Andy Burnham and transport policy: what to expect?
Analysis and insights from transport expert - Bradshaw’s Chief Economic Advisor, Andrew Morrison.
If Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister, transport is one of the few areas of policy where he will arrive with a working model already in place, rather than a set of intentions. Manchester’s Bee Network, and nine years as mayor, give him a transport model he has built and can p oint to. The question is what extending it nationally would mean in practice, and what it would and would not address.
UK city productivity remains low relative to comparable European cities, and this represents a significant and persistent drag on national output. Addressing it requires action across a range of policy areas: the business environment, the tax treatment of investment, skills, planning, and infrastructure. Transport investment is one part of this, not the whole of it.
The contribution transport makes to productivity works mainly through labour markets. Better transport within a city-region allows more people to reach more jobs, improves the matching of skills to vacancies, and supports the agglomeration effects associated with larger, denser, more easily navigable labour markets. This is primarily an intracity and intra-city-region effect, delivered through buses, trams, suburban rail, and walking and cycling infrastructure, rather than an intercity one. This has a direct bearing on how a Burnham government should be expected to prioritise spending between local transport and large intercity rail schemes such as Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) and HS2, where the case for value for money is generally weaker.
It should be acknowledged that recent governments have already invested significantly in city-region transport. The first round of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS), worth £5.7 billion over 2022–27, and the roughly £15.6 billion announced for the second round (2027–32), were explicitly modelled on the consolidated, multi-year funding approach used for Transport for London. Bus franchising powers have also already been extended to authorities beyond Greater Manchester. A Burnham government would be building on an established direction of travel, not starting from a blank page.
Where Burnham has gone further in his stated asks is on the depth and permanence of devolution: fuller fiscal devolution rather than grant funding, land value capture as a funding mechanism, bringing more commuter rail services under local control as part of an expanded Bee Network, and longer-term funding certainty in place of single-year or short-cycle settlements. On policy specifics, this points to continued bus fare caps below the national level, expansion of integrated, branded networks to additional modes, and greater investment in walking and cycling. One notable gap is road pricing: Burnham has consistently ruled out congestion charging, having abandoned Greater Manchester’s Clean Air Zone proposals following opposition in 2022–23. This removes one of the more credible funding mechanisms available to support expansion without drawing on other budgets.
The treatment of NPR and HS2 will be a useful indicator of how these priorities are resolved in practice. The £45 billion NPR programme agreed in January 2026, with compact agreements signed by six northern mayors, has been explicitly described by government as a phased programme of capacity and frequency improvements rather than a new high-speed line. Government has also referred to a longer-term intention for a new line between Birmingham and Manchester, but has been explicit that this is not a revival of HS2, with no decisions yet made on specification or timetable; current indications are that work would not begin until HS2 Phase 1 and NPR are complete, which points to delivery in the 2040s at the earliest. Burnham has welcomed the NPR settlement but has continued to press for a high-speed Birmingham–Manchester link and an underground station at Piccadilly, both of which would carry a materially higher cost per unit of economic benefit than equivalent investment in intracity transport.
This leaves an open question for a Burnham government: whether it would prioritise the higher-return, lower-profile investment in local transport, or continue to press for the larger, more visible intercity rail projects with which Burnham has long been associated. His record in Greater Manchester suggests genuine commitment to the former, but his wider political identity has been built substantially on advocacy for the latter, and the two may compete for the same constrained funding.
This question will be set against a difficult fiscal context. Defence spending is rising, fiscal headroom is limited, and the second round of CRSTS funding has yet to be tested against a tighter spending review. Delivering the productivity benefits of intracity transport investment will depend on this being treated as a priority in its own right, rather than assumed to be affordable alongside the larger, less cost-effective schemes.
