Major city regions stand to benefit from Sir Rod Eddington’s proposal to reprioritise Britain’s £18bn annual transport budget, while smaller, less economically buoyant areas in the UK could miss out on investment resources, according to a new report.
The think-tank Centre for Cities released a report that argues recommendations in the Eddington Transport Study would ‘shift the balance of transport investment toward London, the Greater southeast, and a few Northern city regions’. Areas with economies seen to be performing less strongly might lose out on their share of the budget.
This prioritisation was ‘politically charged’ and Sir Rod’s objectives have ‘distributional consequences’ for both people and places, the report said. ‘Eddington is urging the Government to invest in success. Looking forward, the key issue is how Government combines its principles with Eddington’s recommendations – and how to manage the perception that it is using investment to “back winners”.’ Investing in success spelled ‘bad news’ for cities hoping to use transport infrastructure investment, such as trams, as a catalyst for area regeneration, instead of congestion targeting.
However, tackling congestion would prevent urban areas from ‘overloading’, and was important for areas like Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham, the report said. By focusing on growing urban areas and their catchments, as well as international gateways and key inter-urban corridors, the Eddington proposal was ‘unlikely to deliver better links to small cities that do not serve a major “gateway” function, such as Norwich, Exeter or Carlisle’. The report suggests that the Government must ‘tread very carefully’ if it decided to implement Sir Reids recommendations. It also uses the government to commit to new additional investment in transport infrastructure for Britain’s cities to perform better.
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