M67 motorway

The M67 is a 5-mile-long (8 km) urban motorway in Greater Manchester, England, which heads east from the M60 motorway passing through Denton and Hyde before ending near Mottram. The road was originally conceived as the first section of a trans-Pennine motorway between Manchester and Sheffield that would connect the A57(M) motorway with the M1 motorway; however, the motorway became the only part to be built.

Numerous calls have been made over the decades to complete the motorway link between Manchester and Sheffield, the second and ninth most populous urban areas within the United Kingdom. Traffic between the cities is mainly divided between the Snake (A57) and Woodhead (A628) passes, which traverse the Peak District. Several plans were suspended and a proposal to link the two cities with a tunnelled scheme underneath the Peak District did not go ahead. In 2024, plans for the Longdendale Bypass, a road that will bypass the heavily congested section of the A57 in Mottram, were approved and cleared for construction.

The M67 heads east from the M60 motorway, passing through Denton and Hyde before ending near Mottram. From the end of the motorway traffic can either follow the A628 road or the A57 road further east to the M1 motorway and Sheffield.

Before the motorway reaches its eastern terminal at Hattersley/Mottram roundabout (where traffic continues along the A57 into Longdendale), there are the stub 'ski ramps' where the motorway would have continued eastwards, as there are at the western end.

In 1965, the Ministry of Transport asked Halcrow to report on a route selected by the county surveyor of Cheshire and this led, in stages, to the development of the design to partial urban and partial rural motorway standards. There was a public inquiry in 1967.^{[failed verification]} The first section to be opened was the 'M67 Hyde Bypass' which was constructed between 1975 and 1978. M67 Denton Relief Road to the west was constructed between 1978 and 1981. These schemes are connected by a viaduct over the River Tame and Peak Forest Canal.

In 1967, at the time of the first public inquiry there were discussions regarding an extension of the motorway across the Peak District National Park.^{[failed verification]} It was to provide a second motorway link across the Pennines to the south of the planned M62 and avoid the Snake and Woodhead passes, which are often closed in snowy weather.

The full proposed route was to start from Manchester city centre at what was the A57(M) motorway eastern terminal roundabout (now a flyover for the A635, constructed in 1995), following the line of the A57 Hyde Road through the inner suburbs of Ardwick, Gorton and Debdale Park. Large-scale demolition took place along the line of the motorway (which is still evident today), tied in with the widening of the Belle Vue and Reddish Lane junctions.^{[citation needed]}

From there the intended route follows the present-day M67, skirting Hyde and Denton. Upon reaching Mottram, the route passed the village to the north (through a tunnel), then crossed Mottram Moor to skirt Hollingworth through the Etherow valley floor. The motorway would then have run around the side of Bottoms Reservoir to reach Hadfield, from which the trackbed of the Woodhead railway line (the former intercity route between Manchester and Sheffield, now closed) was to have been followed up the Longdendale valley to Woodhead. At Woodhead, the route would have diverged, with one carriageway entering the Woodhead Rail Tunnel (now disused) and the other rising on a sweeping viaduct to go over a realigned Woodhead Pass.^{[citation needed]}