Government pledges massive spend on transport upgrades
THE Government is to invest £29billion in an upgrade package for strategic and local roads across the UK.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid made the announcement during his speech at the 2019 Conservative Party Conference last week.
The fund is an expansion of the £25 billion Road Investment Strategy (RIS2) pot set aside by the previous Chancellor, Philip Hammond, for road improvement works to be carried out between 2020 and 2025.
The full details of exactly where and when the money will be spent will be revealed later, but the works will include improvements to the Simister Island interchange in Manchester, turning single-carriageway sections of the A66 Trans-Pennine expressway into dual-carriageways, and a new 10-mile section of the A428 between Milton Keynes and Cambridge.
At its last spending round, the Treasury committed £220million to buses alone. Now, Javid has confirmed this will form part of a “national bus strategy” from 2020 onwards, involving the rollout of “superbus networks”, expanding the number of low-emission buses in the UK and delivering better value for passengers.
A trial of the scheme will begin next year in Cornwall, a county that the Government says has “significant deprivation and social exclusion”.
More than £20million will be dedicated to bus lanes in the West Midlands, and contactless payment will be brought to all buses.
Finally, as Javid pledged £5billion on the rollout of full-fibre broadband to rural areas, he talked about the need for the UK to catch up with other European countries on the latest technologies, such as 5G, which is used in connected and autonomous vehicles.
“All of these measures will level up areas of our country that feel left out,” Javid said, adding that the Government’s plan was “borrowing to build, not borrowing to waste”.
“Full details of exactly where and when the money will be spent will be revealed later”