Women and girls given priority for three-year public transport strategy
The ground-breaking West Midlands Safer Travel Partnership has set out new proposals to use crime-busting technology and put safety of women and girls at the centre of plans for the next three years.
The award-winning partnership, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has launched a new three-year strategy which sets out to not only reduce crime and anti-social behaviour on the region’s public transport network but make sure people feel safer too.
And the message is clear that with just 2.2 crimes or anti-social behaviour reported for every 100,000 journeys, public transport in the West Midlands is safe for the vast majority of passengers.
Key new initiatives include revising design standards for key infrastructure such as bus shelters, tram stops and bus stations to prioritise safety of women and girls travelling alone.
This includes making sure areas are well lit, promoting public help-points with video links to female control room staff, as well as more training for staff on the public transport network.
Further to this the plan sets out how the Partnership will harness the latest technology, including AI analysis, to help identify anti-social hotspots and trends to both detect and prevent issues.
Over the last two decades the Partnership, which is made up of Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), West Midlands Police (WMP), British Transport Police (BTP) and transport operators, has won awards for its approach to public transport safety.
In recent years it has pioneered the development of Transport Safety Officers (TSOs) – dedicated to tackling low level crime and anti-social behaviour. The team is growing and officers are now assisting other parts of the country to set up their own TSO teams.
TfWM’s CCTV control room, that has access to more than 5,000 security cameras covering the tram, rail and road networks across the region, proves invaluable in identifying and catching criminals as well as keeping the region moving.
West Midlands mayor Richard Parker recently went out on patrol with TSOs seeing how they patrol the network and keep people safe.
He said: “I want to make journeys easier, more affordable and crucially safer for everyone – especially women and girls. his new strategy shows exactly how we're working with the police and our transport partners to make that a reality."
“We know people can feel less safe at night, so we're taking action to reassure them. That means looking at how we design stations, stops, and shelters and how we deploy our transport safety officers.
“While incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour are rare, we have a dedicated team working around the clock to keep people safe."
Pictured (L-R): Patrol team: - Lee Clarke, Esha Sheemar, Mayor Richard Parker, Mohammed Naqshbandi and Nikodem Szewczyk
