East Midlands to benefit from £9.6 billion transport investment

4 Oct 2023 08:45 PM

Multibillion-pound plan to link major cities in the North via bus, rail and new and improved roads.

The East Midlands will benefit from a £1.75 billion regional rail hub benefiting more than 50 stations in a major funding boost to create stronger public transport networks.

A total of £36 billion in savings from HS2 will be reinvested in hundreds of transport projects across the country, delivering more buses, reopening railway stations and ensuring major funding for new and improved roads.

Yesterday (4 October 2023), we have announced the Network North plan, which will still see HS2 delivered between Birmingham and Euston in central London.

But every penny that would have been spent extending the route will instead be redirected into roads, rail, and buses to drive economic growth and provide jobs.

Network North will build better connectivity across the North and Midlands with faster journey times, increased capacity and more frequent, reliable services.

The Midlands Rail Hub will be delivered in full with £1.75 billion of increased investment to speed up journey times, increase capacity and boost frequency of services across the region.

We will do a study to take a holistic view of connectivity between the Midlands, Yorkshire and the North East, seeking to maximise on our investment in the full Midlands Rail Hub. We will look at opportunities to upgrade infrastructure, including at Tamworth, to improve journey times between towns and cities on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). This includes possible linkages between Birmingham and Nottingham together with support for strategic stations in the East Midlands. 

It will benefit more than 50 stations in Birmingham and the wider Midlands, including Cheltenham, Gloucester, Hereford, Malvern, Worcester, Tamworth, Burton, Derby, Nottingham, Nuneaton and Leicester.

Further benefits for the East Midlands will include:

• the number of trains between Leicester and Birmingham will be doubled from 2 to 4 per hour
• a guaranteed £1.5 billion to empower the new East Midlands City Region Mayor to transform transport for 2.2 million people living in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. This is an average of almost £1,000 for everyone in the 2 counties. The new combined authority could use the funding to extend the Nottingham Tram system to serve Gedling and Clifton South and connect Derby to East Midlands Parkway with a Bus Rapid Transit System
• stations and lines closed under the 1960s Beeching reforms will be reopened, including the Ivanhoe Line between Leicester and Burton, connecting 250,000 people across South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire, with new stations en route
• funding will also be provided for the Barrow Hill Line between Chesterfield and Sheffield Victoria, with a new station at Staveley in Derbyshire
• £100 million will be shared across the North and Midlands to support the development and rollout of London-style contactless and smart ticketing, supporting seamless travel by enabling contactless or smartcard payment
• funding to fix 2 major pinch points on the A5 between Hinckley and Tamworth, a stretch of road linking the M1 and M6 that serves more than 1 million people. Funding will also be provided for improvements to the A50/500 corridor between Stoke and Derby, cutting congestion for the 90,000 drivers who use the road each day and ensuring smoother journeys for drivers and freight around Rolls-Royce, Toyota, Magna Park and other major local employers
• a Midlands Road Fund worth nearly £650 million will be launched for new road schemes
• a brand-new £2.2 billion fund to transform local transport in every part of the Midlands outside the mayoral combined authority areas and the new East Midlands combined authority – rural counties such as Shropshire, smaller cities like Leicester and towns such as Evesham
• a further £250 million will fully fund 10 smaller road schemes in the Midlands, including the A509 Isham Bypass, near Kettering, and the A43 between Northampton and Kettering
• £2.2 billion for the Midlands to combat the potholes causing misery for drivers
• £230 million will be invested in increasing the frequency of bus services in the Midlands and the popular £2 bus fare will also be extended until the end of December 2024 instead of rising to £2.50 as planned
• the East Midlands will get a brand-new City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) allocation of over £1.5 billion as it embarks on its new status as a combined authority next year