Ep. 4 – 2026: The year ahead with Martin Price, Better Streets for Birmingham Chair

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In this episode of the Better Streets for Birmingham podcast, Kevin Carmody speaks with Martin Price, Better Streets for Birmingham Chair, about the future of transport and road safety in Birmingham leading up to 2026. We discuss the local and national road harm reduction strategies, the impact of upcoming elections on transport policy, and the progress of various transport projects including rail improvements and micro-mobility initiatives. The conversation also touches on funding challenges and the importance of community engagement in advocating for safer streets.

Making sense of Birmingham’s transport funding

Transcript

Kevin Carmody (00:06)
Welcome to the Better Streets for Birmingham podcast. Today I am talking with Martin Price, the chair of Better Streets for Birmingham about the year ahead to 2026. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today, Martin.

Martin Price (00:18)
No, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Kevin Carmody (00:21)
So 2026 could well be a pivotal year for tackling road harm. In the national context, we’ve just recently had the new road harm reduction strategy and it’s one that does in many ways mirror our own local road harm reduction strategy which was released with full council approval in March 2025. That builds on the 2021 transport plan for the city. So having…

both national and local should really smooth the delivery of all of these ⁓ road harm reductions with the possible spanner that 2026 includes ⁓ elections for council elections in May. This, of course, has a potential to change the mood when it comes tackling road danger within the city. So I think we’ll have to start with a short review. Martin, where are we up to?

with the 2021 transport plans say reallocation goal of one third of all road space to other forms of transport by 2030 I think it was wasn’t it.

Martin Price (01:33)
Yeah, a very short deadline actually, now that we’re halfway through, around halfway through. I don’t think we’re far enough through that. It was an ambitious target, the third of road space. I think it’s likely going to take about a decade or more. I think that corridors…

So, so planning and transport plan divides Birmingham into city centre and corridors, which is your main roads and then the neighbourhoods kind of slices of pizza between the main roads that go into the city centre. And if you look at it, like Hagley Road is starting to get skates on to have that kind of thing where it’s like bus lane.

A38 Bristol Road, going to get it, we’ve already got it, and other slices. So in that sense, getting into the city centre, they’re probably doing quite a good job, but it has the neighbourhood stuff that’s taking an awful lot longer. And I think that we should be prepared for this to be a long term strategy if indeed it continues.

Kevin Carmody (02:36)
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, some of these places for people type neighbourhoods, some have been delivered kind of quietly and quickly others we know they can allow the ones like in Moseley and Kings Heath have been a little more fraught. So we’re also into year three of the road safety emergency.

Have we seen much progress for the items that were to be delivered in that?

Martin Price (03:11)
No, it’s very much in the bear in mind that the road harm reduction strategy for the city is only a year old about nowish. So it took them a while to translate what they were going to do in response to the emergency into document and an action plan and also get it through the joys of Birmingham City Council governance. In terms of what they’re looking to do there.

I think some of the key things around enforcement have moved forward a lot. So you’ve got speed cameras going up on Coventry Road, you’ve got red light cameras starting to come in, you’ve got junction cameras that are quite a few years in the making coming in. But it is taking a while. Ultimately the goal is to reduce road harm.

Kevin Carmody (03:41)
Yeah.

Martin Price (04:01)
Also 30 down, sorry, 40 miles an hour and above down to 30. That’s come in, took two years to do.

When you look at road time reduction overall, like the goal for the council at least, and that’s why I think it’s probably bolder than the national strategy, is to remove through journeys from neighbourhoods and put them onto main roads and then on those main roads control the traffic through things like camera technology and reduce speed limits and really make it so the neighbourhoods are for the people that live there to deter from speeding traffic and reckless driving going through.

because you can’t do that, can’t go anywhere other than addresses within those neighbourhoods. So that’s why I think it is better than, in many ways, than the national one, but the national one does start to…

address some of the offences, the rules of the road and also the penalties that go with dangerous driving and being in control of a vehicle. so it tackles it from that lens, that very much stick lens, rather than on the ground, how do we prevent road harm entirely?

Kevin Carmody (05:14)
So what do you think the elections in May are going to mean for transport policy?

I mean, even, you know, does it really matter? How much does it matter who is in control and what level of control they have to kind of influence what is very much a lot of this is policies that are kind of developed by different departments and civil servants.

Martin Price (05:41)
Yeah, I mean, if you look at the policy, I think it’s very hard to disagree with the core objectives of the policy. So, fewer road deaths, more efficient moving about.

I think what people will disagree with from party to party is how we get there. The transport plan and associated documents are very politically bold. I think that time has been wasted since they were introduced in the works. So the first one was introduced during COVID and then it was updated again in 2021. I think that we have had some…

fairly bold cabinet members that could have gone further faster but for various reasons didn’t.

What that then means in terms of the results of the council election is I don’t think that you can disagree with the core bits of the transport plan but actually some things might go on ice for a couple of years. Rather than a whole rewrite I hope we might see more of the people pleasing schemes that don’t have much of an impact but might have a little bit of impact going in. I know that some parties ⁓

very kind of anti-everything that the transport plan looks to achieve in terms of implementation. But again, I think that when you start taking away all of the bluster around it, there are sound principles where the city is getting incredibly congested, there are too many road deaths.

People need to move around the city more effectively and efficiently. when they do that, they can save money, but also spend money in the local economy. And I think that that’s really important. People need to be able to move around with public transport, especially people that are older, younger, everybody getting around more efficiently in the city, school, local trips. It’s just more the controls that you have to put in place to allow that to happen that people might disagree

on

Kevin Carmody (07:45)
Okay, so let’s talk about some of the projects that we’ve got coming up this year. We’ve got a couple of rail items. I think probably the one of the ones most excited about is the Camp Hill line.

which is a kind of read instruction, also the East side Metro and starting to see extensions going out into, you know, these different parts of the city getting connected, which is fantastic really.

Martin Price (08:12)
Yeah, so we’ll see Camp Hill open. So you’ve got your Pineapple Road, your Kings Heath and Moseley connecting into New Street at first, twice hourly service.

believe that it will be four carriages as well. And I think those will be very full carriages given that it’s twice an hour. But I think that people persevere given the journey time difference compared to the number 50 bus. And also in

outside of the city but in the region you’ve got your Darleston and Willenhall’s opening so that’s on the to Wolverhampton and Walsall line towards the north of the region and then Metro like you say we’ve got new extensions opening within Birmingham City Centre so from Ball Street the new junction that’s there and down towards Millennium Point until HS2 kind of allow the

tram to go through their building site and then also you can take that tram and I think it’s important that you talk about the rest of the region and that will open up a link that could take you to Dudley through Wendsbury on the new line that’s opening after several several decades of trying to get that open so I think that’s really important for the region having those new lines and you can’t very well get to Dudley other than by bus or by car at the moment.

Kevin Carmody (09:40)
Yeah,

yeah, and to have, I think it’s Sandwell & Dudley is the current station, which is just unfair to really put Dudley’s name on that for a consideration of how poor it is as a kind of connection point for it.

I think we also will get tap and go payments. They should be opening imminently. So possibly even.

Martin Price (10:00)
So

yeah, yeah, sort of, probably. In terms of rail…

Kevin Carmody (10:06)
Yeah, I mean they’re

already installed at the stops, aren’t they?

Martin Price (10:10)
For tram, yes, we’ll get contactless tap and go. The challenge has always been, always been getting rail into the network, certainly because bus is quite…

Kevin Carmody (10:13)
Right.

Martin Price (10:22)
easy now. They’ve been through projects, we’ll have franchising that can define the machines that are used, but been able to use Swift Go on that for while. Tram is owned by the West Midlands Combined Authority, so it’s easier to dictate the technology, but it’s train fares that are the tricky ones that you can have a…

monthly pass or a weekly pass, fortnightly pass. But it’s very hard to do pay as you

Kevin Carmody (10:51)
Okay, so what we’ve got coming up this year, new items we’ve got, we’re gonna have a change in our ⁓ pay per ride kind of micro mobility operator. So we’ve had Beryl who replaced Voi over the last couple years. So we, did some sleuthing and it is. ⁓

Martin Price (11:15)
It’s lime. that’s actually quite a big step change in micro mobility for the region. They do very well in London in terms of coverage.

and also something that…

I’ve experienced is that they’ll do very well for events as well. So Alexandra Palace, they will park up a great many, a great many bikes there for people to get home. So I think that’s what I’m looking forward to is that actually things like Edgbaston, there’ll be a load of bikes available potentially and football games. Thinking about sports quarter, if you get a cycle lane over to sports quarter, then you could get a lot of people to cycle back as well as walk, as well as get the tram, as well as get the train.

Kevin Carmody (11:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the it will be interesting as well as to see what the what the requirements are for parking of the bikes as well because at the moment we’re very restricted on these these kind of docks that we have currently so

Martin Price (12:16)
Yeah exactly, my understanding is that it’s going to be virtual docs which I think will be good. What we haven’t seen with microability so far is that reach to be able to get, I can’t use it down in the southwest of the city because actually the zones ended in Stetchley and Bournville but

pre-Beryl for Voi, I could just about get to Norfield, just about near the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital is where the line ended and you would get your line of scooters building up.

Kevin Carmody (12:43)
Right.

Yeah, We also so the other works that we’re going to be seeing and this is really all through the year, isn’t it is the new street repaving.

Martin Price (13:03)
Yes, so it’s going to take until I believe next, partway through next year. ⁓ So that is going from Victoria Square, the steps of the fountain that are in need of some love, all the way along New Street to the tram line, but also the offshoot street. So thinking about Bennet’s Hill and I want to say…

Temple Street, but I get them mixed up all the time. So that will have the one-way loop reversed, which will be good. I suppose there is a fun question around this is billed as an active travel connection scheme.

to get between all of the different rail stations effectively and get through the city centre. We’ve just fought off successfully the public space protection order that was going to make people go at a crawling pace or get off, which is not possible for some people who cycle and use it as mobility aid. But also these are very, very busy areas of the city centre. Currently the blue routes don’t quite meet to provide you a route.

through the city centre without going through this core and when you have things like the Christmas market taking up the

New Street and Victoria Square for example for a good three months then that makes getting through the city centre very tricky if you’re cycling or scooting as well. So yeah that’s something that sticks in my mind is actually when are we going to see that route that goes through and connects the different spokes of the corridors that come into the city centre because currently

doesn’t exist and even with this paving I will be very glad to not have wet feet as the least paving can provide at the moment. But is that a great cycling solution? Probably not.

Kevin Carmody (14:56)
No, I think anything really that kind of mixes pedestrians and cyclists together is not good for either. No party is enjoying the kind of mixed mobility in the same way. Bikes don’t enjoy being on busy roads, so pedestrians don’t enjoy having a load of cyclists whizzing past them. It’s not fun.

Talking of cycleways though, so we have the A38 continued extension and that’s a works that’s going to continue on through or you know really kind of kick off I guess again through this year and that’s

Martin Price (15:33)
Yeah, so it’s

going to start in Selly Oak from outside University Crossing, carrying on through the High Street. Again, this is one of the schemes that have been in the backlog for several years. I think it was Active Travel 2 or 3, that fund. we’re a couple of years out. ⁓

overdue this extension, but it will mean that you can cycle up certainly Selly Oak High Street to Selly Oak Triangle and then later in the year the subject to full business case which comes back to your election point that will be going for a cabinet decision as I understand it at one of the first cabinets after the election and so assuming that that goes through and is approved.

Kevin Carmody (16:21)
Right.

Martin Price (16:25)
then construction will start later this year to start going from Selly Oak towards Northfield and Longbridge and I assume that you would start at the Selly Oak end and get to Norfield and then continue on down to Longbridge but that’s going to take about two years to build.

Kevin Carmody (16:46)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is supposed to be a bit of a year of, know, we’ve had all the plans in the pipeline, they’re supposed to start being getting delivered now.

Martin Price (16:55)
Exactly, it’s especially what these are city region sustainable transport settlement funded schemes so they come from the combined authority via DFT, Department for Transport from the government so the combined authority and then the combined authority have a build stuff or gives it to local authorities to build so we are

getting to the end of the first period of that. So that was 2022 to 2027. And we’re entering 2026. Some of these schemes will go beyond 2027. And that is a concern that I’ve had since 2021. Funding just kind of keeps getting extended, extended, extended. Therefore, the deadlines are pretty arbitrary. And I still think they are. But

Kevin Carmody (17:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Price (17:45)
I’m really glad to see this moving forward because especially for the A38 scheme down to Longbridge.

First of all, I live along that route, it will directly benefit me. But also, there’s going to be so many crossing improvements, so we managed to get extra crossings put in as part of consultation periods. Also, access to local amenities, parks, the leisure centres along schools, along the route, colleges. And finally, there’s a load of junction improvements where there’s pretty dangerous junctions to turn right.

For example, Bristol Road to Northfield Park and Ride for the station. You turn right across…

the central reservation that has been very, very dangerous and there’s so many pockets like that along the A38. They’re going to really look at those and reduce the number of them so that it’s safer and signalize some so it’s safer for those movements. And also at the end, you get your cycleway going through the middle as well, which I think will just be a really great route once we’ve got our bus lanes as well. And so eventually when they go up to kind of Sprint level, so really quick and really

reliable buses, Bendy buses, then we’ll have a proper sustainable transport corridor going from Longbridge all the way into the city centre, which is ripe for a tramway in the future.

Kevin Carmody (19:08)
Yeah, and one that will be

able to move a lot of people as well, which is, you know, that’s, that’s.

Martin Price (19:14)
Yeah, I think that people don’t really

think about that when some folk ⁓ come back to elections and start to oppose it, but haven’t really thought about the safety impact. And I don’t think that it would be an easy argument to put across, but maybe between us we can. The road space reallocation is not…

not reducing capacity of the road, it’s just giving that capacity to a different mode of transport and in so doing increasing because you’re not having lots of single occupancy cars, you’re having full buses, hopefully not too full so that they just keep moving.

Kevin Carmody (19:42)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I mean, it fantastic as it would be to be able to kind of do the…

a long route, once you get into the city, that does need to continue. And we I mean, this is something that we’ve seen through this year around like on the Kent Road, where you get to the end of that A38, you’re getting into the city and then it’s building works on top of, you know, this kind of allocated space. So.

Martin Price (20:21)
Yes,

but then I think looking even further forward, obviously this is about delivery now, I think that that area of the city centre is really starting to come together in terms of the plans that are ahead. So you will eventually be able to get through to your HS2 station and into Digbeth very well through Smithfield. But there’s so many different pieces to the puzzle that actually it makes the city centre business really hard, really hard to crack.

Kevin Carmody (20:47)
Yeah.

Martin Price (20:48)
without

Kevin Carmody (20:49)
Yeah.

Martin Price (20:49)
potentially just going around the ring road, which is another option in the long term plan.

Kevin Carmody (20:54)
Okay, we’ve I like that we talked about the A38 future sprint on that, but I think we should be seeing some more other Sprints on coming up this year. So Coventry Road, is that right?

Martin Price (21:09)
Yeah, so this is a long standing project that’s been going on for probably about five years now, the first sprint route, which goes from Walsall to the Birmingham city centre and then along Coventry Road, the A45, towards Solihull. So they’re doing some more works, I think currently slash in this time of recording, where they’re just finishing up.

bits and pieces around the A45 Coventry Road. But that’s really important because you’ve seen ⁓ there’s the data to show that reliability since that bus priority and bus rapid transit, the reliability and service standards has been great. You can get from Perry Bar certainly to the City Centre in no time at all and reliably. ⁓

Kevin Carmody (22:03)
Yeah, that’s fabulous, which on so many bus routes, you can’t say that, can you? OK, so another thing I have made note here, do we do we think we’re going to see any more school streets?

come out in 2026.

Martin Price (22:19)
I think so. I don’t know which, but there’s certainly the programme to move forward with a couple at a time. recently there was expressions of interest for the Safer Routes to School programme, which is a new package of money available from the council. I think there were nearly or above a hundred. I may have made that up. But in that area. ⁓

Kevin Carmody (22:33)
Yeah.

Martin Price (22:46)
applications, expressions of interest, so I think they’re just working out how to, how on earth to convert those into schemes and which to prioritise. We’ve also got some safer routes to schools, consultations out, we’ve got a Chillcot school I think is what it’s called in Hall Green North, no Hall Green South.

Kevin Carmody (22:48)
Yeah.

Martin Price (23:11)
I was just thinking, actually that’s not the right councilor, Hall Green South, ⁓ and that is like a combination of money over several years to make some crossings a bit different. So, yeah.

Kevin Carmody (23:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s some crossings that some reductions in speed limits

on on a few roads there isn’t it and. Yeah, yes, OK, OK. we still have a small. Collection of projects which. ⁓

Martin Price (23:28)
It is,

Kevin Carmody (23:41)
for example the environment transport and neighbourhood fund projects which are still being delivered really in the style of the old 2016 road harm reduction plan which is to do know kind of minor interventions on places where there might have been a handful of incidents before as opposed to kind of a wider area

Martin Price (24:04)
I think that I was reflecting on this recently and it appears that actually for the most part unless somebody’s really really gone and kind of held those engineers to account it’s been path of least resistant schemes so we’ve got a lot of stuff to do we don’t want to spend too much time having to

Kevin Carmody (24:21)
Yeah.

Martin Price (24:27)
argue in favour of the scheme because when you get those letters through the door they’re very matter of fact of we’re putting a, for example, couple of speed cushions in your road, tell us what you think, or we are going to close this end of your road, tell us what you think. It doesn’t really tell you and this is the benefit that we expect to see and this is why we’ve chosen this over another reason which would just help residents to kind of at least understand what the measure is.

And don’t think that councillors are very well equipped to do that explaining. They certainly want to bring highways along to meetings. Those meetings can get heated when there’s not a comprehensive understanding of what.

interventions are and benefits, disbenefits. But yeah, it’s certainly path of least resistant stuff. But also there’s some quite interesting things and like separate crossings are good. There are also things that are not so good being delivered. But yeah, they’re ongoing and at least.

Kevin Carmody (25:35)
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay, so are we okay to talk now a little bit about ⁓ what the funding we’re looking at coming up this year? I think we’re looking at the new ⁓ capital funding programs. Is that?

Martin Price (25:59)
Yeah, so most of our funding is received from government via the combined authority.

What’s happened is that the mayor last year decided to commission a review from an economist called Bridget Roswell and the review is called the Roswell review and that’s to look at everything that was committed to and see is that still the right thing to do and does it align with the objectives of the region now because actually once you accounted for all of the commitments you

didn’t have much money left for 2.4 billion pounds and that is…

why I’ve kind of made a distinction ⁓ in post online around this is what happens when you chase growth is that you might end up with ⁓ out of that 2.4 billion pounds a few but very powerful schemes that impact or unlock new areas but only impact people using those areas versus everyday improvements because you could spread that.

£2.4 billion across the region and get very small journey improvements that do add up but that doesn’t get you your big tramway or when you go commit to £400 million to unlocking a sports quarter which yes probably the right thing to do but also commits a big chunk of your money for five years. So yeah that’s reporting back in February.

I don’t necessarily know what the outcome is for Birmingham. I just have a hesitancy that they might look at big schemes like tramways, which start to absorb lots of funding. And I don’t think actually is the right way to fund tramways at all because they are expensive and they are good. We should fund it in alternative ways. But it might mean that…

small things but good things like cycleways start to become less of a priority in that big package because it’s got alternative funding through something called the integrated settlement which is how we get our active travel fund money but also isn’t enough money to do lots of big cycle corridors at all. So yeah we’ll certainly kind of look at that.

It’s been way too secretive, like way too secretive. Everything has just been put into that basket and they’re not reported on at like governance and transparency meetings, which has been quite disappointing and has been a theme since Numa took office. But we’ll see what happens there. Hopefully Birmingham do quite well out of it. But I do note that £400 million is already committed to Birmingham ⁓ for the sports quarter.

Kevin Carmody (28:50)
Yeah,

So let’s just think then about coming up to these May elections. We have put out our request for manifesto pledges. ⁓ Hopefully we will get lots of candidates signed up to them. I know we already have had some and we’ve had some great conversations with candidates as well. ⁓

Martin Price (29:14)
Yeah, we’ve had

some good conversations with candidates and also parties within Birmingham that are really on board with ultimately addressing road safety and probably in a faster manner than has been achieved so far. As you say, we’re a couple of years into the road safety emergency now and we’d probably like to get to Vision Zero a lot faster than the current pace allows.

Kevin Carmody (29:22)
Yeah.

trajectory for sure. mean is there anything that we should be asking people to do? they be speaking to their candidates?

Martin Price (29:55)
Yeah, so I think the first thing is to go and read the asks and get familiar with them. They’re available on our website. They have explanations if you open all of the drop downs on how to achieve it, what the benefits are and also some links through to national campaigns because actually our asks are predominantly a

bringing together of national campaigns that have been going on for quite some time. So it isn’t just Better Streets for Birmingham kind of trying to rethink our roads. It’s actually long-standing campaigns. In terms of what people can do with them, think cosigning is great. We can also keep you in the loop with what’s happening then. As things get closer to the election, more candidates will come out. So more are being announced all the time for various different parties. Certainly engaging with those candidates

saying I care about road safety, I care about not just road safety but how I move around the city and essentially like you say Kevin, ⁓ I use the Hagley road for a while, for my journeys and…

I get stuck on the bus and that means that I miss a lot of things or means that I can’t go into the office as much because I don’t know if I’m going to get there or if I’m going to get home on time. So really kind of taking that to candidates and getting them familiar with why it matters to you and encouraging people to do the same means that we can at least have people that are ⁓ fairly well versed with what.

The steps would be to addressing the road safety emergency and then on the other side of the election we’ll take stock of who’s in and start talking to them about how to achieve safer streets no matter which colour or hybrid or whatever starts to emerge as a ruling party.

Kevin Carmody (31:53)
Yeah, and I, you know, I’ll say as well, you know, please do as listener visit https://betterstreetsforbirmingham.org And sign up and support us, but also we do regularly post in our newsletter what consultations are coming up and how you, you know, some ways to think about those consultations and perhaps, you know, whether they want support or things that could be improved on them. obviously we do that all through the years. So OK, Martin.

Thank you very much for your time. It’s been very nice chatting with you here. And yeah, here’s to a good 2026.

Martin Price (32:28)
You’re welcome, thank you.