Sprint bus will end up as a ‘blunder bus’

DEAR Editor, Now we are in the second half of 2020, I see two clocks ticking. One is counting down towards the end of the traditional arrangements with the EU. Another is counting down towards June 2022 and the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

The transport plans for the games include the Sprint Bus Rapid Transit scheme. This was conceived 15 years ago and has proceeded at a “crawl” rather than a sprint.

The preferred buses for the scheme are continental style bendy-buses. The worthies of the business improvement districts, local politicians and officials from Centro went to a Van-Hool factory in Belgium in 2013 and thought “we like the look of these; we want buses like this in Birmingham”.

Similar vehicles introduced elsewhere in the UK have now ended up in scrapyards as commercial and operational ‘blunder buses’. A lot has changed since 2013. Centro is now Transport for West Midlands. Brexit is a new reality. At the present time importing vehicles from abroad, like bendy-buses, will cost more and incur tariffs if we crash out with no deal on New Year’s Eve, as is now likely. Who is going to pay for this? The council tax payers of the West Midlands and the bus passengers?

Residents living along the A34 have also highlighted the dangers of bendy-buses and pointed out the risks caused to vulnerable road users like cyclists. The current Prime Minister got rid of them when he was Mayor of London; this risk was part of his reasoning.

Rather than reinventing the wheel,

Transport for West Midlands needs to look to best practice elsewhere in the country.

They could do no worse than take a trip to Bristol, where British-built double deck buses operate on their mainline BRT system. These vehicles are less risk, are larger and similar to the current platinum buses operated by National Express West Midlands, and could be on the streets well before July 2022, if we got our ducks in a row now. The Sprint scheme is carrying more risk by the day, the longer the