Shaping Birmingham’s Transport

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.