Chancellor George Osborne has vowed to make Britain’s infrastructure “fit for the future” and has committed £60m to HS3 as part of a £461m infrastructure spending spree announced ahead of tomorrow’s Budget.
A blueprint for HS3 will be drawn up by next year.
In addition to the money set aside HS3, the chancellor also pledged £75m to develop plans for a £6bn Trans-Pennine tunnel linking Manchester to Sheffield and £161m to accelerate upgrades to the M62 road outside of Manchester.
In a report, The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) also called for improvements on the most congested part of the M62 to be sped up.
It said the region needed “immediate and very significant investment” and, if George Osborne’s vision for a Northern Powerhouse is to become a reality, there must be better cross-pennine connectivity.
There has been relatively little investment in road and rail infrastructure between Leeds and Manchester since 1971.
Lord Adonis, former Labour transport secretary and chair of the National Infrastructure Commission said that if the north was to become a powerhouse, work needed to “begin as quickly as possible”.
“Leeds and Manchester are just 40 miles apart but there is no quick and easy way to travel between the two. In rush-hour it can take more than two hours by car, by train it can be almost an hour.
“So we should kick-start HS3 across the Pennines and slash journey times to just 30 minutes. But we must not wait decades for change – journey times should be cut to 40 minutes by 2022.”
A plan should be drawn up by 2017, the report said.