As the cycling and walking commissioner for the West Midlands, Adam Tranter has a difficult path to tread. On the one hand, he needs to encourage more people to ride bikes and take up forms of active travel, while at the same time stressing the need for safer cycling routes and infrastructure. It is not easy.
"I try not to unnecessarily scare people off," he tells Cycling Weekly . "My job is to get more people walking and cycling. However, I don’t think realistically, I can do that in good faith without getting more infrastructure."
Birmingham, the most populous of the seven constituent parts of the West Midlands, has a serious problem with cycling safety. Two men were hit by vehicle drivers in the city in just over a fortnight last moth, with another seriously injured.
"Anyone who spent time in Birmingham will attest that, certainly in the inner city, Birmingham has a really strong antisocial car culture," Tranter says.
"We cannot deny that people who are popping out, coming back from work, are losing their lives through no fault of their own, really. I don’t want to scare people off, but I don’t think that anyone who looks at the Belgrave Middleway, which is one of the roads where the cyclist was killed, thinks that’s fine, it’s okay. It’s not. We need to drastically make those roads much less hostile much more quickly."
After the second death of a male cyclist on 31 May, Tranter wrote to West Midlands Chief Constable Craig Guildford, […]
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