Urgent call to pause and redesign speed cushion local schemes

Filed under: General

Councillor Majid Mahmood,
Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport, Birmingham City Council

Cc: Councillor David Barker,
Chair of Sustainability and Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Birmingham City Council

Cc: Mel Jones, Head of Transport Planning, Birmingham City Council

Sent by email

4 June 2025

Urgent call to pause and redesign speed cushion ETNF schemes

Dear Councillor Mahmood

We have previously welcomed the introduction of the Environment and Transport Neighbourhood Fund (ETNF) in response to the road safety emergency, which has made funds easier to spend and introduced more straightforward principles for local schemes.

It has been brought to our attention that there are a number of proposals within both ETNF and Brum Breathes schemes, designed by the city’s engineers, that rely on speed cushions as a traffic calming measure.

We are requesting an urgent pause and redesign of these schemes on the basis that:

1. Speed cushions go against the Council’s recently adopted Road Harm Reduction Strategy: “traditional physical traffic calming (such as road humps and speed cushions) will be minimised, as these measures do not contribute towards Healthy Streets environments”.
   
2. ETNF schemes must improve the Healthy Streets score of a street, which the Road Harm Reduction Strategy notes speed cushions do not improve the score.
   
3. Speed cushions do not meet Active Travel England and LTN1/20 guidance, which states “cushions are not a preferred form of traffic calming on cycle routes because they constrain the ability of cyclists to choose their preferred position in the carriageway and are particularly hazardous to riders of three wheeled cycles”.
   
4. In creating constraints for people cycling, this goes against the Council’s adopted Birmingham Transport Plan policy to create safe environments for walking and cycling and increase uptake of active modes.
   
5. The prevalence of SUV and crossover SUV models, as well as the fact that new car models are getting 1cm wider every other year, render speed cushions increasingly redundant as drivers can effectively avoid speed cushions.

We acknowledge that several Councillors will have put forward these schemes either in response to tragic and avoidable collisions, or to prevent the worst from happening. We understand that our call for a pause and rethink could be frustrating, however for the reasons outlined above, speed cushions will not meaningfully reduce the road danger their communities face on a daily basis.

It is important that the little money available within the ETNF envelope is spent on schemes that deliver transformational and long-lasting change.

The Council’s policy to “remove through traffic for motor vehicles from residential streets wherever possible”, a measure which we believe could have been unnecessarily discouraged by engineers, is the single most cost effective use of the available funding to address many road safety concerns.

According to analysis by Cycle Streets, over half of the city’s residential streets do not permit through-traffic and retrofitting this measure to the rest of the city is an important step to reduce both dangerous driving behaviours and the volume of traffic.

We look forward to continuing working constructively with you and your officers to pursue effective street design that addresses our city’s road safety emergency at pace.

We would, however, remind you that addressing the emergency will only happen once all parts of the council are aligned on the vision and how to implement it.

Best wishes

Martin Price and Cath Palgrave
Co-chairs
Better Streets for Birmingham