Funding for the Strategic Transport Plan

According to Transport for the North’s Investment Programme, the interventions needed to address current challenges on the transport network require a funding envelope of £60 billion to £70bn, of which £39bn is the estimated value of Northern Powerhouse Rail.

By subtracting committed expenditure from government agencies including Network Rail and Highways England, TfN estimates additional capital expenditure required above existing levels over the next 30 years of £21bn-£27bn.

This represents an average level of additional investment in the North of between £700 million and £900m a year, which equates to £150 per Northern citizen per year (or 43p a day).

Much of this additional investment would need to come from the Treasury, with TfN arguing that the additional investment represents just 0.8% of the North’s total Gross Domestic Product (currently valued at some £343bn), and that it would therefore sit within the overall 1.2% of GDP spending on strategic infrastructure used by the National Infrastructure Commission and benchmarked against other countries.

TfN says it considers the investment programme to be ambitious but realistic, while there may be opportunities for private investment such as the Department for Transport’s recent calls for market-led rail proposals.

With an economic prize on offer of a £100bn boost to the North’s economy, Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram told TfN’s inaugural conference that there could be no excuses, and that finding the money had to be a priority for government.

He added: “Any suggestion that the Government is set to ignore this weight of evidence will confirm what many of us have suspected for a long time, that the national government is committed to the rebalancing of the economy in name only.

“Anything other than fullblooded support for Northern Powerhouse Rail from the Government will say to me they have given up, given up on northern commuters, given up on northern jobs and businesses, and ultimately given up on our northern towns and cities.”