The argument for a tunnel between Sheffield and Manchester isn’t just an economic one but one full of emotion for people in South Yorkshire - Jayne Dowle

However, this new idea - using radical Norwegian drilling techniques to create a road and rail tunnel - is being devised by Future Works, an independent group of infrastructure experts founded by Michael Dnes, who has two decades of experience at the Department for Transport and Alex Griffiths, a former Royal Engineer who’s clearly learned lessons working on Sizewell C and HS2.

It would include a 14-mile dual-carriageway tunnel beneath the Peak District, which the company believes would cut Manchester to Sheffield journey times by up to 30 minutes - and wouldn’t close in snow and high winds as the existing Woodhead Pass does. And bring back to life the disused railway line.

I don’t know about the family histories of Mr Dnes and Mr Griffiths, but they’ve hit the nail straight on the head when they say - on the website of their company Trans-Pennine Connect - that a century and a half ago, our ancestors crossed the Pennines with rails and roads.

However, the lack of modern connections means Manchester and Sheffield cannot reach their economic potential. “Today, we can change that, building on Victorian ambition to grow the North and help Britain prosper,” they believe.

Call me a sentimental old history nerd if you like, but this touches me - because a century and a half ago, my ancestors did just that, leaving Prescot and Huyton near Liverpool, and trekking across the Woodhead Pass to Barnsley, carrying everything they owned on their backs. They came with their families to work in the booming South Yorkshire coalfield.

Like South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard, who welcomes Trans-Pennine Connect’s plans as “a really exciting opportunity”, as a South Yorkshire person, I’ve done the journey myself “hundreds and hundreds of times”.

And every time I do it - as my long-suffering children will attest - I mention our ancestors and their epic journey. If I’m driving alone, I think about them silently. Anyone who knows the A628 will know that especially at night, that can be quite a spooky thought. Especially if you end up stuck in traffic near the old roadside chapel, St James’ Church, the resting place of some of the 32 navvies who lost their lives building the first tunnel under the Peak District, Woodhead 1.

History nerds like me will also remind any passengers that unbelievably, this rail link opened in 1845 under the aegis of the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway, one of the world’s longest railway tunnels at the time. It was followed eight years later by a second tunnel, Woodhead 2, to cope with the increasing volume of rail traffic. As many have said, if the Victorians could do it, why can’t we? Government-led plans for a tunnel link, first mooted in 2015, have come to nothing.

“Other countries would have closed this gap 50 years ago,” Future Works pointed out. “We have spent that time arguing about it. The North doesn't need a debate about infrastructure. It needs this road and this railway.”

Then in 1953, only eight years after the end of the Second World War, when the country was still reeling from austerity, Woodhead 3 was built to accommodate the overhead line electrification of the trans-Pennine route, as the older Victorian bores were too narrow for electric infrastructure.

One of my uncles grafted on this project, and I remember his tales of the harsh conditions, of being picked up in the village by a bus in the early hours to start work over the moors at first light.

So you see, the Woodhead Pass is more than just a road to me; it’s in my bones. However, sentiment aside, there are very clear economic benefits to linking Sheffield and Manchester, as Prime Minister Andy Burnham himself pointed out in August after a particularly gruelling trip over the alternative route of the A57’s Snake Pass, a road notoriously prone to landslips.

And amid all the talk of devolution, Future Works believes that the £2bn project could be delivered without recourse to funding from Westminster - which could bode well. The tunnel could pay for itself through tolls, they propose, making it an investment prospect for local authorities, pension funds, or other private investors.