Shaping Birmingham’s Transport

We’ve had a few requests urging us to hurry up with the group presentations. As promised, you can find them below. Congratulations again to all of our finalists.

Brumderground - winners

The Brumderground group, consisting of Jamie Phillips, Jamie Hodgson and Aaron Pereira, proposed two main improvements to Birmingham’s public transport network: the creation of an underground network, linking our suburbs to the city centre and increasing Centro’s power to regulate public transport.

Birmingham currently contains three suburban lines operating at high frequency. Our intention is to expand our rail network with an underground system, connecting suburbs which are not currently served by trains. An east-west line would run from Merry Hill/Halesowen, along the Hagley Road to Castle Vale as part of the east Birmingham regeneration scheme. A north-south line would run through Kings Norton, Druids Heath, and Moseley and then across the city centre towards Perry Barr and Kingstanding. The third line would link Birmingham with Sparkhill and Solihull. Being fast, frequent and easy to use, an underground system would certainly improve Birmingham’s connectivity and help to reduce the number of trips made by car. Nonetheless, we accept this is a costly proposal, amounting to between £10-15bn.

Our other main aim would be to give Centro more control over the multitude of private transport companies. This would ensure that public transport is being run for the benefit of those who use it, rather than to generate large profits for the operators. Connectivity between different modes of transport, such as in London, would take greater prominence and smartcards, similar to the oyster card, would be introduced on all buses, trams and trains, eliminating the need for cash fares.

Lastly, all tickets and passes would be interavailable for use on all companies’ buses.

Handsworth Grammar School - runners up

Our team [from Handsworth Grammar school consisted of; Nadeem Pervaiz, Minh Ngoc Nguyen, Simrat Singh & Akaash Hussain] gave it their all in a competition to try and revolutionize transport for the wider Birmingham conurbation in the near but also distant future. Our group’s presentation collated all of our major ideas together. The topics which we incorporated into our slideshow ranged from a cable cart system, to smart cards used for public transport, and even grass powered cars!

An entertaining part was where Minh engaged the audience with his latest invention/innovation, the ‘Panda 5000’, a really cool car that could be powered by Solar, Wind, Hydro-electricity and even gerbils – the latter being a joke.

We felt that a Cable Cart system, similar to those found at Ski resorts would serve the thriving city of Birmingham well, linking many major landmarks together: Connecting the Bull Ring to Symphony Hall, then to Broadway Plaza etc.

Private Pod incorporated the following: Comfort, Speed, Design, Reliable, Own ‘POD Lines’, Private for friends and family but still relatively cheap to travel, eco-friendly!! (The private is unfortunately not run by gerbils)

The Plant – A car which is powered by the same energy a plant needs to survive: Water + Light. Though the vehicle design was just grass on top of a car, the plant was to show how renewable energy resources must be the way forward for all vehicles

Much hard work went into preparing our colour-rich information boards. One of the boards consisted of rhetorical questions such as; ‘Do you feel safe using public transport?’ could get people’s views on modern day public transport. The other board consisted of future transport, idea’s that we came up as a group such as cars powered by renewable energy resources such as poo (already tried and tested in industry) – a plentiful source!

Day Savers - runners up

Wow, what a conference. As I sit in Starbucks surrounded by the steering group and some of the UKYP Birmingham members reflecting on today, we realise what exactly what it is we’ve done today. Young people make up 37% of our population, and today they were able to speak to high-level decision-makers to do with transport in Birmingham. The guests they were consulting with were:

• Councillor Len Gregory: Cabinet Member for Transportation
• Councillor Jon Hunt
• Councillor Tim Huxtable
• Stephen Rhodes: Bus and Highways Director, CENTRO
• Martin Hancock: Commercial Director, National Express
• Inspector Gordon: British Transport Police
• Ben Martin: Friends of the Earth
• Andy Marlow, Richy Rana and Tyrone Fowles: UK Youth Parliament

A huge well done to Jamie P, Aaron and Jamie H for winning the Your Vision: 2026 competition with their Brumderground concept. Congratulations also to the two runner-up entries.

The idea of today was always to produce practical actions that the council can act on, tommorow, in the short-term and in the long-term… we certainly had a wealth of ideas that came from the rich discussion on each table. The Birmingham Mail attended and commented on how successful they thought it went. The young people involved really did make it what it was, so thanks to them for attending, and also to all those who put in so much to make the event happen. We’ll be updating this blog with the solutions you came up with over the next few days and weeks, as well as some of the photos taken on the event. Alternatively, you can find us on Facebook to keep up to date. Leader of the Council Mike Whitby has said he’s interested in hearing how the event went, and where we can take it from here; we’ll let you know how it goes. We recommend subscribing to stay informed.

As Bilal said in his closing remarks: “This isn’t going to be compiled into some big report where we try and pass it on to the relevant agencies; the appropriate people have already heard and noted what you’ve said.” He’s right. And so it ends? Don’t be silly; this is just the beginning.

With only a week until our event it is set to be better than ever! Myself and the rest of the group have been working hard over the past few weeks to prepare a video that will be aired at the beginning of the April 2nd event. We have travelled around Birmingham collecting the opinions of young people and transport experts alike all in an attempt to incorporate as many different opinions on our system as possible. The video will open the event, introducing the delegates to the themes and discussion points of the day. Last week we interviewed the Leader of the Council, Mike Whitby! Sahar and myself travelled to Birmingham Council House and were greeted with an excited leader and some Chinese green tea. The leader was happy to film the introduction of our video, in which he congratulated all those who wish to make a difference through attending the event. We were delighted at the level of enthusiasm that met our hard work, and we left the meeting with the request to continue developing our project, with the possibility of hosting annual events like next week’s.

With all the final details confirmed there is no better time for you to book your place to attend our ‘Shaping Birmingham’s Transport’ Event. The day is the perfect opportunity for you to air your views and opinions to important figures who make changes every single day. Remember, places are limited, so book as soon as possible to ensure you can attend! I look forward to seeing you all there.

With a month to go until the competition entry deadline, it seems transport has never been a bigger issue on the public agenda. This month the Transport Steering Group made the front cover of the City Council’s ‘Forward’ Newspaper, delivered to every house in Birmingham, showing the scope of interest and progression in ameliorating the current system.

The issue is also the focus of the UK Youth Parliament who are holding an upcoming summit discussing the accessibility and affordability of public transport. Brendan McGowan, Interim Head of Programmes, explained: “Our aim for the Fares Fair event is to bring together young people from across the country and support them to share and learn from other 11-19 year olds how they’re shaping transport services where they live- whether this is about customer services training for drivers, more affordable trains and trams or a reliable bus to get you to school, work or to see your mates.”

 Also in the news this week a Facebook group campaigning specifically about Travel West Midlands’ fares which continues to grow by at east 1,000 people per week. We spoke to group creator Michael Burke about why he set the group up: “I felt that there was no real way of people getting their opinions across to TWM, and that starting this group would be a good way for those people to voice their concerns. And the group has been very successful in doing this.”

As the awareness of the problems with Birmingham’s public transport system and suggestions for future developments continue to grow, what better time to submit an entry to our competition!

Well, the build-up towards the event is certainly picking up pace as we near 2 months to the date of the youth conference. We recently launched the competition, and this week we’re doing some further press work - so keep your eyes and ears open.

Stephen Rhodes (Director of Bus and Highways, CENTRO) and Martin Hancock (Commercial Director - Bus and Coach, National Express) have confirmed that they will be joining Cllr Len Gregory (Cabinet Member for Transportation, Birmingham City Council) to attend the event and listen to young people’s ideas on Birmingham’s transport. This shows how seriously the project is being taken by the decision-makers across the city. In the next few weeks, we will be confirming many more names of relevant people who have been invited to attend.

Registration for people wanting to attend the event was also opened recently and we’ve had keen interest from a lot of young people across the city, so I’d suggest that you head over to the Conference page and fill in the application form as soon as possible to snap some places. To ensure that we have a representative group of young people attending the event, we are limiting places to 5 per institution (i.e. school, college, youth group).

The Shaping Birmingham’s Transport group on Facebook has been rapidly increasing in members since its launch, and there are some interesting discussions taking place on it. So I’d definitely recommend having a look and adding your own input - as it could influence what is discussed at the conference.