A road to link the M62 and M1 through Kirklees is being planned.
Officials have resurrected a 30-year-old scheme to build a huge bypass between the busy motorways.
Kirklees cabinet member, Clr Peter McBride, said the link road would be an A-road and would be largely dual carriageway.
The Examiner has not yet seen a detailed map of the route but Clr McBride confirmed it would connect with J25 of the M62 at Brighouse and join the M1 at the Durkar junction at Horbury.
He said it was likely to wind north through Hartshead and Heckmondwike before looping south close to Mirfield, through Dewsbury and across the river on land close to Ossett and Horbury.
Dubbed the North Kirklees Orbital, the bypass has been selected by politicians from the so-called Leeds City Region to be put forward for huge amounts of government cash.
In 1988 a similar scheme sparked huge protests with thousands of people signing petitions to stop it.
Dewsbury MP at the time, Ann Taylor, described it as an “outrageous waste of public money”.
That proposal did not have the support of Kirklees Council and was eventually dropped in early 1993.
But more than two decades on, the new one, on a similar route, is being pushed as a solution to the traffic and regeneration woes of much of the borough.
Officials say that not only will it ease the congested Cooper Bridge junction and free up busy roads in Mirfield and Dewsbury but also spark new jobs and growth for Kirklees, Calderdale, Bradford and Wakefield.
A bid for funding from the Department of Transport (DfT) will be made in the next few weeks by the so called Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
At the time of the 1980s scheme, councillors, including now leader of Kirklees, Clr David Sheard and Clr Peter McBride, opposed the idea.
Reports from the time show Clr Sheard campaigned to have Spen Valley rail links improved instead while Clr McBride, who was chairman of the M1-M62 Task Force at the time, said the DfT had “not done its homework” and the route would bring “disastrous environmental damage”.
Mirfield Tory, Clr Martyn Bolt, said Kirklees had ended up opposing the plan after the DfT insisted the link road was a motorway without any access for Kirklees traffic.
But Clr McBride said the new scheme was “very different” and was being backed by Calderdale, Bradford and Wakefield councils.
He said: “The reason we turned the previous proposal down was people here got no benefit from it.
“It just helped traffic get from the M1 to the M62.
“This one is linking the strategic priorities for three or four districts in terms of regeneration.
“It has all the things we wanted in the previous one that we didn’t get.”
Clr McBride said the new road would “undoubtedbly” ease the jams around Cooper Bridge and give better access to the motorways to commuters.
He said it would have access points for local traffic.
It is thought it could also ease the pressure on the M62 and M1 around Leeds.
Clr Bolt said he would oppose the idea if there was no benefit for his ward.
“If all we’re doing is losing green fields and getting loads of pollution then we will oppose it,” he said.
Clr Bolt said a study in 2006, during his tenure as transport portfolio holder for the council, had found that very few vehicles drove the entire stretch of the A638/A644 between the M1 and the M62.
He said most of the traffic was local motorists and so any new link road may not relieve the pressure on the A62 between Leeds and Huddersfield or the A644 between Brighouse and Dewsbury through Mirfield.
