The Northern Way

The Northern Way is led by the northern regional development agencies: Yorkshire Forward, North West Regional Development Agency and One North East.  Its aim is to bring together regions and cities and, by working together, to improve the sustainable economic performance of the North and its approach is widely regarded as good practice.  Yorkshire Forward leads the transport component of the Northern Way, developing its evidence-based analysis to address pan-northern short-, medium- and long-term transport priorities.

An important issue for the Northern Way is the constrained capacity of the rail network in and around Manchester, call the "Manchester Hub". The hub is recognised as the single most important transport issue in the North, because of the pan-regional impacts that current constraints impose. The Northern Way has led work looking at the benefits that could be accrued by improvements and this is now feeding in to further work led by Network Rail.

High Speed Rail is also a topical issue. The Northern Way is part-funding work to develop a business and economic case for a high speed rail system, together with other Regional Development Agencies and city regions.