The city has more bus stops per kilometre than any other city in Western Europe according to an article published in the Birmingham Post.
The revelation comes from a press release issued by Transport for West Midlands which is responding to passenger criticism of its recent decision to suspend 60 bus stops on major bus routes in a bid to speed up bus journey times.
There are more than THIRTEEN bus stops per kilometre in Birmingham, which compares to to three-and-a-half in Barcelona, two-and-a-half in Paris and less than one per kilometre in Berlin.
The three leaders according to the data presented are Birmingham (13.5), London (12.6), Manchester (9.9). Budapest is the closest European city, with just over eight.
It does have to be said that Birmingham and the West Midlands suffer in comparison to other European cities from not having complementary rapid transit systems such as metro lines and tram lines (there is only one surface metro line in the West Midlands). Our main means of “rapid” transit remains buses which is probably why there’s such a large density of bus stops. Culling the number is an attempt to return the description “rapid” to our transit system which has to compete with the congestion from cars.
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