A guide to getting stuff done in transport

Filed under: Elections / General

Have you read our ten practical steps to address Birmingham’s road safety emergency?

Request something new

Beware promising new things to residents – everything transport wise is more expensive than you would think: tramway is £130m per mile, zebra crossings cost up to £100k, getting double yellow lines installed can cost in the region of £10k due to legal orders and new highway signage costs around £1,000 per sign as you have to pay forward for maintenance.

Petitions do not typically make things happen faster. While politicians and political candidates typically use petitions to acquire voter information, reporting straight to the organisation responsible for it will at least get the ball rolling, which enables you to petition about something should the report not get anywhere.

• Bus stop (also relocation or removal) – can request from Transport for West Midlands, note that current policy seems to be to space stops out more.
  
• Small safety critical changes to streets – can be requested through Birmingham City Council’s online ‘request highways works’ form – limited budget, safety critical changes more likely to be built.
  
• Resident parking schemes – can be established but costs money for the consultation and legal orders, would need to be implemented using Councillor funds. 
  
• Barriers and chicanes to prevent motorcycles and cycles – can be tested against the equality act and proven not to work, restricts disabled and non-standard cycle issue – tackle the root problem with West Midlands Police.
  
• Cycle and e-scooter hire expansion – Lime are launching in April after winning a contract with West Midlands Combined Authority. We are wa
  
• Bigger local schemes – e.g. speed bumps, chicanes, junction narrowing, build outs, modal filters – More likely to need to use a dedicated fund. There are several funds. The easiest one for Councillors to access is the Environment and Transport Neighbourhood Fund: £10,000 per councillor per year – all funding is now allocated until the election. Schemes after the election will need to tightly follow the Healthy Streets approach.
  
  We discourage the use of speed cushions as in our experience, they are ineffective and mean you end up back at square one. Instead, consider whole-carriageway speed humps or speed tables, continuous pavements, chicanes, narrowing junctions and carriageways, planting trees, formalising parking bays or preventing through traffic if it’s not a main road. Transport for London and Cambridgeshire County Council have produced good explanatory guides.
  
• School streets where fewer or no cars on a residential street next to a school – Talk to Birmingham Connected about this – school needs to be on board. Residents need to be brought on the journey with this, especially if you need modal filters to make it work. More information on School Streets.
  
• School journey improvements – there’s a relatively new small fund for improving school changes called Safer School Journeys – for example, crossing improvements and pavement parking measures.
  
• Private land – Contact the owner of the land e.g. shopping centre owner or business.
  
• Bus lanes, tram extensions and new rail stations – Beware, these are dealt with at a regional level (West Midlands Combined Authority). Lots of work goes into selecting and funding routes and they can take several decades to build and open. There’s an oversubscribed pipeline of major schemes selected until 2032 and beyond. Campaigning for a scheme is sensible, a political candidate promising to build it is not advised.
  
• Cycle lanes – Mainly funded by government grants, the pipeline and its ordering is agreed between Birmingham City Council and West Midlands Combined Authority. The pipeline is currently being refined. Cycle-friendly streets are more likely to be achieved in a shorter time frame – where traffic is reduced or calmed so you can cycle in the carriageway.

Get something fixed

• Fixing roadworks – Roadworks are complicated, planned roadworks are approved by Birmingham City Council so tend to be better managed, but utility companies can spin up emergency works and tell Birmingham City Council after they’ve started. There should be a contact number at the roadworks or on One.Network which lists all roadworks in the city. If temporary lights have failed or the roadworks area is dangerous, contact 0121 303 4149.
  
• General road issues – pavements, bollards, potholes – Report through Birmingham City Council’s website – the way this is funded is through the Highways PFI – there’s around £130m budget a year for repairs. In the 2026/27 budget, £25 million extra was released for highways repairs.
  
• Traffic lights, signs and pedestrian crossings – Report through Birmingham City Council’s website – they will come to fix them as soon as possible with a roving team – If an entire junction is out, call them and they’ll send someone instantly – 0121 303 4149.
  
• Road sweeping – Request through Birmingham City Council’s website – Request street cleaning.
  
• Flytipping – Report through Birmingham City Council’s website – Report fly-tipping – usually fairly quick to remove if it’s a genuine public highway.
  
• Public litter bin overflows or damage – Report through Birmingham City Council’s website. Requesting a new one doesn’t have much success due to a city-wide review of bin placement.
  
• Bus stop – Glass, signage, lighting or broken real time information screen – Report through Transport for West Midlands’ website.
  
• Park and ride – Report through Transport for West Midlands’ website.
  
• Rail station – Anything within the station footprint, report to West Midlands Railway. Birmingham Moor Street is operated by Chiltern Railways and Birmingham New Street is operated by Network Rail.
  
• Rail line side – Report to Network Rail (In an emergency: 03457 11 41 41).

Get enforcement

• Pavement parking – If obstructive (have to go into the road, can’t get a wheelchair or double buggy through), send it to West Midlands Police through Operation Snap. The Council can enforce where there are double yellow lines. The Government is planning to give obstructive pavement parking powers to local authorities soon.
  
• Inconsiderate or double yellow parking – Report to Birmingham City Council so that they can visit the area. We are awaiting a new contract to improve the parking service.
  
• Speeding on residential streets – Report to West Midlands Police’s ‘Contact us’ tab on local neighbourhood police team page. Note that Police don’t generally enforce 20mph streets. The proven solution for this is to reroute through-traffic to main roads, which can have camera enforcement. Community speed watch is only successful if they’re held regularly and there are not enough handheld cameras available to achieve this.
  
• Speeding on main roads – West Midlands Police have a rotating list of speed camera positions where it’s deemed safe for the vans to park up – with recently expanded capacity! The Council has a priority list of speed cameras focused on main roads.
  
• Box junctions and banned turns – This is called moving traffic enforcement. The Council are running a trial of banned turn and junction cameras, hope to get a programme of them afterwards, especially as part of new bus schemes.

Other bits to note

After someone is killed in a collision, funding becomes available to improve the street, regardless of what happened. This is part of the Road Harm Reduction Strategy Action Plan.

Who owns what?

Mode	What	Owner
Bus	Bus stations	Transport for West Midlands
Bus	Bus stop shelters and poles	Transport for West Midlands
Bus	Bus stop litter bins	Birmingham City Council – Street scene
Bus	Bus stop CCTV and real-time information screens	Transport for West Midlands
Bus	Bus stop locations	Transport for West Midlands
Bus	Bus vehicles	Individual operators e.g. National Express West Midlands, Diamond, Kev’s Coaches
Cycle hire	Cycle hire stands and white lined parking spots	West Midlands Cycle Hire (Beryl) until end of March, Lime from April
E-scooter hire	E-scooter hire stands and white lined parking spots	West Midlands Cycle Hire (Beryl) until end of March, Lime from April
Paying	Swift cards	Transport for West Midlands
Paying	Contactless payments	Individual transport operator
Paying	Older and disabled person passes	Transport for West Midlands
Rail	Station	West Midlands Trains for most, Chiltern Railways for Birmingham Moor Street and Network Rail for Birmingham New Street
Rail	Park and Ride Car Park	Transport for West Midlands
Rail	Trackside	Network Rail
Rail	Secure cycle parking – accessed with a Swift card	Transport for West Midlands, Network Rail at Birmingham New Street
Rail	Embankments	Network Rail
Rail	Abandoned platforms	Network Rail
Rail	Bridges and viaducts	Network Rail
Road*	Speed cameras	Birmingham City Council (West Midlands Police processes fines)
Road*	ANPR cameras	West Midlands Police
Road*	Clean Air Zone cameras	Birmingham City Council (BCC contracts someone to operate them)
Road*	Red light cameras	Birmingham City Council (West Midlands Police processes fines)
Road*	Banned junction cameras	Birmingham City Council (BCC contracts someone to operate them)
Road*	Bus lane cameras	Birmingham City Council (BCC contracts someone to operate them)
Road*	Traffic lights, street lights, sign posts, crossing lights	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Guard rail	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Crossings	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Road markings	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Benches	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Public litter bins	Birmingham City Council – Street Scene
Road*	Cycle paths	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Cycle path – greenway that uses park land or shared path	Birmingham City Council – Sometimes Highways, sometimes Parks
Road*	Roads and footpaths	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Road*	Bridges, subways and tunnels	Birmingham City Council – Highways (Kier maintains)
Tram	Tram stops	West Midlands Metro
Tram	Tramway rails	West Midlands Metro
Tram	Tram vehicles	West Midlands Metro

*Check land ownership. New developments might not be adopted (yet or at all) or might retain ownership of roads, paths and cycle routes through their site. Car parks are typically privately owned. There are several examples in the city where swathes of publicly accessible land is privately owned e.g. Longbridge Town Centre and Chamberlain Square.

Transport documents

We have collated links to strategies, plans, reports and statistics on our website.