Travel hampered by journey times
In the North, Manchester-Leeds (its two biggest city economies) enjoys five trains per hour, with the journey taking 50 minutes.
The Midlands’ two biggest cities - Nottingham and Birmingham - are the same distance apart but have only two trains per hour, taking more than 70 minutes.
Passengers can travel to London in the same time, despite a journey length of 94 miles.
There are no direct trains between Coventry and Leicester (29 miles), and a journey time of around an hour (with a change at Nuneaton). As a result, just 3% of people travelling from Coventry to Leicester do so by train, whereas 59% from Coventry use the train to travel to London.