Why the Snake Pass needs to become a major political issue - Yorkshire Post Letters

I welcome the fine effort of Jayne Dowle (Column, August 6) in her attempt to highlight the primeval transport linkage that postures as a main road between Sheffield and Manchester. It has seriously retarded the economic growth of both cities, especially Sheffield’s.

Two of the largest cities in the UK are indeed badly crippled by the adverse geography that the A57, Snake Pass has to struggle through as it rises well over 1,000 feet, twists and turns like a lethal black mamba and suffers all the excesses of the Atlantic weather systems that sweep over this expansive but entrancing wilderness of mainly Derbyshire.

Sheffield itself, once in the 19th century the greatest steel city in the world and the whole of South Yorkshire owing to its mining heritage, has suffered the most from the massive changes in world trade and competition.

Manchester, with its now highly diverse and sophisticated industry dominates the North-West. Ms Dowle astutely stresses the rich potential for both cities in their complementary specialisms if this transport impasse can be fundamentally rectified and the Snake consigned to the packhorse memories of its origins.

Despite the fact that Jayne comes from Barnsley, where Tories are as rare as the sighting of a striped Dalmatian, her column is usually quite impartial and attempts to seek out the truth although I categorically disagreed with her support for the Starmer/Hermer Chagos Island fiasco in an earlier YP article.

But to return to Jayne’s current article - it is imperative that the Snake Pass rises to become a major political issue after the endless years of passive neglect.