The Residents’ Forum received the following update from the Birmingham Cycle Revolution team at Birmingham City Council:

“The Birmingham Cycle Revolution aims to get more people cycling around the city; making Birmingham greener, safer and healthier. Over the next 20 years, we have big plans to grow and develop Birmingham to secure our position as a world class city. We have £24.3m to make canal towpaths, parks and roads more cycle friendly, and to launch city-wide initiatives to get people on their bikes. Investing in cycling will reduce congestion and carbon emissions, improve access to jobs and education, and improve people’s health.

Birmingham City Council and its partners have now begun to deliver the Birmingham Cycle Revolution, and we wanted to take this opportunity to update you on progress.

Improvements to canal towpaths and green routes across the city started in February 2014 and are due to be completed by the summer of 2015. The project has also started looking at “Local Links” to join routes from canal towpaths and “Green Routes” across the city. Many of these are already out local consultation, and more to follow this month, with the intention of work starting to create the networks from the start of this summer.

The project includes cycling improvements on a number of key corridors, including Alcester Road, Harborne Road, Bristol Road, Soho Road, Lichfield Road, Birchfield Road and Nechells Parkway. These proposals will be consulted on over the summer.

All these will help to provide safer, more direct cycle routes to encourage more people to take up cycling in the city. There are many other initiatives to support cyclists, such as bike maintenance schemes, free bike loan and hire through Big Birmingham Bikes, new cycle hubs and school cycling programmes, and we’ll be developing these further in the coming months, along with other new ways to get people on bikes.

Details of all these, the proposed route improvements and dates for the local cycling consultations are all on a new dedicated Birmingham Cycle Revolution web page www.birmingham.gov.uk/bcr – we’ll be keeping this page up to date with progress on all elements of the Birmingham Cycle Revolution so please do visit regularly. We’ve also developed a project leaflet which you can download.

We hope you will join us and encourage everyone in your organisation to get pedalling. We believe the improvements will be a huge incentive to get everyone joining in. If you have any ideas or ways you can support the Birmingham Cycle Revolution, we would love to hear from you.

For more information on the project, progress updates or how you can get involved please contact the Birmingham Cycle Revolution team by email at cycling@birmingham.gov.uk, tweet us @BhamCityCouncil #bcr or ‘like’ Birmingham City Council on Facebook.

With best wishes,
The Birmingham Cycle Revolution Team”