Villa Park Redevelopment

[Percy McCarthy]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

Yay!

Edit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birmingham-Shit-Things-Delight-About/dp/1800683995

[Sexual Ealing]

Cheers Percy!

[paul_e]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

Yay!

Edit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birmingham-Shit-Things-Delight-About/dp/1800683995

Surely he already has a complimentary copy of that given who wrote the foreword. (winky thing)

[Percy McCarthy]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

Yay!

Edit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birmingham-Shit-Things-Delight-About/dp/1800683995

Surely he already has a complimentary copy of that given who wrote the foreword. (winky thing)

Haha!

[DB]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

For an urban area with nigh on 3 million people I’d say it’s about the worst in Europe for Public transport for similar sized Cities. But you could say that about every single Regional English City.

The buses are ok ish. If that helps.

Birmingham is the biggest city in Europe not to have an integrated underground or tram network.  The city has been woefully neglected in terms of it's infrastructure by governments of both colours since the 1950's when it was seen as a threat to London because of its rapid growth after the war. They needed to slow it down and it worked. Rant over.

They are slowly building extensions, new lines to the Metro. Andy Street was a big advocate of the Metro, but I believe the new guy is looking at other options for future lines, as it’s too expensive.
PS I thought Leeds was biggest city in Europe without any metro, tram, underground etc…

[AV82EC]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

For an urban area with nigh on 3 million people I’d say it’s about the worst in Europe for Public transport for similar sized Cities. But you could say that about every single Regional English City.

The buses are ok ish. If that helps.

Birmingham is the biggest city in Europe not to have an integrated underground or tram network.  The city has been woefully neglected in terms of it's infrastructure by governments of both colours since the 1950's when it was seen as a threat to London because of its rapid growth after the war. They needed to slow it down and it worked. Rant over.

They are slowly building extensions, new lines to the Metro. Andy Street was a big advocate of the Metro, but I believe the new guy is looking at other options for future lines, as it’s too expensive.
PS I thought Leeds was biggest city in Europe without any metro, tram, underground etc…

Yep there's that classic urban economists joke with a picture of Leeds urban metro system which is just a blank sheet of paper.

[SoccerHQ]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

For an urban area with nigh on 3 million people I’d say it’s about the worst in Europe for Public transport for similar sized Cities. But you could say that about every single Regional English City.

The buses are ok ish. If that helps.

Cross City Line is great.

If they could just get back to 6 trains an hour, and be a bit better organised at Aston Station then it would make a massive difference to matchdays.  With the new trains now fully running in theory it could move over 12,000 people an hour.

Yeah the new rolling stock has been in operation for a couple of months now and it's as close as you can get to London style transport (they remind me of the Overground carriages in design) so you can fit more people in now into the middle parts.

Don't think 6tph is coming back anytime soon so it remains a big issue for the evening matches with 20/30 minute gaps in the service after 8pm.

In a perfect world we'd find a plot of land the other side of the JQ (Great Hampton row/Newtown) so it's still reasonably close to Aston, the city centre, Snow Hill and also the tram so that rivals what we currently have.

[paul_e]

The slots that are missing from the cross city line are apparently being left open for the camp hill trains to use. With University being the only stop on the side that comes close to the busy stations on the other side I do wonder if they'll temporarily have the trains on the new line carry on to Sutton.

[Rory]

I'm almost certainly moving to Birmingham soon. This thread makes it sound absolutely shit!

I hope somebody has let WM Police know about the impending spike in drug crime.

[Nev]

Half the problem with transport seems to be bone-headed changes in traffic management. Roads which until a few years ago used to be one way after the match turned into two way, with an absolute jumble of cars fighting it over for every inch in both directions. Trains leaving half empty whilst there are 90 minute queues outside. That sort of thing really does not help.

This is the issue with the shuttle buses. They take an age to creep up the Lichfield Road towards Rocky Lane where they should have priority over other traffic to encourage use, it's fine on the way in.

I know 'cos I was sat on one last week, stinking like a wet dog and shivering like one as well. So much so I had to have a restoratory pint when I alighted, before making my onward journey by train.

[pauliewalnuts]

Half the problem with transport seems to be bone-headed changes in traffic management. Roads which until a few years ago used to be one way after the match turned into two way, with an absolute jumble of cars fighting it over for every inch in both directions. Trains leaving half empty whilst there are 90 minute queues outside. That sort of thing really does not help.

This is the issue with the shuttle buses. They take an age to creep up the Lichfield Road towards Rocky Lane where they should have priority over other traffic to encourage use, it's fine on the way in.

I know 'cos I was sat on one last week, stinking like a wet dog and shivering like one as well. So much so I had to have a restoratory pint when I alighted, before making my onward journey by train.

We go to Oxford every now and then, because a. we like it and b. it's not too far from us.

We used to park in the city centre, which was tricky and expensive, but for the last five years plus, we have been using one of the park and ride options. The buses use a dedicated bus lane down the Woodstock Road (if you know Oxford), which is not a particularly huge road, but they still manage bus lanes in both directions. It works brilliantly, bus sails unimpeded past tons of traffic.

I know it is more complicated with Brum because bigger cities bring different flows of traffic, from more directions, and it's harder inter-linking everything together, but it strikes me we don't seem to try too hard to sort this sort of thing.

[Chris Smith]

The slots that are missing from the cross city line are apparently being left open for the camp hill trains to use. With University being the only stop on the side that comes close to the busy stations on the other side I do wonder if they'll temporarily have the trains on the new line carry on to Sutton.

Have you got a source for that, Paul? I ask because as a former commuter on that line it wasn’t my experience. The stations were always rammed at rush hour in the pre-pandemic days and that was with 6 trains an hour. It took a while to ramp back up but on the occasional time I get them now they seem as busy as ever albeit much more comfortable.

[paul_e]

The slots that are missing from the cross city line are apparently being left open for the camp hill trains to use. With University being the only stop on the side that comes close to the busy stations on the other side I do wonder if they'll temporarily have the trains on the new line carry on to Sutton.

Have you got a source for that, Paul? I ask because as a former commuter on that line it wasn’t my experience. The stations were always rammed at rush hour in the pre-pandemic days and that was with 6 trains an hour. It took a while to ramp back up but on the occasional time I get them now they seem as busy as ever albeit much more comfortable.

I can't remember but it was a while back (probably when we moved back from Norway in 2014 and were looking for somewhere with easy train access to the city) if you take out the city centre stations and international it was University > Sutton > Four Oaks and then Erdington, chester road, five ways, wylde green, aston and selly oak all pretty close together. I suspect Longbridge and Northfield are now a lot higher on the list though given all th ework that's gone on over that way.

Either way the camp hill line just shuttling between pineapple road and new street seems a bit pointless when you're leaving gaps on the cross-city schedule so I'd like to see them linked in some way.

[Ads]

Can I ask a favour when we're mooting new sites for a future ground? Would you drop a Google map link in please? I can never work out quite where people are saying and I am genuinely interested in mooching about the proposed sites and learning a wee bit more about Brum. I might well know where you mean, but place names/street names mean nowt to me.

[Chris Smith]

The slots that are missing from the cross city line are apparently being left open for the camp hill trains to use. With University being the only stop on the side that comes close to the busy stations on the other side I do wonder if they'll temporarily have the trains on the new line carry on to Sutton.

Have you got a source for that, Paul? I ask because as a former commuter on that line it wasn’t my experience. The stations were always rammed at rush hour in the pre-pandemic days and that was with 6 trains an hour. It took a while to ramp back up but on the occasional time I get them now they seem as busy as ever albeit much more comfortable.

I can't remember but it was a while back (probably when we moved back from Norway in 2014 and were looking for somewhere with easy train access to the city) if you take out the city centre stations and international it was University > Sutton > Four Oaks and then Erdington, chester road, five ways, wylde green, aston and selly oak all pretty close together. I suspect Longbridge and Northfield are now a lot higher on the list though given all th ework that's gone on over that way.

Either way the camp hill line just shuttling between pineapple road and new street seems a bit pointless when you're leaving gaps on the cross-city schedule so I'd like to see them linked in some way.

I think the plan is to link to the Cross City at Kings Norton as it used to.