Selly Oak Cycleway Alongside Selly Oak High Street
The cycling facilities in Selly Oak are generally good, albeit at the time of construction cut off from anything else. Isolated infrastructure is good practice if it has been built with an eye to the future. However, in order to fit in with the car-centric design of the junction, the cycleway is on the opposite side from the shop units, which are clearly difficult to let. Neither this nor the stroad that is the high street are good from the point of view of re-invigorating the high street, as people on bikes will stop and shop if they can get to the shops, whereas people in cars do not. This would have been less of a problem when the area on the left was a Sainsbury's. That said, this area is earmarked to become student housing, so at least students will benefit from a protected cycleway on their doorstep, one that accesses both the university and the Queen Elizabeth hospital (which is a teaching hospital). The cycleway passes behind the bus stop, which is best practice. Despite this, it seems to be normal for Brummies to walk along a cycleway rather than using the adjacent footway. In this case it doesn't help that the nice wide pavement has been filled with clutter. The planters make the area look nice, but do they have to be so large and slap bang in the middle of the footway? Why not place them in one of the six lanes for motor traffic? Oh wait, in Motor City impeding drivers is not OK, impeding pedestrians is.
