We need a rail infrastructure that really connects the UK

The case for investing in infrastructure is just as strong today as it was in the days of Brunel, Stephenson or Telford. It doesn’t matter whether you’re manufacturing cloth or smartphones, designing software or running a firm of solicitors: you still need access to suppliers, a skilled workforce, and a ready marketplace. Effective transport is what allows workers choose from a wider range of employers, and take a better job in the next town. If we are to build the new homes we need, they too must be served by transport.

In November we announced that we would explore opportunities to restore infrastructure lost under the Beeching and British Rail cuts of the 1960s and 70s. Why? Because, if anything, the case for new infrastructure is greater now than it has been for perhaps a century. Thanks to economic growth, there are more vehicles on our roads, and more passengers on our railways, than ever before. That’s a result of our record levels of employment, and of more firms bringing more products to market. It’s good news for us all, but it’s creating unprecedented demand on our transport networks. Rail passenger numbers have more than doubled since privatisation, yet without the investment we are making, we would be left dependent on a Victorian network designed for a population a quarter the size of our own. Massive investment in our roads—the largest in a generation, incorporating widening schemes, new bypasses, bridges and tunnels—is equally important.

Getting infrastructure from decision to delivery takes time. The Crossrail project, started in 2010, will open next year. We have already built new stations and rebuilt many of our biggest and most important existing ones, including Reading, Birmingham New Street and large parts of Manchester Victoria. This month we opened the Ordsall Chord, a short but challenging new line connecting Manchester’s three main stations for the first time. We’re delivering so many extra train carriages that the rail industry has built a new train factory, in Newton Aycliffe, and the historic Derby works, producing trains since 1840, has invested in new capacity. These and other sites are constructing 17 new carriages every week; by 2021 there will be more than 5,500 new carriages on the network.

The quality and capacity of England’s roads is also increasing, thanks to our £23bn investment plan. It includes a £4.5bn commitment to add an extra lane to the motorways between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Yorkshire, a new tunnel past Stonehenge, and work to transform the A1 links in the north.

This all helps, but there is more to do. For instance, because we haven’t built a major railway north of London for 100 years, the UK’s two existing north-south main lines—on the east and west coasts—are relied upon to carry slow-moving freight and regional commuter services, as well as intercity trains. Despite billions in investment, passengers on these lines are forced to stand at peak hours. There is also too little east-west connectivity in our country, across the Pennines in the north and linking East Anglia to the southwest. The lack of north-south capacity is a major reason we are building HS2. When it’s complete, HS2 will connect eight out of 10 of Britain’s biggest cities, and provide a productivity boost to the Midlands and the north.

To better connect the east and west, we are supporting Transport for the North’s work on Northern Powerhouse Rail. We’ve backed the plan with £60m of funding so far, and will receive full proposals by the end of 2018. Further south, we have established the East West Railway Company, charged with overseeing the reinstatement of the line linking Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Bicester and Oxford. That will reconnect East Anglia, the south Midlands and the southwest. Even further south, we’ve committed £1.6bn for upgrading the A303 link with  Cornwall.

We are heirs to a pioneering infrastructure legacy. But the mistake is to assume that what served in the past will meet our needs in future. Infrastructure is costly and time consuming, but the real cost would be to fail to act, and to allow our infrastructure to become increasingly clogged. We won’t let that happen.