Action Briefing Apr 2003 - May 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Bus Showcase Routes - Road Widening By Stealth?

New Bus Showcase Routes - great! But are they just road widening schemes masquerading as public transport improvements?

We have been closely following the plans to widen the Hagley Road for bus lanes, the consultation period for which will now run until the end of April. An alternative, less drastic plan has been produced that will still satisfy the objective of reducing bus journey times. This would require the removal of 40 trees instead of 70, would involve less demolition (although the King’s Head public house on the corner of Lordswood Road would still be lost) but many properties along the road would still lose land from their front gardens or forecourts. The new scheme is an alternative to the original 2002 scheme, so that both are still an option, but it should be emphasised that a third option exists - that is save £14 million by not widening the road at all!

Enforcement
Proper enforcement of double yellow lines and existing bus lanes are what's really required to improve the reliability of buses. FoE believes that road widening will seriously damage the environment of Edgbaston and Bearwood, will stimulate more car use, and will not help to attract people onto the buses.

The Council must also consider how the long term aim of extending Midland Metro down the Hagley Road to Quinton will fit in with the bus lane plans. They should come clean and say what the plans for the Metro extension really are rather than flounder about and waste millions on a half baked bus lane scheme (which may have to be rearranged several years later anyway to accommodate the extended Metro).

Both original and revised plans are just a means of road widening under the disguise of a bus showcase scheme, providing more road space for car users, thus stimulating even more car use. Is it really worth spending £14 million on road widening for bus lanes just to shave 5 minutes off bus journey times? Will such a slender time saving attract a significant number of people out of their cars and onto the bus? And what about the worsening bottlenecks and traffic queues, where bus services will just become ensnared in traffic jams?

Reduce Car Use
We should be trying to reduce car use, not catering for its growth, so there should be no need for road widening - especially if the bus services are going to be so good that people will leave their cars at home! There is an overwhelming case for having more bus lanes within the preexisting road carriageway, in effect reallocating road space from cars to buses, but there can be no justification for road widening to accommodate new bus lanes.

More Bus Lanes - Where next?
In the West Midlands conurbation, a total of 40 bus show case schemes are planned over the next 20 years. Two bus showcase schemes involving road widening are currently under consultation, namely the ‘Outer Circle’ route 11 in Birmingham and the 34 service which runs along the Bingley Road in Coventry.

On the Outer Circle Route, road widening in Stechford and Erdington will mean demolition of buildings and removal of street trees along stretches of the route. The entire scheme will take another 5 years to complete but highway improvements, including the dreaded road widenings, will be introduced on a piecemeal basis. Some widening has already begun, for example on a stretch of Stoney Lane in Yardley, involving cutting away a grass verge and removing a row of mature street trees. Smaller scale road widenings can be expected in Stirchley, Fox Hollies Road, Acocks Green and Church Road in Sandwell.

The period 2001 to 2002 saw new bus stops and pedestrian crossings provided, with a start made on highway improvements during 2003. Centro are dealing with the bus stop and passenger facility parts of the consultation, while Birmingham City Council and Sandwell Council are dealing with the highway improvement aspects. Consultations with local residents and businesses along the affected route have been or will be undertaken on a scheme-by-scheme basis. Campaign groups like Birmingham FoE often do not receive official notification of such local highway improvement measures and we may only find out about them if local residents alert us as was the case with the Hagley Road.

Strategy
It would appear that bus lanes and to a certain extent red routes are part of a wider West Midlands strategy of quietly providing more space for cars with the Local Transport Plan budget. The City Council and certain other West Midlands councils may publicly state their commitment to reducing car use and encouraging alternatives but when it comes to the crunch this is not translated into real action. On the ground, its business as usual as yet more futile road widening and capacity improvements are implemented at the expense of our environment. Have they considered the bigger picture of how all this extra road capacity fits in with Kyoto Protocol targets on emissions levels?

More Information
For details of the Outer Circle Route 11 bus showcase visit www.birmingham.gov.uk/11showcase/ For more info or to make any comments on route 11, contact Gary Groves at Birmingham City Council’s Transportation Department at Gary.Groves@Birmingham.gov.uk or call 0121 303 6644. For info on other bus showcase schemes email: andrewmiddleton@centro.org.uk or call 0121 214 7160

Martin Stride