Dear candidate, will you fix our road safety emergency?

Imagine a Birmingham where you walk or wheel easily along clear and well-kept pavements. You can pause on a bench for a moment of rest. There are trees to provide shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.

As you move around your community, you cross the street quickly and safely, confident that other people will give way.

Streets are calmer, which has made cycling an everyday option to many. There is a network of safe cycle routes connecting the city. You can park your bike securely in an on-street hangar or hire an e-bike affordably at the end of your street.

Most children walk, scoot or cycle to school, often with family or friends, getting fresh air and exercise to start the day ready for learning. After school, they can play and spend time outside safely, close to home.

For longer trips, your local bus, train or tram is reliable, affordable, frequent and available day and night. They get you to where you need to go on time. You tap your card and get charged the best fare for your day.

When you do need to drive, journeys are smoother and less stressful. Drivers are patient, roads are safer, and running a car costs less. If you don’t own a car, you can easily rent one when you need it.

You can move around your city freely, safely and confidently. You feel healthier, you spend less, and you have more time for the things that matter.

This is a Birmingham with better streets.

Getting around Birmingham too often means putting yourself at risk. Pavements are obstacle courses and road rules are rarely enforced.

The city has declared a road safety emergency. Someone is killed in a collision every two weeks, and someone is seriously injured every day. Beyond the personal and community tragedy, crashes cost Birmingham £205 million each year.

Every day, 10 million vehicle miles are driven on our streets — creating congestion that costs the city £300 million annually and contributing to 900 early deaths each year from poor air quality. Yet a quarter of car trips are under a mile, journeys that could often be made by walking, wheeling or cycling. With almost one third of Birmingham’s adults and a quarter of 11-year-olds obese, encouraging more people of all ages to walk, wheel or cycle would have a dramatic improvement in their health.

Birmingham features in 8 of the top 15 postcodes for uninsured drivers. Every road policing operation results in car parks full of vehicles confiscated for breaching the rules of the road.

Around a third of children are driven to school. Families often say they’d prefer to walk or cycle, but unsafe roads, dangerous parking, and traffic congestion make that difficult. As a result, the school run adds thousands of car trips each morning, worsening congestion and air quality around school gates.

Car ownership places a heavy burden on families, taking up around 25% of household income. At the same time, one in three Birmingham households has no car, and many who rely on cars do so because the alternatives feel unsafe, unreliable or unavailable.

Public transport faces major challenges. Buses are delayed by congestion, trams serve limited routes, and train timetables are frequently disrupted. Ticketing remains complex. The current network doesn’t meet the needs of our growing and diverse city.

Cycling and walking should be safe and practical choices, but many residents don’t feel protected. Only those using our limited patchwork of separated cycle lanes can travel with confidence — though six in ten people say they would cycle if more safe, direct and lit routes were built. Pedestrian access is frequently impeded by poorly parked vehicles.

In residential areas, speeding from through-traffic has become a major concern. Shortcutting traffic has risen 72% since 2009, often overwhelming local streets and junctions never designed for heavy flow. Outcries and petitions for road safety improvements fill councillor inboxes.

Funding for transport projects exists but delivery remains inconsistent. Progress can be slow and fragmented, leaving many disconnected from essential services, education, and employment.

Birmingham needs a joined-up and consistent approach to transport that puts its citizens’ safety, health, and connectivity at its heart.

What will you do to make our streets safe?