I think this is what "Northern Powerhouse Rail" was supposed to address, but I don't know if it's going to get as much love as a London project, if it goes ahea

I think this is what "Northern Powerhouse Rail" was supposed to address, but I don't know if it's going to get as much love as a London project, if it goes ahead at all :( For any non-UK people who aren't familiar, here's here's a simple map showing pop. density to give you a rough idea what we're dealing with: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-density-based-on-the-UK-census-at-the-5-km-5-km-grid-spatial_fig2_292189735 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gridded-UK-population-de... You can clearly see the areas in question - London being the big red/purple blob in the far south-east, and the cities/conurbations marmarama described are to the north and north-west of that. They're not individually on the scale of London, but they're substantial population centres that would see real benefits from this kind of public transport infrastructure investment.