A transport legacy from Birmingham’s 2022 Games

Tony Bolden makes timely comments on the need to prepare Birmingham’s transport for the Commonwealth Games in 2022 (Letters LTT 25 May). Decades of neglect of investment in public transport in favour of policies to support car use are likely to make this a challenging exercise.

Birmingham will only be prepared for the Commonwealth Games if the facilities available to visitors make the transport part a pleasant and stress-free experience.

Overseas visitors:

Birmingham can expect to receive many visitors from the countries competing in the Games including families of the athletes and supporters of their country’s team. Not all competing countries are likely to have direct flights to Birmingham Airport and many may travel via Heathrow or Manchester airports. So the first requirement would be direct rail services from both these airports to Birmingham New Street. It would be very helpful to bring forward the proposals for the Heathrow – Reading rail link to be completed in time for the Games. With this, the obvious solution is a new rail service between Heathrow and Manchester airports via New Street. There would be a strong market for this service even without the Games.

UK visitors to the Games:

Whilst Birmingham enjoys very good rail access to most parts of the UK, a large population south of the Thames will have to endure the delays of travelling via central London using slow services and multiple changes of train. There are two solutions, both of which could be justified in their own right:

1. Extend the Manchester Airport – Birmingham – Heathrow service proposed above to Clapham Junction and East Croydon and possibly on to Brighton.

2. Build a new line from Bedford to Northampton so that Thameslink trains could be extended full time to Northampton and, for the Games, straight to Birmingham. This would give good rail access to Birmingham from most parts of Surrey and the South Coast with very convenient interchange at St Pancras after the Games.

In addition, Crossrail services could be extended to High Wycombe so that Birmingham is more accessible to Essex and East London.

Finally, there will be a need for later trains from Birmingham to all parts of the UK so people can get home after the end of competition each day. The planning of these will enjoy the benefit of the experience from the 2012 Olympics.

In Birmingham:

Everything possible needs to be done to make travel during the games a pleasant experience and not stressful. Ticketing has to be easy. People do not want to spend a lot of time queuing for tickets and a selection of all-routes tickets needs to available for one or three days or one or two weeks that can cover either one person or a small group of people. I found such a facility very useful when travelling with colleagues to a trade exhibition in Munich recently. Bus, tram and heavy rail services need to be very frequent in the evening as well as during the day. High capacity transport needs to be available to all the competition venues.