@mrmjprice
I design public services by day and chair @betterstreetsforbirmingham.org by night. Also ‘own’ @a38cycleway.bsky.social counters. Let’s rebalance our streets for safe and equitable trips from A to B. 🏳️🌈🚴🏼♂️🟢 📍 Birmingham, UK
How an electric bike can protect your money as another oil shock hits.
The argument for fossil fuels is ending, but so too is the argument for relying on cars for journeys of under five miles.
Here's some numbers to convince:
www.cyclingelectric.com/in-depth/how...
Transport for City Regions Rosewell Review longlist - last month's board meeting.
A row of a table that suggests WMCA are planning to spend £15 million on a transport network brand roll out, which is at pre-strategic outline business case stage.
If you had £15 million at your disposal, do you think you'd spend it on rolling out a new regional transport brand or making your customer service outfit fit for purpose?
Are we to assume it’s £2 per litre in a random motorway fuel station?
Yes sadly in Birmingham we do not have anything like this. We have a couple of dozen awkward spaces at a few secure hubs, and a mix of pull-down stands and sheffield stands at most others.
Yeah, certainly not comprehensive enough for the reporting it's received.
Less of an issue for local West Mids trains - six spaces per train with no booking necessary. CrossCountry and Avanti longer distance services still tricky.
Bike bay availability on trains - aside from the peakest of peak services - is quite good since we got new stock for West Midlands Trains. CrossCountry and Avanti still tricky.
I can only get in if I force it. Especially hard with someone parked on the first rack in. I wonder if it'd be any easier if they got the second door to open - or if they're even aware only half of the door opens?
Better Streets for Birmingham podcast ep 8. - Clean air in Birmingham
Happy Monday! We've got another podcast out. A conversation with Kirsten de Vos and Florence Cadge about clean air in the city.
betterstreetsforbirmingham.org/ep-8-clean-a...
I imagine someone in a 4-wheeled vehicle will flatten it before BCC's contractors do later this year...
Sorry, alt text! Alt text: plan of a cycle route. The road is two-way with a junction in to a railway station. The planned two-way cycleway is on the opposite side of the road to the railway station. The way to access it is to use a toucan crossing and shared paths to get across the junction.
Even up in Selly Oak the lane will sort of go past the station rather than feed people into it?
The tie-in down in Longbridge will mean the last quarter of a mile to Longbridge Station is a bit pants and incoherent. We’ve tried to have a couple of options added e.g. use Tessall Lane LTN or go through the permissible path through the business park and around the park and ride.
Take the new @a38cycleway.bsky.social extension. The route will overall serve three stations on the Cross-city Line.
Except around Northfield Station, there’s a gap in infrastructure for a third of a mile. The options being a steep hill or a street with higher and speedier traffic.
If there’s money for marketing, create an isochrone map of 10 mins cycling around each station and write to households in the area, include a map of routes and low traffic streets. Run a map-based survey to capture problem areas. Hold a series of Dr Bikes to get cycles into use. Offer out d-locks.
A screenshot of a newspaper article discussing that there are low cycle counts at rail station cycle parking, suggesting it is because of the risk of theft.
Theft risk is possibly a factor. Other factors include:
🚲 A lack of safe routes to most stations
🔒 There’s a safe store, there’s no emergency procedure should something go wrong
🚳 The main secure store in town can’t be accessed without some force by cargo bikes
Under the numbers there are stories.
A road with lampposts. Attached to each lamppost is a union flag and flag of St George. Each lamppost’s flag is torn to a different length.
Just went past the pictured road. Look at the state of this image now we’ve had winter!
Interesting. It looks like Via/Citymapper also run the demand-responsive buses.
*to clarify, making data (and ticketing?) available for established tools to make greater use of instead of paying for it.
🥴 And now have changed their online journey planner to be a Citymapper iframe. Our journey planning discovery recommended they consider using an external provider - hopefully this isn’t another contract.
I wonder when they'll get around to using westmidlands.gov.uk or westmidlands-ca.gov.uk 🤔
Whatever you experience day-to-day and then double it was my experience of doing stuff within the CA stack. 😅
Also nuts that the base URL goes to an Azure app with no way to recover from the service failure?
Seems curious that you'd not start with control of the domain. It doesn't look consistent with other WMCA domains. Would be easy for that supplier to be disruptive about it.
Just checked bustimes.org/map for someone at a bus stop when an out of service bus flew by. 😭
Political gymnastics all over the shop.
A sign attached to a bus stop pole that informs passengers to scan a QR code for live departure information.
Of course TfWM have installed new signs with proprietary URLs on, so that when the supplier changes, every sign needs changing. And for some reason it couldn’t be printed on timetable posters which are replaced fairly regularly?
Helpful whether you're seeking election or just trying to get your local broken stuff fixed.
