Transport

Milton Keynes has an outstanding transport network within the city, thanks to the grid road and redway networks. However, there are several major problems with transport in the city:

  • Poor maintenance of the roads and redways, together with a failure to expand the road network sufficiently, have hampered the ability of these networks to fulfil their function.
  • Bus services, which could make use of the grid network to provide reliable, high-speed routes, have suffered from poor management by some of the incumbent operators.
  • Although the city is well-connected by rail to London, Birmingham, and other West Coast Main Line destinations, it lacks good rail connections to the South Coast, the West Country, Wales, East Anglia, the North East, and Scotland.
  • Although the city has direct access to the M1 and a high-quality road link via the A421 towards Bedford and Cambridge, all other long-distance roads out of the city, including the A421 and A422 towards Buckingham and Oxford, the A5 and A508 into Northamptonshire, and the A5 towards Dunstable, are inadequate single carriageways.
  • The city’s long-distance coach services all arrive and depart from the poorly located Coachway at junction 14. The city centre has no intercity coach links besides the X1 to Luton.
  • Although good public transport options are available to Luton and Birmingham airports, the city lacks good public transport connections to the other London airports.

To address these issues, City of the Future is campaigning for the following transport priorities:

  • The establishment of an independent Milton Keynes Infrastructure Trust to take over management and provision of infrastructure from Milton Keynes Council. This body, modelled on the Parks Trust, will have a charter requiring it to maintain the grid road and redway systems to the highest standards, to develop the city’s road, cycle, and public transport infrastructure to maximise the efficiency of every mode of transport in the city, and to ensure consistency and high quality in the city’s street furniture and landscaping maintenance.
  • A prioritised program of long-overdue grid road duallings and junction upgrades.
  • The establishment of an independent public transport operator based in the City of Milton Keynes dedicated to improving local and long-distance bus services in the city and partnering with the Infrastructure Trust on a future mass-transit system for the city.