Action Briefing Feb 2003 - Mar 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

West Midlands News

Bus Priority or Car Priority?

Local authorities across the West Midlands conurbation are looking to invest millions in new showcase and super showcase bus routes. We even have proposals for the first three Red Route bus routes in the region. Now, we should be very enthusiastic about this shouldn’t we?? This is the sort of investment we have been calling for a long time.

However, all is not that simple in the transport engineers' minds. We would assume that this would mean retaining the existing road space and giving real priority to the bus as they have done in London. Well, no not at all. Here in the West Midlands we still have a highway engineers' department who will do whatever they can to make life easier for the private motorist and if it means calling it a bus investment to get the money out of Whitehall then that is what they will do. So far we have seen proposals that take out listed buildings, ancient hedge rows, street trees, front gardens and pubs to essentially create a road widening scheme which is called a bus lane but in reality creates an extra lane for the car and when they return to the original highway line it is the bus that has to fight its way back into the traffic stream. Local groups from across the conurbation along with local transport activists will be on the case of these local authorities arguing that it is the existing road space that we have to work with thereby preserving those communities where people want to live as habitable areas not severed by four, five or six lane highways, irrespective of whether one of them is a bus lane or not.

Chris Crean