The Government will publish ‘the first integrated national transport strategy the country has ever had’ ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has said.
Ms Haigh was responding to the publication of the ‘rail and urban transport review’, led by Juergen Maier, which the Labour Party commissioned while in opposition. The review calls for a strategic reset, with Mr Maier telling journalists at a briefing on 21 August that the UK had had ‘a pretty bad decade in terms of confidence’ due to the chopping and changing of plans for major schemes. The review suggests that publication of a strategy will provide certainty, which could enable a ‘greener, faster, cheaper’ framework which could cut project delivery costs by 20% and timelines by 25%. It also recommends the development of an infrastructure investment playbook to facilitate and leverage private investment.
The formation of the strategy, which the reviews suggests should cover England but with a framework for cross-border links to Scotland and W…
