NEXT time you are stuck in traffic, or bouncing over a potholed road, or waiting for a delayed train, consider that your taxes are being used to build brand new transport links that will improve the lives of Londoners.

You can ponder why London gets 24 times as much spent on infrastructure per resident than the North-East and that the capital’s Crossrail will get nine times more funding than all the rail projects planned across the whole of the so-called Northern Powerhouse area.

Former chancellor George Osborne coined the phrase Northern Powerhouse to describe the area that the rest of us call the North of England. Perhaps he hoped a marketing makeover would galvanise the North’s growth prospects.

Whatever the reason it is a bit like rebranding Hartlepool United as Real Hartlepool and then expecting them to soon be challenging for the Champion’s League. Without investment any progress would be very slow indeed.

If we are to have any hope of matching the UK’s real economic powerhouse in the south east then we need better infrastructure – and that means diverting money that would otherwise be spent down south up here.

Bold plans recently announced to revamp Darlington’s Bank Top Station look like a proverbial no brainer and the sooner they get started the better. Schemes for new crossings over the River Tees, and a Darlington bypass – things that have been talked about for so long they have almost entered the realm of urban myth – would also give the regional economy a lift.

Tees Valley Combined Authority will now ask ministers for funding, arguing that better roads will create thousands of jobs.

The time has come to stop talking about this and make it happen.