Adam Branson on scepticism over recent rail improvement plans as transport betrayal hits the North

Adam Branson is a freelance journalist, writer and editor

Reaching Newcastle Central Station well before sunrise, I discovered my train had been cancelled. The next one was delayed and then further delayed on route, making its way across the Pennines painfully slowly.

By the time I got to Manchester, Stockport council’s leader and chief executive, plus the development corporation’s chief executive, had been waiting for me for 20 minutes. The press officer was messaging me with mounting urgency and rapidity. There was nothing for it but to jump in a cab, costing around £60; I didn’t have the nerve to put it through on expenses. On the way home, three trains were cancelled.

The problem is that my story is far, far from unique. The transport infrastructure of the North is creaking, disrupting countless journeys and causing huge damage to productivity. I’ve lost count of the number of contacts who tell me they’ve given up and gone back to driving everywhere, which is terrible both for congestion and the environment. The roads are hardly in great shape either.

Central government has consistently failed the North when it comes to investment in public transport, with so much promised but so little delivered. Axing the second leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds was the biggest U-turn; yet more delays to Leeds’ tram network the latest. Nobody feels disappointed anymore because they no longer believe the promises in the first place.

So, the government’s announcement earlier this month of plans to spend up to £45bn on rail improvements in the North was greeted with a lot of scepticism. It didn’t help that chancellor Rachel Reeves allocated £1.1bn in the current spending review period for “planning, development and design work” – still no spades in the ground then.

Making connections: Labour has promised to upgrade the lines from Leeds to Manchester, Sheffield and York

To be fair, the announcement provided greater detail than is usually the case. The first phase of the programme, the government said, would deliver improved connections between Leeds and Sheffield, York and Bradford. In the North East, development work on the Leamside Line in County Durham will also be taken forward.

This will be followed by a new route between Liverpool and Manchester, via Manchester Airport and Warrington, and finally by improved connections across the Pennines between Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and York. It is blatantly obvious that the entire programme cannot be delivered in one go, so the acknowledgement of this phased approach breeds a certain degree of confidence.

Staggering North-South divide

At the same time, it is worth remembering the scale of the betrayal. Last June, think tank IPPR North published its research on the gap between per-capita spending on public transport in London and in the North. The findings were staggering. Spending in London rose 2.11 times faster than in the North on average each year over the past decade.

What’s more, had London-level spending per head been received from 2009-10 onwards, then by 2023-24, the North would have received £140.42bn more in transport spending. “This £140bn catch-up cash is worth more than the entirety of capital spending on transport in the North since the millennium, which we estimate to have been £82.52bn since 1999-2000,” the report states.

Supporters of spending on transport in London argue that it is necessary to support the continued economic growth that the Treasury and, indeed, the country depends upon.

It isn’t a bad argument. But to maintain it ad infinitum, such pundits are effectively saying that spending on transport in the North wouldn’t improve productivity in the same way. I beg to differ. We are neither grim nor dim up North.

Adam Branson is a freelance journalist, writer and editor