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Frontrunner for West Midlands mayoral election pledges 40-fold increase in spend on cycling

Ex-John Lewis boss Andy Street sees cycling as key to fighting traffic congestion

The Conservative candidate who is frontrunner to become the first mayor of the West Midlands has pledged to increase annual spending on walking and cycling 40-fold should he be elected in May, saying the entire region should benefit from huge investment of the kind currently being seen in Birmingham.

Andy Street, former managing director of the department store chain John Lewis, is a strong favourite with the bookmakers to win the region’s first mayoral election, and has told the Birmingham Mail that one of his priorities will be to tackle traffic congestion.

Besides reinstating closed railway lines including ones from Stourbridge to Walsall line and Walsall to Wolverhampton, he has also pledged a massive increase in money spent on cycling and walking.

He said: “The fact that the West Midlands is being strangled by congestion is well documented. Almost two-thirds of journeys are made by car and, at peak times, 81 per cent of cars have just one person in them.

“Giving people a viable alternative to driving is the key to busting the congestion that is bad for people and bad for business.”

Besides reopening several disused railway lines he also plans to expand the region’s Midland Metro tram network.

“However, investment in cycling and walking also needs a major boost,” he continued.

The first wave of the government’s Cycle City Ambition funding, announced in 2013, saw Birmingham City Council awarded £17 million by the Department for Transport, with additional local match funding of £5.9 million.

The second wave of funding, announced in March 2015 and covering 2015/16 to 2017/18, saw an increase in central government funding to £22.1 million, with match funding of £7.9 million taking the total to £30 million.

During the same period, an additional £8 million will be spent on cycling in the city, £6 million of that from local enterprise partnership funding plus match funding of £2 million.

With 1.1 million people living within the area controlled by the city council, Birmingham will therefore see an average spend on cycling of £8.63 per person over the current four-year period, close to the minimum £10 per head annual spend cycling campaigners have called for.

Street recognised Birmingham’s efforts to grow cycling but said that a similar approach was needed across the whole of the West Midlands, which has a population of 2.8 million with other major centres of population including Coventry and Wolverhampton.

“There is some exceptional work taking place in parts of the region around cycling,” he said.

“For example, Birmingham Cycling Revolution is an excellent project, what we need to do is apply this across the West Midlands.

“The role of Mayor means that, for the first time, we will be able to have a fully co-ordinated approach and somebody who will be able to press for investment in our cycling and walking routes.

He added: “In London, spending per head on sustainable transport is around £20. In the West Midlands it is 25p – that is clearly unacceptable and as Mayor I am committing to achieving a 40-fold increase which would lead to a transformation in our region’s cycling infrastructure.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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7 comments

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dafyddp | 7 years ago
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Despite its size, Birmingham has trailed behind Manchester in the charisma stakes, but this could be an opportunity to turn that on its head. Birmingham has some very broad roads that could easily turn a lane over to cycling and of course, there's all those cannalside paths ripe for development. The investment needed is huge, but Birmingham really has the potential to be the UKs answer to Copenhagen or Portland.

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kitsunegari replied to dafyddp | 7 years ago
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dafyddp wrote:

Despite its size, Birmingham has trailed behind Manchester in the charisma stakes, but this could be an opportunity to turn that on its head. Birmingham has some very broad roads that could easily turn a lane over to cycling and of course, there's all those cannalside paths ripe for development. The investment needed is huge, but Birmingham really has the potential to be the UKs answer to Copenhagen or Portland.

Having driven around Birmingham, I'm not sure I'd trust my safety to those drivers, even with better infrastructure. It would be akin to driving in London.

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markysd | 7 years ago
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Anything would be better for coventry than what we've currently got!  Cycle paths that stop halfway up busy roads (usually shard use and poorly maintained) and painted lines that direct you on to the pavement at roundabouts occasionally causing conflict with drivers when you dare to take the correct lane and go round it instead ("use the f'ing cycle lane" etc). There was a decent number of bus lanes but many of these are now suspended, some of which continued on from bike lanes. I imagine it's the same story most places however. 

Its such a small, compact and densely populated area it could benefit from better cycling infrastructure to get more people out of their cars. 

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nowasps | 7 years ago
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Ack.

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nowasps | 7 years ago
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Most voters are motorists. If he's genuinely going to try and improve things for people out of their cars, he needs to keep it to himself.

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HarrogateSpa | 7 years ago
3 likes

I don't know all the details, but my strong impression of the 'revolution' is that the work which has been done so far has produced crap infrastructure.

 

You need quality cycle routes if you're going to persuade people to use them. This means having the courage to do something which may slightly inconvenience people walking or driving - not painting a white bike on a pavement, and making people riding bikes give way to every side road.

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kitsunegari | 7 years ago
4 likes

He can pledge it all he wants. Who's dumb enough to believe it?

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