Transport investment can’t be sidelined if Yorkshire is to realise its potential - The Yorkshire Post says

For example Bradford, one of the cities with the youngest population in the country, has suffered from years of transport neglect. Making the population of the city more mobile will only be good for the whole economy. It will also be important if levelling up is to be realised in the city.

However, the North of England needs more than just individual projects and that is why Transport for the North (TfN), the first statutory sub-national transport body in the UK, is such a vital organisation.

It is more important now than ever to have a unified vision for transport in Yorkshire and beyond.

While it has been hit by funding cuts and had to make 34 redundancies, TfN is required to speak up for the region’s needs and to ensure a coherent vision is in place. Its new business plan shows that it has lost almost £70m of funding after Westminster seized control of the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) project. The organisation branded the Government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) as “wholly inadequate” last year and said the Government was investing less than half of the £40bn needed to transform the Northern rail network.

TfN has vowed to “move forward as a smaller, leaner organisation” but if the Government really believes in levelling up, it wouldn’t sideline a unified voice championing the need for long overdue improvements to our transport infrastructure.

The reality is that the Government’s IRP fell way short of expectations when it was announced last year.

The fact that Liz Truss, the leadership frontrunner, has committed to building NPR in full, a high speed line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford, is welcome but promises have been made before and either abandoned or watered down.