The Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded Bradford Council £400,000 ‘to kickstart master planning’ on a new railway station.

A total of £2bn is earmarked to build the station and a new line to deliver a significantly faster, 30-minute journey to Manchester via Huddersfield – in part to compensate for the loss of HS2 north of Birmingham.

However, it is not clear whether the construction cash will be available before 2029, when the scrapped stages of the high speed rail line were due to be built.

Government officials said the master planning work will consider how the station can best support regeneration in the area and maximise its potential to create new homes, jobs and local growth – as well as significantly improve transport links and cut journey times.

‘Once complete, the findings will form part of a wider business case for the project which will include details on the proposed location and delivery date for the station.’

The DfT said the cash meant that the Government was delivering on its commitment to deliver a new train station in the city following the announcement last month that HS2 would not be built north of Birmingham.

Rail minister Huw Merriman said: ‘I have championed the case for a new railway station in Bradford for a long time and the funding announced today will make this commitment one step closer to becoming a reality.’

Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said: ‘It is good to see this moving forward; everyone has worked so hard for so long to get this progressed.

‘Improving connectivity for Bradford to the rest of the North is so important to enable greater investment, jobs and opportunities. There can be no successful North without Bradford being successful.’

The DfT said it also ‘continues to push forward plans to electrify the Calder Valley Line between Bradford and Leeds – backed by £500m – to cut journey times by around 40% from 20 minutes to as low as 12 minutes’.

However, officials again did not give a date for this work, which was first announced in the November 2021 Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands and involves electrification of only a fraction of the whole line.

This article first appeared on Transport Network.