BARNSLEY has emerged as a strong contender to take the eastern entrance for a new trans-Pennine road tunnel expected to cost £16bn to build.
Five potential routes have been announced by the government and four of those would place the tunnel entrance at this side of the Pennines somewhere between junction 35a on the M1 and a site north of junction 37, near the A635 at Cawthorne.
Only one of the routes still on the drawing board would take traffic away from this district, with a tunnel entrance somewhere near the A57 on the outskirts of Sheffield.
Plans for a tunnel - which would be around 18 miles long - have been previously announced by the government and then chancellor George Osborne put £75m into the planning stages alone.
Read more in this weeks Barnsley Chronicle
