Transport: West Yorkshire

(asked on 18th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to improve transport infrastructure between Wakefield and Leeds.


Answered by
Rachel Maclean Portrait
Rachel Maclean
This question was answered on 26th March 2021

The Government is committed, as part of its Levelling Up agenda, to improving transport connectivity both within and between, the towns and cities of the North. In West Yorkshire, we are providing £317m from our Transforming Cities Fund and access to the £4.2bn Intra-City Transport Fund to improve transport infrastructure between Wakefield, Leeds, Dewsbury and Huddersfield alongside £49.6m to maintain local highways and improve local transport infrastructure. In addition, local authorities in West Yorkshire will be able to bid for transport projects for the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund, launched at the Budget 2021.

The Government’s Road and Rail Investment Strategies are improving strategic infrastructure between Wakefield, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester through our £589m commitment to upgrade and electrify the Transpennine main line between Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester, and investment on the M1 between Junctions 39-42 between Wakefield and Leeds, now open to traffic. The second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2), published in 2020, also included funding for Highways England to develop proposals to upgrade M1 Junctions 35A-39. If funded for construction by the next RIS (starting in 2025), this would provide extra capacity on this stretch of the M1 and would allow more drivers to travel between Wakefield and Sheffield.

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