Cities need £70bn to improve inadequate transport system

Britain's big cities urgently need the freedom to raise £70bn to deal with "grossly inadequate" transport systems, say leading academics.

A research team led by Stephen Glaister of Imperial College London said the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, must loosen his grip on funding otherwise urban areas will continue to deteriorate.

Their report concluded: "Whether by road or by rail, journeys into and out of our major cities are commonly fraught with obstacles. These delays, diversions and cancellations are symptomatic of an ageing infrastructure that is struggling to meet public demand." The document, Back on track - or off the rails?, said lessons should be learnt from New York and Paris which run their transport systems better.

Transport's share of public funding has nearly halved over the past decade and as a percentage of gross domestic product Britain has been spending about half as much as other European countries, the researchers found.

The report said: "Cities need more freedom to act, to raise money locally and to take responsibility for their own transport agendas." The authors warned that the problems were likely to get worse "in the next year or so".

London's traffic was the "worst in the world", said the report, with average journey times longer than all other major cities in Europe, Asia and Europe.

Professor Glaister said: "The tendency towards increasing central government control of transport over the past 50 years needs to be reversed.

"Governments have failed to deliver on urban transport and we believe it's time to let cities take control. It's worked for major overseas cities, such as New York and Paris, and we think it could lead to huge improvements in the UK."