A £530m plan to improve train services on congested routes in northern England was unveiled by Network Rail.

And it could mean major benefits for travellers to and from Huddersfield – especially on the crowded commuter trains to and from Leeds at peak times.

If successfully funded, the plan would see a 40% increase in trains per day across the region, with passenger numbers increasing by 3.5m a year.

Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield would also benefit from the improvement in services which would start coming in from 2014 and would be made possible largely through removing existing bottlenecks at Manchester.

Key benefits would include:

Faster services between Liverpool, Chester, Manchester and Manchester Airport and Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, and north east England.

New inter-regional/trans-Pennine services, allowing six trains every hour to pass between Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester with journey times as short as 43 minutes.

Major restoration and improvements to Manchester Victoria station which would become a major interchange for the North with vastly improved facilities for passengers.

Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher said: “Rail is already a massive success story in the North, with many thousands of people travelling with us every day and more than 90% of services arriving on time.

“Through better connections, faster services and improved stations we want to trigger wider growth in the North which, in turn, will support local jobs and businesses.

“Our ambitious vision includes miles of track, new platforms and electrification to keep driving up passenger demand while keeping freight on the rails – and lorries off of our already-congested roads.”

Richard Fieldhouse, who chairs the Huddersfield, Penistone and Sheffield Rail Users Association, said better connecting services were also needed to get people into the larger centres like Huddersfield, Sheffield and Leeds, which would benefit first.

“An hourly service on local routes is not enough to cope with present day needs, let alone the increase in traffic that this excellent set of proposals will generate.”