Bus operators have expressed frustration over the Government’s pledge to allocate nearly £1bn of redirected HS2 cash for bus improvements in the North and Midlands after ministers allocated just £150m of the promised cash.
The Department for Transport described the additional cash for councils in the North and Midlands as the first tranche of new funding under its Network North plan – with further allocations to be announced ‘in due course’.
The department somewhat undermined its claim that cancelling HS2 North of Manchester will give a significant boost for transport when it added that the cash comes on top of ‘unprecedented investment’ of over £3.5bn for the bus sector since March 2020.
The new cash for the final year of the Parliament represents a fraction of the nearly £2bn of a promised £3bn to improve services that was diverted to subsidise bus operators during the pandemic.
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