I know, do you think they made a mistake by not letting through traffic under the BullRing Tunnel? .Also the new Masshouse area is a nightmare to travel through and not much of an improvement to be honest.
I go up to Birmingham city centre quite a lot taking photographs, so have plenty of time to watch the flow of traffic round the city centre. Below is my opinion.
For years Birmingham council have seen the Inner Ring Road as a concrete collar, strangling the city and limiting its growth. Most businesses and companies want to be inside the "inner ring road" and not outside it.
The inner ring road kept the city centre small, and provided a barrier for locals and tourists who want to venture outside that inner core. So, for example, the Jewellery Quarter would probably be much more popular if people did not have to navigate their way over the A38 between Snow Hill station and the 1970's library.
So the council have been removing or "softening" that Inner Ring Road concrete collar for the last 20 years or so.
This has included knocking down the Masshouse roundabout and nearby roads, removing the section of Inner Ring Road in front of New St station, and also removing pedestrian tunnels from UNDER roads and putting the roads under where the pedestrians walk (such as the bridge that links the area around Victoria Square and Centenary Square (as you come out the 1970's library).
While I think all these were the right things to do, this is of course a long term project and you cant do it overnight. But you now finish with a bit of a "hotch potch" where parts of the inner ring road still exist (and are being used) and parts of the Inner Ring Road don't exist.
So, for example, they have removed the inner ring road in front of New St station, but all that seems to have done is push traffic BEHIND the BullRing, and the roads round near the Hippodrome, and Arcadian and the Markets are now clogged with traffic, as they were never designed to take that much traffic.
Also many cars still come into Birmingham down the A38 from Spaghetti Junction, but then reach the large junction (near the old Fire Station) and then pour down James Watt Queensway to get to the car parks near the Bullring. But the cars then find themselves going round Masshouse and into Park St (behind Moor St station) a road totally unsuited to masses of traffic coming in to the city centre.
So it is a bit of a mess, with large dual carriageways round parts of the city centre, then narrow roads like Park St (and others) unable to cope with the traffic.
I would like to see the council push more people out to the OUTER ring road.
For example many people, as I said, clog up the roads round behind the BullRing and Hippodrome while they try to get along Moor St Queensway back up to the A38.
But if they directed traffic along Digbeth or the Bristol Road OUT of the city to the Outer Ring Road they could rejoin the A38 that way, avoiding the city centre.
Sorry to go on, but the inner city traffic has been a bug bear of mine for a while, as I spend so much time walking round the city centre.
I think the council have done some things right, but there is still a lot to do (and of course the council are not awash with money)
