No standing mass-transit delivery unit or rolling tram programme for second cities

Centre for Cities shows big UK cities systematically underperform their size. Manchester is about 55 per cent less productive than same-sized Rome, partly because far fewer workers can reach the city centre by public transport, and raising effective city size to European levels is worth about £23.1bn a year. The UK builds trams as bespoke one-offs, with each city re-creating consenting, design and procurement from scratch, which contributes to costs running two to eight times French and Spanish levels per Britain Remade. CRSTS money exists. A delivery institution does not.

Agglomeration in second cities is the largest quantified regional growth lever the UK has. France built tram networks in more than 25 cities through serial, standardised delivery. The per-project approach guarantees high costs and decade-long timelines for every scheme.

A national light-rail delivery unit with standardised vehicle and design specifications, framework procurement and retained engineering teams, running a rolling multi-city construction pipeline on behalf of mayoral authorities.

// Build together: Counterparty: mayoral combined authorities jointly creating shared light-rail delivery unit, pooling CRSTS funds; no statute required.

Second-city agglomeration is the largest quantified regional lever, worth about £23bn a year, and no institution owns the delivery model and no date forces action.