Our priorities for our new commissioners

Filed under: General

It’s a new year: new commissioners and new task forces full of experts are on the horizon. We’re almost there, eight months after the Mayor committed to replacing ex-commissioner Adam Tranter.

While we’ve been awaiting new commissioners, Birmingham has declared a road safety emergency (in its 176th day at time of publishing) and horrific collisions are reported every week from all corners of the West Midlands. Some new infrastructure has moved forward but it’s still at a painful pace.

So, what are Better Streets for Birmingham‘s priorities for our new commissioners?

Ensure that walking and cycling gets a fair share of CRSTS 2

The Mayor’s biggest lever is his spending power: what transport projects he’ll put forward for funding. The next round of the five-year funding known as CRSTS 2 is being put together and it’s worth £2.6 billion.

We estimate that £600 million would deliver the entire region’s local cycling and walking infrastructure plans, transforming local travel.

Committing money to a rolling programme of school streets could remove a number of local car journeys from streets, in turn helping buses to move faster because of less congestion and making children’s journeys to school safer.

Another low cost, high reward project would be to help authorities adjust traffic light crossing timings and upgrade sensors.

Even with these projects, this would still leave close to £2 billion for bus, tram and train projects.

Make every transport project consider walking and cycling

CRSTS 1 (2022-27) has a lot of schemes that are getting into consultation and delivery. There is a danger that bus, sprint and tram routes don’t take cycling into account, or drop cycling out of ease.

The new commissioner needs to make sure that all transport projects properly consider the walking and cycling experience, rather than leaving it as an afterthought or as a promise to revisit in the future.

We see examples time and time again of how impossible it is to retrofit schemes, so we need to get things right as well as future proofing the first time.

A zero-tolerance approach to illegal vehicles

Operation Trident saw vehicles with illegal modifications confiscated or their owners ordered to make them road legal.

A renewed and better resourced operation is needed to have greater impact and get the message out there, especially now that West Midlands Police has returned to community-based policing.

Confiscating and destroying vehicles would send out a strong message to the community that dangerous driving of modified vehicles will no longer be tolerated.

Make critical friends with local authorities and politicians

The transport system needs to be worked hard to bring it into making decisions in the spirit of LTN1/20 and a lower traffic future. Many CRSTS schemes have been delivered by local authorities. This means that in order to keep the local authorities brave when redesigning their streets, the Commissioners will need to make friends with politicians and officer teams across the region. That will involve praising the good while challenging the bad and ugly.

If this relationship doesn’t exist, we could end up with bad piecemeal schemes that contain yet more unhelpful shared use paths and discriminatory cyclists dismount signs.

Keep challenging the pace of delivery

The Mayor knows this is a problem and it’s part of why there’s the independent review about transport. Regionally, we haven’t spent devolved money fast enough and have projects that are five years overdue. This needs fixing urgently.

Recently there have been efforts to streamline WMCA’s assurance process, which has been a significant factor of slow delivery. It’s important that this is sorted so that good infrastructure is built sooner rather than later.

If this is not fixed, it could materially impact how much funding the Government gives us in the future.

Navigate the constraints of the roles

The Commissioners were reshaped to be champion roles. Our concerns about the changes have been well reported and still exist.

There is little in the role specification that describes any levers they will get access to, which is surprising given the funding that WMCA distributes.

The Commissioners will also have very little time – one day per week – to get across the details and hold people to account, while also making friends with officers, politicians, charities, residents and campaigners across the region.

Given the scale of the challenge of road safety and lack of safe walking and cycling infrastructure, if the Commissioners cannot make headway, the Mayor must quickly honour his commitment and act to review and adapt the roles.