Joined-up thinking
A 24-mile West Midlands cycling route is set to transform active travel in the region, writes Laura
Anyone currently hoping to cycle between Coventry, Kenilworth and Birmingham faces the choice between a narrow, winding B-road and an unsealed, unlit and isolated canal towpath, or a main road. That will all change by the end of the decade, after plans to build a 24-mile cycleway linking the three places was announced in February. West Midlands’ Mayor, Andy Street, called the route, which will shadow the HS2 line, with a spur to Coventry, a ‘no-brainer’. It will, he says, deliver on health, net zero, wellbeing and economic growth goals, and connect local communities surrounding the line, via a safe, continuous, cycling and walking route. And he’s called on HS2 Ltd to help make it happen.
The HS2 Cycleway has been a pet project of mine for years. In 2018 I got wind of a Government feasibility study, which supposedly revealed plans for a network of cycling and walking paths around the route – but it hadn’t been made public. When I got my hands on the report, via Freedom of Information request, it was more promising than I’d hoped. It estimated the route would return a whopping five times greater returns than the rail line itself, thanks to its health, and low-carbon, low-cost transport benefits.
In case you’re picturing a long, straight path alongside a thundering high speed rail route, it’s not that. Instead, it’s a series of connected bridleways, on-road cycle tracks and former haul roads that would cross the line at regular intervals via tunnels and bridges. No surprise then, that trackside communities would benefit the most from these local cycling and walking connections. Beyond that, though it would create a high-quality, long-distance cycle route from London to (then) Manchester. In the built-up areas, the cycleway’s benefits were turbo charged, returning up to £14.80 per £1 spent on infrastructure. By contrast road investment will reap £2.50 per £1 spent, if we’re lucky.
This isn’t pie in the sky stuff. Street and his walking and cycling commissioner, Adam Tranter, have been doing the heavy lifting on this for a while, bringing council leaders together behind the path, with agreements to connect with local roads, and a funding plan. They now have agreement from HS2 Ltd to leave haul roads and maintenance tracks, used to build the route, so they can be converted to cycle routes once the work is done.
It’s been a long road to reach this point. The Department for Transport was forced to retroactively introduce walking and cycling paths on HS2’s bridge and tunnel designs to link active travel networks across the railway after criticism about HS2 Ltd’s failure to do so. These will make cycleways such as the West Midlands route possible, once the line is complete. Without this, cyclists would have had to share dangerous, high-speed road bridges and tunnels with heavy traffic.
You and I, the kinds of people who are confident on a bicycle and can probably tolerate riding on the road with traffic, are the outliers. Most people won’t share the road with cars, and that proportion increases among women, people of colour and anyone hoping to cycle with children, or in older age. And while I don’t mind, too much, dicing with drivers from time to time, these days I much prefer the peace and safety of off-road paths. I don’t mean ones that are narrow, slow and shared with pedestrians, but those designed for normal cycling speeds where you don’t need to constantly stop.
West Midlands’ Walking and Cycling Commissioner, Adam Tranter, told me the busiest sections will have bicycle roads: two-way routes with separate pedestrian pavements. They’ll treat bicycles as traffic, in other words. In the Netherlands, he points out, big infrastructure projects such as rail lines come with cycling and walking (and bus) links baked in. We are only just starting to get this right in the UK.
We’re not talking about overnight change: work won’t start on the route until 2027, when the railway line is hopefully built, but this is a genuinely exciting bit of leadership and ambition for active travel from a city region that only a few years ago considered unlit towpaths adequate cycle infrastructure.
It may be years off, but in a decade, cycling in the area won’t be just for the fit and the brave, but for anyone who fancies getting on a bike, whatever their age or ability. That’s definitely something to feel hopeful about.