ABSTRACT
The focus of this Chapter is on the transport planning activities of Birmingham City Council (BCC) in the period 1987–2001. BCC is the highway authority for the City of Birmingham, the largest local authority in the UK in population terms. Birmingham provides a useful case study in a number of ways. First, in contrast to the other two areas under consideration, it is situated in a conurbation, and we can expect the range of issues and policy emphases here to be different from those prevalent in the other two areas. Second, it has a different institutional structure and history. Since 1986, when the West Midlands County Council (WMCC) was abolished, Birmingham City Council has been a unitary authority. Issues surrounding relationships between sub-national administrative units will therefore be limited to Birmingham’s relationships with its neighbours, particularly given the built-up nature of the conurbation and the way transport flows transcend administrative boundaries in this highly polynodal conurbation. The West Midlands does, however, differ in having at this intermediate level a Public Transport Authority (PTA) and Public Transport Executive (Centro) which remain as relics of the two-tier system. We might expect that as Centro is centrally concerned with public transport, a pro-public transport storyline is likely to be more prominent than in non-metropolitan areas. In addition, the relationship of the PTA to BCC, from whom it draws part of its membership, will also be an interesting area of exploration and one unique to this case study. Third, Birmingham has a long history of inner-urban road construction (see Borg, 1973 for a historical account) and also has a recent history of innovation in the tackling of transport issues, principally through the development of ‘Integrated Transport Studies’ and the ‘Package Approach’ and often in concert with other West Midlands local authorities. Fourth, Birmingham’s position at the heart of Britain’s most significant car manufacturing region will affect the climate of transport policy discussions in the city.
