About Better Streets for Birmingham

Our mission

Better Streets for Birmingham campaigns for changes to our travel and planning infrastructure to improve the sustainability, efficiency and safety of our streets. By identifying, supporting and advocating for changes to our environment that enable car-free journeys, we aim to make active travel and public transport the default options for trips around our city.

Our vision

We believe in a Birmingham where children can play safely in residential streets, where people improve their physical and mental wellbeing through active travel and where our environment is not sullied by acres of public space given over to private vehicle usage. By connecting this city to make car-free travel the easiest option, we will make it a more pleasant place to work, live and play.

Our goals

Better Streets for Birmingham…

• advocates free bus travel for under-16s in Birmingham
• advocates protected cycle lanes along all major roads in the city
• supports school streets for every school in Birmingham where reasonably practicable
• supports existing low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and advocates their continued rollout
• advocates preferential use of new non-hydrocarbon buses on the most congested routes
• supports car sharing schemes and advocates their expedited expansion
• advocates bus franchising for the West Midlands, supporting the ACORN Birmingham campaign for greater public control of bus services on which so many residents, particularly those from underserved communities, rely

Our objectives

We have created objectives to achieve between April 2023 and March 2024. We will:

1. Formalise into a type of organisation that allows us to apply for funding, by:
   • Establishing ourselves as an organisation;
   • Setting up a bank account;
   • Applying for our first funding grant.
     
2. Be more representative of our city, by:
   • Reaching out to new communities beyond our established neighbourhoods;
   • Making connections with disability groups and resources.
     
3. Engage with our communities, by:
   • Creating a street stand set-up for events;
   • Developing a regular, visible cargo bike delivery scheme to reduce car use, support local businesses and engage with the community in a positive and constructive way to demonstrate the potential applications of active travel;
   • Engaging in visible actions to highlight and tackle anti-social driving practices, such as idling, speeding, distracted driving and pavement parking;
   • Showing support for LTN rollouts through focused and positive campaigns to counter-balance anti-LTN negativity;
   • Shouting about our activities to local and national media outlets.
     
4. Hold Birmingham City Council and Transport for West Midlands to account for delivering funded schemes and designing speculative plans.

Who we are

Better Streets for Birmingham is open to Birmingham City Council residents. Anybody can join us if they share our mission, vision and goals.

You can read more about how Better Streets for Birmingham is structured online.

We occasionally publish public comments in response to news about active travel, public transport and street design. These comments are only ever published on our website or social media accounts.