Town’s transport chaos ‘ignored’ by city council £140,000 to create plan to keep Sutton Coldfield moving
SUTTON Coldfield town centre’s road and public transport links have been ignored by Birmingham city council bosses for more than a decade, town councillors claim.
The result gridlocked.
At the same time Birmingham city centre has seen almost £2 billion of transport investment, including the Metro extension, New Street Station revamp and ring road upgrade.
There have also been other major road improvements such as at Castle Vale’s Spitfire Island and the Selly Oak bypass.
But now the fledgling Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council (RSCTC) is drawing up plans to get the town moving again and grab its share of funding.
Locals is that the area have been crying is often out for improvements to the town which is constrained within a tight ring road rammed with both shoppers and through traffic.
Previous plans for a bypass, drawn up about 15 years ago, were shelved due to lack of funding and a town centre framework plan, adopted in 2009, barely got off the drawing board.
RSCTC and Birmingham City Council have now put down a com- bined £140,000 to develop a detailed transport model for the town centre.
The model will look at how to keep the town moving and offer in-depth data on the movement of traffic and public transport and how they can be improved to benefit shops and businesses.
This plan will then be used to bid for Department for Transport, Local Enterprise Partnership or West Midlands Combined Authority funds to put it into action.
Sutton Trinity councillor Ewan Mackey (Con) said: “Sutton Coldfield has one of the highest car ownership rates in the UK.
“It is hoped that a transport model will hand us the investment we need to improve public transport and make getting around a little bit easier for all.”
The town council is hoping the new West Midlands Metro mayor will support the efforts and has already received backing from Conservative candidate Andy Street.