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Congestion Strategy

Congestion is identified as a critical issue in the Transport Shared Priority and our 2003 LTP.

Our Strategy will reduce congestion through network improvements, demand management, public transport enhancements and local schemes that support regeneration. We will coordinate our programmes with the Highways Agency (through the ATM and Route Management Strategies), Strategic Rail Authority (through implementation of the Rail Utilisation Study recommendations) and with neighbouring authorities (over strategic Park & Ride sites).

A review of how individual elements of our Strategy and programme contribute to tackling congestion is provided in the Congestion Strategy Annexe.

We have used early outputs from the new PRISM model to forecast what the increase in the number of trips would be by 2011, assuming current trends continue. Trips will increase as a result of our regeneration policies creating more jobs and housing in the Metropolitan Area. An increase of 13% is forecast – some 240 million extra trips per year. Of these, 165 million would be car trips, which would undoubtedly exacerbate congestion and increase peak period car journey times by 25% to 35%. Bus users would suffer slightly smaller increases in delays.

The challenge we face is to ensure that congestion harms neither our competitiveness nor environmental quality. This means that public transport, walking and cycling must play a bigger role in providing for extra trips and in ensuring our transport networks operate as efficiently as possible.

We can have greatest impact by encouraging people to change the way they travel from cars to public transport, walking and cycling. We have put in place a programme to enhance the work we already do through Travelwise and Safer Routes to School. Our aim is to transfer a further 5% of trips from cars to other modes. This would limit the increase in peak period congestion to between 17% and 25%. Total kilometres travelled by car would increase by about 7% to 8%.

In addition, we plan further spending on Bus Showcase, local rail improvements, Red Routes Phase 1, walking and cycling to provide for more trips by these modes. The overall impact will be limited, but important. Without further Major Schemes investment, we will be unable to provide sufficient capacity to cater for the planned increases by non-car modes.

We have plans – subject to funding being available – to improve network efficiency. The two principal tools are Red Routes and UTC improvements. The expansion of Red Routes across the West Midlands is expected to reduce journey times by 10% and improve reliability by 20%. Our UTC proposals have the ability to increase peak period capacity on the strategic network by 3% and reduce delays by 10%-15%. We will undertake measures to ‘lock in’ these benefits so we avoid increasing car trips at the expense of other modes.

Further Major Schemes to improve the bus and rail network capacity and reliability are proposed, but depend on new funding becoming available.

However, it is clear that if we are to meet our long term aims of regenerating the Metropolitan Area and reversing long term decentralisation, we need look at more ways of catering for the forecast increase in car trips. Looking ahead to 2031, our PRISM model produces worrying forecasts of congestion if present trends continue.

Evidence

Birmingham City Council has set up a ‘Congestion Task Force’ with representatives from a range of organisations to focus on tackling congestion ‘hot spots’ in the city.

The sub-regional studies of the Black Country and Coventry / Solihull / Warwickshire, plus the Birmingham growth proposals, will need to be taken into account. Work to date indicates that even though the PRISM outputs are currently provisional, we need to examine ways of managing demand, using both existing and new approaches, if we are to avoid unacceptable levels of congestion.

Table 8.1 Forecast Number of Trips (millions per year) sets out the current forecasts.