mountain base. The Tioga Pass over the Sierra Nevada is worse, it is typically only open for 4 months a year. Lee Vining to Mariposa is 107 miles in summer and 390 in winter.

Tunnels are expensive so they get built only when needed. Its perfectly possible to build an all weather surface road across the pennines and most in real terms already meet that criteria, the number of days per year roads such as the A628/A66/M62 are closed are minimal. The objections to doing so are based on aesthetic and environmental factors.

Given that the A66 is now in the pipeline to be dualled from the A1(M) to the M6 the main route that nneds to be addressed is Sheffield to Manchester , compared to the Trans Canada Highway from Calgary to Vancouver its a short drive along slightly hilly terrain , attached is a photo I took earlier - June 20th 2007. No tunnel required there is a snow shed at the highest point.

Image
Also the Alps aren't peat bogs, they're solid rock formations so easy to tunnel through.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Herned »

fras wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 17:12 Funny how the Italians have managed to bore motorway tunnels through mountains. These must have cost a lot, so where did they get the money, or, more to the point, why can't we do it despite being, (so we are told), in the top seven countries for GDP in the world.
I think a big part of, as Keith W says above, is that Italy's geography makes tunnels are a necessity, therefore there is a lot of equipment and a skilled workforce to use, so the cost of tunnelling is significantly lower. Here we only dig road tunnels once or twice a decade or something, I would bet there are double figures of tunnels being built in Italy right now.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by fras »

The political forces for aesthetics - "horrible and intrusive road across the Pennines" have been with us for a very long time. As an example, the LCC tramways were electrified on the conduit system because of the perceived unsightliness of overhead power lines. This meant they cost hugely more to construct, I think it was about 4 times as much.

So nowadays whilst we may not need tunnels in the UK for much road construction, (or indeed for railways), the forces against surface infrastructure are in the ascendant and aren't going to go away soon, or indeed, ever, even if every single road vehicle ends up electrically driven.
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KeithW
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by KeithW »

fras wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 23:10 The political forces for aesthetics - "horrible and intrusive road across the Pennines" have been with us for a very long time. As an example, the LCC tramways were electrified on the conduit system because of the perceived unsightliness of overhead power lines. This meant they cost hugely more to construct, I think it was about 4 times as much.

So nowadays whilst we may not need tunnels in the UK for much road construction, (or indeed for railways), the forces against surface infrastructure are in the ascendant and aren't going to go away soon, or indeed, ever, even if every single road vehicle ends up electrically driven.
Indeed but I suspect they have not even come close to thinking it through, the level of intrusion and potential environmental impact of of driving a 30km long D2 tunnel is immense. Start with an assumption that its 2 bores each 14m in diameter or 7 m radius

The area of a section is A=πr2 which gives you 154 sq metres
With a length pf 30,000 m we find the volume of material to be moved is approx 4.6 million cubic metres
Assuming a density of 2.4 that gives us approx 11 million tons of spoil to be removed for each bore and that doesnt even consider issues such as emergency escape provision, ventilation shafts, lighting etc, rescue provision etc. Then there is the matter of providing what would be in effect the equivalent of an MSA at each end. At least at Woodhead power is available via the Nation Grid transmission lines. At the end of the day its not just the tunnel boring that makes it so expensive as much as all the ancillary costs.

The financial risk would also be high, even with modern TBM's tunnelling would be risky, we know from the experience of the railway tunnels that the geology of the pennines is varied, often fractured and there are huge underground aquifers, hit one of them and you have a major problem.

In my humble opinion a better option would be the sort of provision made on the Trans Canada highway where the road is built along the contours using debris/snow sheds to cover the highway with open sides on the downslope section. Pick the route carefully and you have sections where on the ground the highway is hard to spot until you get quite close and unlike existing pennine roads land slips flow over the top of the debris shed. Effectively what you have is cut and cover tunnel that blends in with the landscape and keeps the road open in bad weather. Using prefabricated concrete structures installation is relatively straightforward.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.31845 ... authuser=0
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.31905 ... authuser=0

Another section here this is through MUCH more rugged terrain that receives more snow than anywhere in the UK. It shows nicely the benefit of the vents on the downslope side that makes ventilation easy. I have advocated the use of such structures on the Rest and Be Thankful.
ttps://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.3206916,-117. ... authuser=0

One of the smarter things they did when upgrading the Kicking Horse Canyon section was construct some stunning bridges for hikers and cyclists using natural materials.
Image

Forget about the Italians , lets bring some Canucks in :)
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

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fras wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 17:12 Funny how the Italians have managed to bore motorway tunnels through mountains. These must have cost a lot, so where did they get the money, or, more to the point, why can't we do it despite being, (so we are told), in the top seven countries for GDP in the world.
Here are the portals on the A24 that runs across Italy from Rome to the Adriatic, although the A24 becomes a superstrada at Teramo.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@42.41730 ... 8192?hl=en
Some history: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traforo_del_Gran_Sasso
Construction period was very lengthy so maybe they also had money troubles !! However, at least they did start work. Plenty of other tunnels all over the place in Italy; perhaps we should invite their teams over here to speed things up a bit.
Worth saying that the A24 is, like most Italian Autostrade, a tolled road built and operated by a private company. Italy and the UK have very different models for building, maintaining and funding their strategic highway infrastructure.

Perhaps it's time to toll all trunk roads so we can have more tunnels?
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jackal
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

A tolled M67 is an interesting thought. There would be such a dramatic difference in journey time between Manchester and Sheffield (and points beyond) that it might work rather better than the M6toll, for instance, which is a minor time saving at most times of day. I would be all in favour assuming it was privately funded - which, alas, is extremely unlikely.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by fras »

jackal wrote: Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:31 A tolled M67 is an interesting thought. There would be such a dramatic difference in journey time between Manchester and Sheffield (and points beyond) that it might work rather better than the M6toll, for instance, which is a minor time saving at most times of day. I would be all in favour assuming it was privately funded - which, alas, is extremely unlikely.
After the M6 Toll debacle, I can't see private funding stepping up to build what would be a very expensive road across the Pennines. The problem is that private money wants a quick return, but a tolled road needs to have reasonable tolls to encourage use, therefor the assumption has to be that decades will elapse before the capital is paid off and a reasonable return provided in the interim.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

The scheme was accepted for examination a few days ago: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... n=overview

Layout: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... ayouts.pdf

I think the hamburger is a recent addition.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by RickyB_uk »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 21:37 Also the Alps aren't peat bogs, they're solid rock formations so easy to tunnel through.
Only the top couple of metres is peat bog though. Most of the rock underneath is a coarse hard gritstone that should be tunnel-able through.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Peter Freeman »

Well, whad'ya know? It has the obligatory hamburger! But it's still a motorway ending at a roundabout.

Still, this is actually a good little scheme. It has a very limited objective, and a timetable, is relatively low cost, is achievable, already has momentum, and AFAIK has no opposition. Two major northern cities and a couple of villages will gain at least some minor benefit during the next twenty years - during which time the tunnel idea is debated, haggled about, and agonised over, before eventually being stuffed into the already overflowing too-hard basket.
Last edited by Peter Freeman on Sun Aug 01, 2021 13:45, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Hdeng16 »

It’s one of the more acceptable hamburger junctions for sure. We were never going to get a GSJ and with that in mind the cut through is welcome given the size of the roundabout
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Conekicker »

jackal wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:57 The scheme was accepted for examination a few days ago: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... n=overview

Layout: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... ayouts.pdf

I think the hamburger is a recent addition.
What a very user-unfriendly PDF.

On the westbound approach to the hamburger I note we have the bog-standard clueless application of road markings - a double headed arrow with associated route numbers.

Do any of the HE's contractors have any clue as to what TSRGD permits? TSRGD S11-4-19 refers. Presumably the final design of road markings and signs will get the usual check to ensure it complies with TSRGD, i.e. no check at all.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Bryn666 »

Conekicker wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 10:02
jackal wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 11:57 The scheme was accepted for examination a few days ago: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... n=overview

Layout: https://infrastructure.planninginspecto ... ayouts.pdf

I think the hamburger is a recent addition.
What a very user-unfriendly PDF.

On the westbound approach to the hamburger I note we have the bog-standard clueless application of road markings - a double headed arrow with associated route numbers.

Do any of the HE's contractors have any clue as to what TSRGD permits? TSRGD S11-4-19 refers. Presumably the final design of road markings and signs will get the usual check to ensure it complies with TSRGD, i.e. no check at all.
It's fascinating because if a third party wants to do anything on a trunk road they suddenly become meticulous in their application of standards.

Unaccountable dinosaur organisation. The sooner it's abolished the better.
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