Approximately, two-thirds of people in big European cities can reach their city centre by public transport within 30 minutes, compared to only 40 per cent of the people in Britain’s big cities. While Brits who drive spend an average of 115 hours stuck in traffic each year. Long commutes damage productivity and are estimated to cost the UK economy £23bn a year.

Britain overpays for transport infrastructure. On a per-mile basis, HS2 is the world’s most expensive railway under construction costing more than twice as similar projects elsewhere. Madrid was able to build an entire metro-system for £4bn, it cost us £18bn to build Crossrail – more than ten times more on a per mile basis.

Bad planning is leading to massive cost overruns. For example, the Transpennine Railway Upgrade was budgeted to cost less than £300m in 2011, but the scope of the project kept changing and costs have ballooned to over £10bn. Hundreds of millions of pounds of unnecessary work was done as a result and the project still has not been delivered. Failures like this are too frequent.

Britain is one of the most centralised countries in the world. Too often, Westminster prioritises investments in long-distance intercity rail such as HS2 or the Northern Powerhouse Rail when they would be better off focusing on cutting down commuting times. Local leaders understand local priorities better than national politicians who spend most of their time in Westminster. If we really devolved power and gave mayors real powers over spending, we'd get the right sort of transport more often.

Britain Remade is campaigning for better local transport. We want to take power from Westminster and give it to local leaders who know better. But, we also want to make sure transport investment stretches further. That’s why we are calling for the government to copy what other countries do to bring costs down, deliver projects on time, and build more.