The life-saving changes set to make West Midlands roads safer, including pavement parking powers
A series of life-saving changes are due to be made on West Midlands roads in a bid to stop people being killed or seriously injured, including pavement parking powers.
West Midlands Combined Authority’s Road Safety Commissioner Mat MacDonald wants to make good progress on measures including clamping down on pavement parking, more red light cameras and speed enforcement.
Mat, an NHS doctor, is spearheading the ambitious Vision Zero aim of ridding all deaths and serious injuries as a result of road collisions by 2040.
He, along with Active Travel Commissioner Beccy Marston, want their streets to be safe enough to encourage people to walk, wheel and cycle on.
Pavement parking powers
One of the problems in the West Midlands is pavement parking and, last month, it was announced councils are to get more powers to tackle it.
Mat said: “Mayor Richard Parker made this a priority in his manifesto, we’ve been working on it in our transport taskforce as well with pavement parking task and finish group.
“We are doing some survey work to explore attitudes to it across the region, reaching out to local councillors to see how it impacts them at ward level and we’re also going to be doing focus groups to have a deep dive into what people’s attitudes are around it.
“It’s a question of what our streets look and feel like and how we prioritise the requirements of some of the most vulnerable people that travel our streets – people using wheelchairs, people with kids in pushchairs, visually impaired.
“These are the people severely impacted and this is a really exciting opportunity to address that.
“We’re looking to have two pilots in two local authorities exploring how we are going to use those powers, what that is going to look like and learning how we are going to effectively roll them out more broadly.
“London has had a pavement parking ban since the 70s and that is effective. In a lot of the inner city areas, people just don’t park on the pavements and not how they do in our big towns.
“Birmingham has got a really damaging culture of people just parking where they want, particularly on pavements in a way that forces people out onto the carriageway.
“That’s the culture we need to shift. Edinburgh has made it illegal. Change in law affects the culture and what is seen as acceptable.
“We will be liaising with communities and taking the lead from them in how to tackle the issue, what works, what doesn’t work and what we can bring to the table.”
Red light cameras and average speed enforcement
Mat has also been working on a joint working agreement which includes work looking at average speed enforcement and deploying more red light cameras.
He said: “Hopefully we will see a lot more average speed enforcement infrastructure delivered this year which we know will without doubt have an impact on the number of collisions taking place.
“On the back of that, we are also looking to deliver the first red light cameras that have been active in this region for 14 years.
“Birmingham City Council are looking at a few sites themselves and we are also finding a pot of funding from the Combined Authority that can be used by the other six local authorities to deliver a pilot set of red light cameras where we can install them at hot spots, measure the impact they’re having in terms of reducing collisions and improving people’s safety in crossing roads and just evidence the positive effects that can bring.
“We’ve also got our work on 20mph speed limits. In Wales and London, there is a huge amount of evidence which shows 20mph reduces collisions and saves lives.
“We want to have some good region specific data on that which can inform our guidance for local authority partners on what speed limits should be.”
