The transport network in the BUA needs significant improvement, with a hefty price tag attached
The BUA is a city region of ardent car-users: three-quarter (74 per cent) of commutes are made by private vehicle, and an outsize share of journeys into the city centre are undertaken in this way too. This is likely to continue across the BUA as a whole, but the question is whether a significant increase in commuting to the city centre can plausibly be achieved with that current reliance on cars.
So public transport will have to provide the route to the BUA having a larger, high-skilled workforce better connected to firms and jobs located in its (already congested) city centre. The BUA is currently very poorly-served in this respect: despite welcome recent tram investment, half of the BUA’s highly-skilled workers cannot reach the central employment district within a reasonable 45-minute commute (including those in most of Wolverhampton and Dudley). Economically, Birmingham acts like a far smaller city than it is as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment