Our consultation response to City Centre movement measures

Filed under: Consultation

If you agree with our response, please send it to the Council through the consultation website or email. The deadline is Friday 16 August – you can link to this page or say you support the Better Streets for Birmingham response.

We broadly welcome the Birmingham City Centre Movement and Access Strategy proposals and support Pushbikes’ consultation response.

Previously, we published an opinion piece with bold options to make the city centre more people-centred. We would like to see increased pedestrianisation and a robust challenge on whether vehicles need access to streets – more pedestrianisation than is proposed here. For example, New Street manages deliveries while being pedestrianised for most of the day.

We believe that the well-needed introduction of part-time pedestrianisation to the Southside area will lead to businesses and residents calling for times to be extended once they enjoy the benefits of people-centred streets.

Building on Pushbikes’ response, we would like to raise additional four points:

Directional signage

Clear cycling directional signage installed as part of the Southside section to help cyclists both find the A38 cycleway and onward directions within the city centre – this signage should show destinations and the journey time in minutes.

Road markings and surface colour treatments

Add a surface colour treatment to ensure the cycling movements between Kent Street and Hurst Street are obvious, along with writing “A38” and a Route 5 symbol under the turn-right cycle road markings into Kent Street (see below image).

Hill Street

Hill Street is Birmingham’s most-cycled street and is also home to the entrance for the Birmingham New Street drop-and-go, which becomes particularly congested most of the time and spills out onto Hill Street.

Consideration needs to be given as to how to protect road space for cyclists along Hill Street so that they are not caught in congestion and forced to weave around stationary traffic.

There is enough road space to reallocate one lane to a cycle route, especially if right-turns into the Drop-and-Go were banned with access to the car park controlled by the traffic junction.

Another option would be to change the restrictions on the excessive taxi rank on Smallbrook Queensway to allow drop-off and pick-up from private hire licence taxis.

By doing nothing, PHL drivers will likely continue down Navigation Street and use Stephenson Street as a drop-off for the station, further exacerbating issues that impact the tram system and damage the public realm.

Enable right turns for cycles onto Digbeth High Street

In Digbeth – Use the Health Mill Lane TRO to exempt cycles from the banned turns onto the B4100 from Oxford Street, Gibb Street and Heath Mill Lane, to enable more cycling trips between Digbeth and Southside.

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Finally, we want to make sure that we are creating a coherent network of cycle routes and that the city centre is navigable. Working on a segment-by-segment basis makes this hard. It would be useful to have a walkthrough with the different emerging plans overlaid so that we can give feedback based on the near-future context.

We have questions about connectivity: Will the upgraded cycle lane that goes via Pershore Street be a future junction to get to Northern connections (Curzon Street and the A45, A34 [and A47] corridors) via Upper Dean Street? In future, will it continue up to Hill Street and Victoria Square for connections to Western connections (A457 and A456 corridors)?

We support the proposed measures and ask for consideration of our feedback.