Columnist

Improving North East transport will improve lives

Reliable and affordable public transport is essential to the everyday lives of thousands of people across the North East. 

We know the standard of public transport has a direct correlation with the standard of living.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the Tyne & Wear Metro, the crown jewel of the North East’s network. 

Carrying approximately 37 million passengers a year across 48.2 miles of track, the Metro serves as a crucial artery of economic and social development. 

But we can go further.

The North East Combined Authority's plans to extend the Metro through Washington via the disused Leamside Line, and potentially onward to Ferryhill through the Leamside South project, represent exactly the kind of ambition needed to build a truly interconnected region, one that stops leaving County Durham's rural communities behind.

The absence of any direct rail or Metro link between Sunderland and Durham is a glaring gap and one that is difficult to defend given both cities were once part of the same county.

The final piece of this vision could be completing the Leamside South connection and going one step further: reopening the disused tracks between Belmont and Durham, utilising the Belmont Viaduct to cross the River Wear. 

This would physically connect all three of the North East’s cities, creating a genuinely integrated network serving around two million people and unlocking the region’s full transport potential. 

The economic case for doing so is hard to ignore. 

Unemployment in the North East currently stands at 7.1 per cent, with an employment rate of 70.1 per cent, the lowest of any region in the UK. 

Transport for the North estimates productivity in the north of England, measured by GVA per capita, sits 25 per cent below the rest of England, with a striking 3.7 per cent of GDP estimated to be lost due to women and girls not taking up employment and training opportunities, with safety and access to transport identified as key factors.

The evidence that better connectivity addresses these challenges is clear. 

Greater Manchester’s £1.5 billion Metrolink Phase 3 expansion removed nearly 39 million car kilometres from roads annually and cut 6700 tonnes of CO2 in 2019/2020. 

More significantly, it improved access to employment, education and healthcare for nearly one in five residents overall, rising to roughly one in three among the most deprived communities. 

Better public transport doesn't just reduce congestion and carbon; it actively narrows inequality by connecting disadvantaged people to the opportunities they need.

Sceptics might once have pointed to Greater Manchester Combined Authority and its high-profile mayor as prerequisites that made such ambition possible and out of reach for a more fractured North East. 

That argument no longer holds. 

We have our own mayor in Kim McGuinness and a combined authority to match.

The question is no longer ‘are we thinking practically?’, but ‘are we thinking big enough?’

Josh Maratty is a policy adviser at the North East Chamber of Commerce

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