Transport
Coventry Transport Strategy
The Council adopted the Coventry Transport Strategy in December 2022, setting the Council’s objectives and vision for transport within the city. Core objectives are:
- Support the city’s economic recovery and enable long-term growth
- Deliver a sustainable, low-carbon transport system
- Ensure equality of opportunity
- Maximise health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.
The metrics contained within this report reflect progress being made towards achieving these objectives, and the role that transport improvements are making to do so, although as ever there is more to be done.
Implementation of the strategy is advancing with funding secured from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) and sources such as the Active Travel Fund to bring forward a range of schemes aimed at delivering a safe and sustainable transport network within the city. Examples are given below.
All electric bus city
Implementation of the £130 million project (£50 million Government grant, the remainder from the bus companies) to fully electrify the bus fleet operating in Coventry continues to progress, with orders being prepared by National Express and Stagecoach for the final tranche of electric buses to ensure that bus services in the city are fully electric by the end of 2025. Currently, 140 fully electric buses are operating in the city, which are running the majority of services fully contained within the city itself.
Electric vehicle charge point network
Using a mixture of Government grant and private sector funding, the Council continues to expand the public charge point network for electric vehicles across the city, with there now being 1,713 publicly available charge points in the city. To place this in context, Coventry has 499 EV charge points per 100,000 population, which is highest number of charge points in the region and the highest in the country outside of London.
This investment has supported an increase in the number of electric vehicles registered in the city, with around 2,200 registered in late 2023.
Cycling infrastructure
The Council has constructed around 5 km of segregated cycle routes linking Coundon and Binley to the city centre, and these are already seeing significant increases in the level of cycling on both these corridors, with 350 cyclists a day using the Binley Cycle Route.
During 2024 further improvements will be made to the route linking the city centre to the University of Warwick, with the Lynchgate scheme due to be completed in the Summer and work due to start on the extension of the Coundon cycleway towards Keresley later in 2024.
The delivery of a safe core cycle network that enables cyclists to complete the bulk of their journey without sharing road space with cars is essential to support the Transport Strategy and One Coventry objectives of achieving a healthier population. Sharing road space with traffic is identified as one of the key barriers to cycling when our residents have been surveyed, with many people wanting to cycle more, for environmental and fitness reasons, but being put off by the prospect of having to cycle in traffic.
The West Midlands Cycle Hire scheme continues to be successful in Coventry with, on average, around 6,000 journeys per month being completed.
A45 Eastern Green Junction
The new junction on the A45 that will provide the main access to the Eastern Green SUE comprising around 2,500 new homes and 15 hectares of employment land was completed in Summer 2024. The scheme was funded by Homes England and the housing developer and means that work can now progress on the building of the new community.
Road safety
Reducing the number of people killed or injured whilst using the transport network remains a core priority and progresses continues to be seen in reducing the number of casualties, with 491 casualties in 2023 compared to 533 in 2022. However, whilst the overall trend is positive, there was a slight increase in serious injuries and fatalities from 90 to 96.
The Average Speed Enforcement programme continues to be implemented on the main roads across the city, with the Holyhead Road, Allesley Old Road and Hearsall Lane routes all added to the programme during 2023/24. The programme has been successful in achieving reduced traffic speeds on these routes and will be rolled out to a further four routes during 2024/25.
The School Streets pilots, which will see roads closed outside four schools during the times of day when children are arriving at or leaving school will commence operation in September 2024 to improve the safety of road users, and especially vulnerable road users.
The Earlsdon Liveable Neighbourhood project is now being implemented following an extensive community engagement the has seen the scheme co-designed. The scheme is aimed at re-purposing streets to make it easier and safer for people to walk around their local community, whilst retaining access for those who need to use a car and for service traffic.
Work also continues to upgrade traffic signals to make them operate more efficiently and to provide improved crossing points for pedestrians, with further funding having been secured to deliver improved crossings during 2024/25.
Maintenance
Road and footway condition data indicates that Coventry’s network is, despite financial challenges, in good condition, with a particular focus during 2022/23 having been to improve the condition of the footway network. Every traveller is a pedestrian for all or part of their journey, and therefore maintaining the footways in a good condition is essential.
Inflationary pressures, especially in the construction industry, remains a particular challenge, with the price of the raw materials used in highway maintenance increasing significantly, but work continues to maximise the efficiency of the maintenance operations as well seeking to supplement current budgets to enable more extensive maintenance programmes to be undertaken.
Our footway condition remains unchanged overall. The reasoning is that condition assessment methodology has changed following the capture and review of three years detailed visual inspection data.
Our condition is now measured in a completely different way and as such the two measures provided within the plan should not be compared as they do not align.
Our true position remains unchanged, and we continue to have high volumes of defective footways compared to other authorities. This is because we have a much greater percentage of paved footways, prone to cracking and lifting. Most other authorities have mainly asphalt footways.
Public transport
Whilst the Council does not operate bus or rail services, it does work closely with those companies and agencies who are responsible for them. Patronage on both bus and rail services remains significantly below 2019 (pre-covid) levels, and this has created significant financial challenges for both the bus and rail industry, but it is noteworthy that within Coventry bus patronage has recovered more quickly than in other areas of the region. The introduction of the new electric buses is likely to be a factor in this recovery.
However, options for the future delivery of bus services regionally are under review, and the Council will work closely with the WMCA to consider these options to get the right solution that will best benefit our community.
Working with Transport for West Midlands, the West Midlands On Demand service, which provides door-to-door public transport to supplement standard public bus services, has been expanded to cover the full city and incorporates the former ring and ride service. The service currently carries around 1,000 passengers per week with a satisfaction rating of 4.5/5 on average.
Utilising the Bus Service Improvement Plan grant, the public bus service network in Coventry has remained broadly similar to previous years, and the investment from All Electric Bus City means that the bus fleet in Coventry is modern. There will be further challenges to the bus industry, however, if patronage remains at current levels.
The rail network has faced similar challenges, not helped by the ongoing strike action, and service reliability on the Leamington – Coventry – Nuneaton line remains poor, with a high level of cancellations. New trains have been introduced on this route, however, and this will provide an opportunity to improve reliability and attract more people back to the railway.
Coventry to London fast services are progressively returning to a frequency of three trains per hour, and the changed timetable has seen two trains an hour running non-stop to London, giving a journey time of only 54 minutes. This will again provide an opportunity to attract passengers back to the railway.