An extra £4bn a year is needed to keep the economies of England’s regional cities growing, the passenger transport executives claimed in an early bid for the 2007 spending review. The call for a £4bn hike for the PTE cities – almost doubling the current £4.7bn – is required to remove the constraints of road and rail congestion on the further expansion of business in ‘resurgent’ cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. It would halve the widening ‘funding gap’ with London, where transport spend per head was 70% higher than the average for the North and West Midlands five years ago, but 160% now. While 44,000 jobs have been created in Leeds in the past 10 years, and 9,000 every year since 1998 in Manchester, the report predicts that growth will be choked without extra funds. ‘We’re getting away with the congestion problem now, but this can’t continue indefinitely’ said a Passenger Transport Executive Group spokesman. Rail overcrowding was becoming an increasing problem in West Yorkshire, following an 80% increase in patronage over 10 years to 21M in 2004/05, while growth in car use in parts of South Yorkshire has outpaced the national hike with a 25% increase in Doncaster. Schemes such as a bus-based rapid-transit system for Leeds and extending the Sheffield Supertram would combat these trends. The report highlights the ‘agglomeration’ benefits of government investment in transport – encouraging business clusters by improving city region transport – and stresses the wider benefits of transport spending. Even the £4.37 per passenger journey subsidy for the Sheffield Supertram is good value, given the £35M-a-year benefits to society brought by £20M in revenue. The PTEG spokesman stressed that the £4bn in extra investment was not a definitive figure – not all the cities had finalised long-term spending plans – but the basis for the start of discussions. ‘The £4bn figure dramatises the difference in spending on London and the drivers of regional economies.’ While the link between transport investment and economic performance was notoriously ‘slippery’, clearly there were many pointers to the need for dramatic improvements similar to the £10bn, five-year programme agreed for London in 2004. The report was warmly welcomed by northern MPs in the Commons last week, with Leeds Northwest MP, Greg Mullholland, attacking the ‘scandalous’ £434 difference in government spending on transport per head in the capital and in Yorkshire. But the initial reaction from the Government was not positive. Local transport minister, Gillian Merron, said: ‘Transport demand in London is on a different scale because of its spread and sheer density. Expenditure includes spend on London Underground, so is therefore always likely to be higher than elsewhere.’ • Comprehensive spending review 2007: the case for transport in the city regions : http://www.surveyormagazine. com/index.cfm?fuseaction=archive.featuredetail&IsPaper=true&articleID=3141