Last stop for City Centre Bus but full steam ahead for public transport

The Birmingham Post has reported City centre to be a bus-free zone continuing from the launch of Vision for Movement – the future for transport in the City Centre, a complimentary document to the Big City Plan focussing on transport, Metro funding helps transport out of bust. The newspaper reveals that further to the Sprint bus network plan buses will be removed from Corporation Street and Colmore Row and terminate instead at four newly created interchanges.

These terminals will be linked by a circular service with priority over other traffic, which will be upgraded to rapid transit vehicles alongside the rapid transport Sprint routes.

Four modern interchanges are set to be created within the next two years at Moor Street, Snow Hill, Paradise Circus and New Street at a cost of £15 million.

Each of the hubs will act as the end point for city centre-bound journeys and a circular route will whisk commuters to other interchanges or key destinations including the markets.

Initially the circular route will be served with conventional buses, but by 2015 new tram-style “rapid transit vehicles” will hit the streets of Birmingham. http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2010/11/18/city-centre-to-be-a-bus-free-zone-65233-27673891/

Meanwhile new CENTRO figures show West Midlands rail use rises but bus growth stalls with public transport's modal share now accounting for over half of morning peak trips into the city centre. Public transport now accounts for 57.8% of morning peak trips, a rise of 1% on the previous year and over 10% up on the 1995 figure of 42%.

A total of 40 million journeys were made on the region’s rail network in 2009/10, an increase of 6.4% compared with 2008/09, while five million passengers took the Midland Metro.

Bus patronage produces equally impressive figures, with nearly 320million journeys in 2009. This equates to 12.2 million passenger journeys per 100,000 people in the West Midlands, the second highest figure in the country, beaten only by 13 million in Tyne and Wear.

The Annual Statistical Report 2009/10 for Centro, the region’s integrated passenger transport authority, showed 29% of trips into Birmingham city centre during the morning peak are now made by bus, closely followed by 27% made by train and 1.6% by the Midland Metro.

Car trips decreased into many parts of the West Midlands including Birmingham (3.6%), Brierley Hill (0.4%), Solihull (4.2%) and Walsall (1.5%).
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