Public transport links in the north affecting jobs

Onward has analysed how many jobs are reachable by car and public transport in every small local area in Britain, finding a shocking transport gap between north and south.

The think tank has stressed that the government’s levelling up agenda must prioritise transport in regional towns and cities, where chronic public transport networks are holding back jobs and economic opportunity.

The analysis shows that public transport is so poorly connected in some parts of England that people can access fewer jobs within an hour on public transport than they can reach within a five-miles radius of their local area.

For example, in Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Bolsover, workers can access only around three-quarters of local jobs within an hour on public transport. This compares to some towns in London’s hinterland, like Redbridge, Barnet or Epping Forest, where an hour on public transport unlocks access to seven times more jobs than exist locally.

Looking at similarly sized towns in different parts of the country, Onward finds that you can reach twice as many jobs using public transport within 90 minutes from Aldershot (1.2 million jobs) than from Halifax (581,837), and over four times as many as from Mansfield (246,857).

The transport gap is particularly acute around towns in the Red Wall regions of the North West and West Yorkshire, where geographic proximity to jobs is no guarantee that workers will be able to reach them.

The think tanks reports that this suggests that spending dedicated to public transport could be much better directed towards improving jobs access in Britain’s regional towns and cities, rather than improving transport in places that are already well-connected.