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Private vehicles to be banned from Birmingham’s City Centre

07 February 2022

Birmingham City Council’s new Transport Plan was adopted on October 12 2021 in order to achieve the following aims: 

• Reduce transport’s damaging impact on the environment, supporting Birmingham’s commitment to becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030.
• Eliminate road danger particularly in residential areas.
• Connect people with new job and training opportunities.
• Reconnect communities by prioritising people over cars.
• Revitalise the city centre and local centres.

In order to achieve these aims, the city centre of Birmingham will essentially become one huge low traffic neighbourhood, with private cars banned from driving through the city centre. The city will be split into seven zones, including the city centre, and motorists will be diverted via the A4540 ring road.

Birmingham City Council intends that this change, alongside the creation of a network of pedestrian streets and public spaces will see active travel, walking and cycling, becoming the most popular method of local travel. 

It is planned that a new fleet of zero-emission cross-city buses will also be introduced. 

The council’s website says that ‘cars will no longer dominate street life around homes and schools’ as a limit of 20mph will be standard on all local roads and parking restrictions will be used to manage demand for travel by car.

These restrictions include limited availability, increases to pricing and the repurposing of land currently occupied by car parking.

Transport Lead for Birmingham City Council Waseem Zaffar said that Birmingham suffers from an excess of single occupancy car journeys, twenty-five per cent of which are one mile or shorter.

This transport plan has been introduced in order to tackle the climate emergency and is partly in response to the forecast 150,000 additional residents which are expected to arrive in Birmingham within the next 20 years – adding to the current 1.2million residents.

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