TWO major new link roads costing up to £5 billion could be built to benefit Bury motorists.

A new ‘Northern Corridor’ is being proposed to help ease traffic problems.

New roads could link Westhoughton with Wigan and there would be a key route directly from Bolton to Bury.

The report from the Department of Transport aims to find ways to relieve congestion on the M60 motorway, mainly between junctions 8 at Stretford and 18 at Simister near Bury.

It proposes a new link from the M6 junction at Orrell to the M61 to junction 5 at the Chequerbent roundabout in Westhoughton.

Traffic on the corridor would then travel south on the M61 to junction 2 where the A666 joins the East Lancs Road, before joining a new direct route to the M62, connecting at Simister Island junction 18, of the M60.

There are also two other potential multi-billion pound investment packages suggested.

One of these involves creating a new orbital ring road outside of the existing M60 motorway, linking the M62 at junction 12, with drivers travelling along the M61 and on to the M62 at junction 18.

The third and final ‘in-corridor package’ could involve a programme of improvements to ‘significantly’ enhance the capacity, performance and resilience of the M60 in an area including Bolton, Bury, Salford and Rochdale.

The study proposes that the Northern Corridor package could cost around £5.5 billion, with the other In Corridor Package listed at more than £6 billion and the Orbital or ‘ring road’ package predicted to cost as much as £7.3 billion.

The DfT report is named the Manchester North-West Quadrant Study.

Cllr David Silbiger from Sedgley ward said he had not yet seen the detail behind the proposed investment, but that he would welcome "much-needed" investment that would ease congestion around Greater Manchester, in particular near the M60 at Junction 17, the turn-off for Prestwich and Whitefield.

Mr Silbiger added: "This will help alleviate the congestion in and around Manchester and improve travel times for commuters and families.

"I look forward to seeing the full details of the proposal and to comment further after studying the report."

The DfT says all of the proposals are ‘speculative’ and there are no firm details about what type of roads could be built, motorways, A-roads or dual carriageways.

A spokesman for the DfT said: “We don’t have any firm details at this point on dates and costs — the report is just a guide at this point. The costs are speculative and are very unlikely to be that high in reality.”