Metro mayors are about to transform transport in England’s biggest cities

Local transport powers, reliable funding streams, and single ticketing mean passengers can easily move around these places by bus, tram, and metro.

Very soon, metro mayors in England will get the powers to set up European-style integrated public transport systems in their areas.

This is a big deal for England’s six largest cities outside London – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield – where almost a quarter of the country’s population resides.

The metro mayors of these places can already plan local bus services and, in 2026, will get powers to manage their urban road networks and better integrate timetables and fares systems across different transport modes.

The Bus Services Act went live last week and speeds up the process by which metro mayors can more easily regulate and plan local bus services.

This is an important step: bringing bus services into local control will end 40 years of privatisation which has coincided with a significant decline in bus use.

In the 18 months since Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham brought bus services into the Bee Network, ridership and passenger satisfaction have increased.

The Government’s Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will give metro mayors control of their roads. And the Government’s new Railways Bill will give metro mayors more control over local commuter rail networks.

The potential impact of these new powers is big. Across the six cities, 1.2 million more people would be able to reach their major city centre in an easy 30-minute journey. That’s an increase of 40 per cent on the current number of people well-connected to city centres.

In economic terms, it would add £17.4 billion per year to economic output by better connecting more people to the jobs and education opportunities in the centres of big cities like Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

With metro mayors committed to delivering these improvements, England’s largest cities outside London are set to benefit from European-style integrated transport over the next decade.

Government is rightly focused on working with the mayors to fix urban connectivity. Big cities are the driving force of regional economies. Making them better connected is crucial to delivering the Government’s growth objective.

Given the positive economic effects of improving local transport, it makes sense to invest more in local urban public transport. Government should help places to do this where they need to, and for this to happen, it needs to go further with devolution.

If metro mayors are to deliver European-style transport systems, they need European-style ways of funding them. Metro mayors should be given the powers available to French mayors to levy payroll taxes on local employers to subsidise transport network expansions and lower passenger fares.

Over the next 10 years, people living in England’s big cities are going to get a transport experience that people in London and many European cities have experienced for decades. With more powers and access to funding, they could do even more.

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Andrew Carter is Chief Executive of Centre for Cities.

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