It was once proudly known as motor city, the UK’s home of the kind of postwar construction labelled “carchitecture” for embracing the booming automobile market that fuelled the city’s economy.
But now Birmingham is waging a battle against an ingrained car culture that is causing a nuisance on the streets and has left pedestrians fearing for their safety.
The conflict flies in the face of Rishi Sunak’s recent pitch to drivers, saying he stands on their side in what he calls a “war on motorists”. The prime minister has cited council moves to restrict traffic as a significant annoyance for voters, but many in Birmingham seem to feel the opposite.
Over the summer six cyclists and pedestrians were killed in Birmingham by drivers in separate incidents, including a police officer walking to work and a 12-year-old boy riding his bike near home. In many cases the car drivers fled the scene.
Earlier this month, two traffic wardens were physically attacked as they worked, while West Midlands police now have a dedicated team to clamp down on street racing on the city’s roads at night.
Adam Tranter, the cycling and walking commissioner for Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, said: “People are racing in the streets of Birmingham in their hundreds and causing collisions. They’re becoming so organised that they are arranging their own off-the-books recovery trucks because they know there is going to be crashes.
“You’ve also got people driving with nitrous oxide balloons in their mouths, and posting videos on social media. I think it stems from this mindset, that we see around the country, typically in young men, that this is a cool thing to do.”
But Tranter said blame for dangerous driving could not just be placed on street racing. “Cars are getting bigger, more comfortable, more protected. The more we lose sight of the fact that cars are very effective weapons when used incorrectly, we lull ourselves into a false sense of security.
“We forget that driving is probably the most dangerous thing we will ever do and as a normal citizen, it is the most likely way that you will kill another citizen.”
Last month, hundreds of people in 15 locations across England and Wales took to their streets to protest against dangerous driving, in a coalition movement that began life in Birmingham called Safe Streets Now.
Mat MacDonald, the co-founder of Better Streets for Birmingham, said: “I think it has been a long time coming. We’ve tapped into feelings that people have probably had for quite a long time about the incursion of traffic into our public spaces, and given it a voice. People are feeling more and more scared about walking down the street with their kids and they’ve had enough.”
It was as a result of Better Streets’ campaigning earlier in the year that West Midlands police launched Operation Triton, a dedicated team of officers to deal with dangerous driving offences, including reviewing the huge amount of footage submitted by members of the public.
But the force has previously said there are no active automatic red-light cameras in its policing area, and only six speed cameras working across the whole of Birmingham.
The problems the city is experiencing are not unique, but the city faces an uphill task to get people off the road in a place historically designed around the car.
MacDonald said: “Looking back, the architects of the postwar vision for Birmingham had a really idealistic vision of boundless autonomous travel for all people through cars, thinking it would lead to a better connected, enriched, happier city. So they built the city for the car and, lo and behold, people started driving everywhere.
“But what that shows is if we build the infrastructure for people to cycle, to skate, to walk, people will do that.”
Dangerous driving and reckless parking has permeated daily life in some areas of the city and affected the way people get around. “We’ve had a huge decline in people walking and cycling to school, because it’s not safe,” said Tranter.
On Stratford Road in Sparkhill, just yards from where the two traffic wardens were assaulted earlier this month, residents described the area as a “wild west” for motorists. At about midday on Thursday, numerous cars could be seen parked on double red lines and on pavements.
Barbora Bendikova, 26, a pharmacy assistant, said: “It’s terrible. I don’t think anyone abides by the rules. People park wherever they want to. When I’m walking with the pram, you have to wait for the car to move to get past. Cars drive up and down all the time speeding. People think no one is going to do anything about it.”
She said her family often got stuck at home when people parked their cars at the bottom of their driveway, forcing them to hunt around businesses nearby to locate the driver and get them to move. “We’ve emailed councillors about it but nothing happens.”
Rashid Khan, 40, who runs an opticians on the road, said: “It’s like the wild west here, people parked wherever and nothing happened. It’s been going on for years but it feels like recently traffic wardens have started enforcing it, coming down hard, and that has upset people.
“But I’m in favour of it. It does create some sort of order at the very minimum.”
Liz Clements, Birmingham city council’s cabinet member for transport, said it was common for traffic wardens and highways workers to face abuse at work, with some being shot with pellet guns in one incident over the summer.
“We have to tackle the sense of entitlement that some motorists do believe that they can leave their vehicle anywhere, drive anywhere,” she said.
Clements said the council’s transport plan was working to improve walking and cycling routes, as well as reducing speed limits across the city and blocking through routes in the city centre. But she said undoing decades of car prioritisation was a challenge.
Clements said: “We’ve almost baked car dependency into the way this city functions, so a lot of people haven’t got a good option, or any options, for public transport. So we need to work on that.
“There are about 250,000 short journeys of less than a mile done by car in Birmingham every day. Those are the journeys that could be walked and cycled if people felt safe.”
But after Birmingham city council was forced to issue a section 114 notice last month, effectively declaring itself bankrupt, there are concerns road safety schemes could be in jeopardy, or take longer to implement.
MacDonald said: “We appreciate the context has changed, but we think these things should be protected from the financial difficulties the council finds itself in. There’s a yawning gap between the vision and the delivery on this so there’s still a lot of pushing that needs to be done.”
