West Midlands motorists are still crawling at 20mph

Drivers in the West Midlands are still crawling in traffic at less than 20mph as new figures reveal barely any improvement in speeds over the past 12 months – leading to calls for fewer traffic lights and bus lanes.

And bosses on the Midland Metro tram network took £7 million in fares last year – a rise of £300,000 on the year before – as passengers were forced out of their cars by soaring fuel costs. The income is the highest ever in a financial year apart from 2006, when it was the same.

Passenger numbers fell the next year but have steadily risen back to 4.8 million users on the 23-stop line between Wolverhampton St George's and Birmingham Snow Hill.

Income dropped to £4.7m in 2007/8 but then came back up. The 2007 losses were put down to vandalism of the overhead cable, which closed the Metro for two weeks.

There were calls today for fewer traffic lights as drivers in Wolverhampton increased their average speed to just 16.8mph on 12 months ago, a rise of just 0.1mph.

In rural Staffordshire drivers get to go at an average of 30mph, more than 10mph faster than those in the busier parts of the Black Country.

In Sandwell the average speed is 17.8mph and in Walsall it is 19.5mph. In Dudley, where work finally finished on the replacement of the Burnt Tree island with traffic lights earlier this year, average speeds on the roads climbed 0.5mph to 18.5mph.

The figures have been released by the Department for Transport which revealed the national average speed travelled on England's roads is 26.9mph.

Latest figures show 84 per cent of drivers who use the country's motorway network got to their destination on time in September, compared with 82 per cent the same time last year.

Henry Carver, chairman of the Wolverhampton Business Group, said: "We have to look at the roads coming into Wolverhampton.

"There is no point in those like Willenhall Road and Stafford Street being half given over to bus lanes."