We first looked at the plans for Dudley Road back in 2020, and found the original plans to be very poor, feeding back our findings to Birmingham City Council. The plans were substantially improved. The project is now complete apart from the section outside the hospital. Despite being not quite complete, we decided it was time we took a look.

In my opinion that which has been built is very good except where the council has opted to use limited space for parking outside Dudley Road shops rather than cycling infrastructure, even though it is now well known that people using these parking places bring little trade but cause congestion. This has been done even though there is nearby on and off-street parking. On the other hand, creating substandard cycling infrastructure discourages people from cycling. Thus the council has built effectively discontinuous infrastructure that is contrary to best practice. That said, the two times I have been here the motor traffic was obnoxious, with lots of it and many boy racers. So what has been built will make the area less hostile for people who choose to walk and cycle, and mostly it is very good.

On both my trips to the area I followed the Worcester and Birmingham canal to the city centre, crossed the city centre via Granville Street and Sheepcote Street, and then followed the canal, On the first trip there I left the canal at Ladywood Middleway so I could join the Dudley Road cycleway at its start at Spring Hill roundabout, but the canal access at Ladywood Middleway necessitated carrying my bike up an unnecessarily steep flight of steps (there is a wheeling ramp, but it is too steep and tight to be usable). On the second trip I stayed on the towpath until I got to Clissold Street (see photos below). However, the fact that on the one hour cycle journey from my home to Winson Green Road I was almost entirely off the carriageway, and always away from fast and heavy traffic, is quite remarkable.

But let's not beat about the bush. Without the canals I would have been forced to make most of the journey on the carriageway, because Birmingham is making pitiful progress addressing the problems created by excessive private car usage. The three of us were there on yet another of the blistering hot days that anthropomorphic climate change is serving up for us. What has been built on the Dudley Road is way too little far too late, and each cycling infrastructure project undertaken by the council takes years. We got there on traditional pedal cycles (and I went twice). Thus our journeys were as close to zero-carbon as you can get short of walking. Not only did our respective journeys have a miniscule carbon footprint, but also cycle manufacture has a small carbon footprint, especially when you consider that the bike I used to get there is around forty years old. Far from being super-fit athletes in our prime, all three of us are over sixty, and one of us is over eighty (and he, like me, had a two hour journey in the hottest part of the day). When are we going to stop finding excuses for not building a transport network for zero-carbon transport? I am so tired of the worn out excuses for not addressing climate change, especially when the technology is available now to the vast majority of the population, if only we would build for it instead of feeding the insatiable demand for motorised transport.

Let's now dig into the detail of what has been built on the Dudley Road, starting at the Spring Hill roundabout