The Woodhead Tunnels are in danger and immediate action is required to
save them.
The three tunnels, which have not seen a train run through them for thirty
two years, have up until now been maintained by the National Grid who used them
for high voltage cables.
With now complete on installing cables in the new 1953 tunnel the National
Grid has no more use for the older tunnels. The Department of Transport will
therefore decide this month on whether to purchase the tunnels in order to
maintain them for future use. If the 1953 tunnel were to be reopened for trains
the Victorian tunnels could again be used for electricity - unless they have
fallen down.
Simon Burns MP, the Minister of State for Transport, has written to Andrew Bingham MP
asking for his views
by the beginning of September.
Successful campaigning by the
Save The Woodhead
Tunnel group extracted from the
previous government a statement that they would consider the 'option' of preserving the tunnels, but the letter from the department appears to show how hollow those words were.
All this occurs at a time when the Highways Agency is consulting on
Trans-Pennine Transport solutions. With the Woodhead Tunnels gone before the
consultation has even started, the proposed
Trans-Pennine Motorway could have
the field to itself.
Keeping the tunnel open will cost £25,000 a year. By contrast the cost of the aborted inquiry into the Longendale Bypass alone was £16 million, or £39,000 a day.
Estimates of future traffic along any Trans-Pennine Motorway are unreliable - that's why the Public Inquiry ended - as are the potential saving of a rail alternative. However English Nature estimated that the road would add 15,840 tons of CO2 a year to the atmosphere, whilst the Translink proposal for reopening the tunnel estimated it could save 100,000 tons a year.
What To Do
If you want to see the tunnels saved for possible reuse, then you need to
email or write to Andrew Bingham as soon as possible. Personal letters only
please, he hates mass circulation emails and cards.
Andrew Bingham
Office of Andrew Bingham MP
20 Broad Walk
Buxton
SK17 6JR
andrew.bingham.mp@parliament.uk
My own email to Andrew Bingham (please don't copy - use your own words)
Dear
Andrew
I am writing as I believe the Department of Transport is currently
considering whether to purchase the Victorian Woodhead Tunnels from the
National Grid in order to preserve them for future use.
I note that they are making this decision at the same time that the
Department is consulting with stakeholders over proposed Trans-Pennine
transport solutions, in which road building in the Longendale Valley will be on
the table.
I strongly believe that with car use in this country on a plateau or
declining and with oil prices showing no sign of reducing, increasing
Trans-Pennine rail capacity is the solution to the traffic problems of the
valley and that, along with electrifying the Hope Valley line and improvements
in the Leeds-Manchester line, reopening the Woodhead line would be a way of
doing this.
I am therefore very strongly of the opinion that to allow the
Victorian
tunnels to fall into disrepair now, when we have no solutions at all
agreed
upon would be the wrong decision and that the Department of Transport
must take
the necessary steps to preserve them. There will be a cost, but it will
be utterly trivial compared to the cost of even an inquiry into a road
scheme.
Like so much of what is best about Glossop, these tunnels are the
legacy of the forward thinking and sound engineering of our Victorian
ancestors. They should not be discarded lightly.
Yours
sincerely
Martin Porter