BIRMINGHAM TO LOOK AT RAPID TRANSPORT IDEAS
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EXAMINATION of possible rapid public transport systems for Birmingham is to begin in earnest soon. The Minister of Transport, Mrs. Barbara Castle, has now written to the council suggesting the setting-up of an investigating committee.
The committee, which will include Ministry and Corporation officials as well as council members will look at rapid transit methods and routes "overhead and underground as well as on the surface".
One possible route for rapid public transport has already been suggested in the report of the Technical Committee of the West Midland Transport Study.
The committee had in mind the "old Great Westernmain railway line from Wolverhampton (Dunstall Park) to Knowle and Dorridge—if this was closed for normal rail service.
About 20 per cent of the total employment in the West Midlands conurbation lay within a band half a mile wide on either side of the line between Wolverhampton and Acocks Green, it was pointed out. A link to Dawley New Town was also mooted.
A second obvious route for investigation is the line of A38 from Rubery in the southwest of the city to Erdington in the northeast.
Along much of the route there are double carriageways which might provide space for monorail.
A south-west to north-east rapid transit system might also have branches to the commuter town of Chelmsley Wood on the east and connections with Redditch New Town and any other expansion scheme in the southwest.