This is the first year that I will be going into an election as a Councillor, and the few weeks have been incredibly busy as we try to get everything dealt with before the election is officially called. In addition to all the usual work in the ward, trying to help out in other wards around the city, and preparing an election campaign, we have had the Council Budget meeting, plus various meetings about District Budgets. A group of us went to Portsmouth to look at their Highways PFI for a Transportation Scrutiny - a very interesting day, but 7 hours on a coach is not the best way to spend a Friday.

I believe our next visit with Transportation will be a trip on the No 11 bus to look at the showcase scheme - given the general antipathy towards buses and bus users from the Tories and Lib Dems, it seems unlikely that any of the other showcase schemes will be started anytime soon. We did manage to get a call-in on a decision on the Tyburn Road bus lanes (though only because one of the Tory Councillors failed to show up to the meeting, and one of the Lib Dems had a crisis of conscience and voted with us) but to no avail. Bizarrely the report on this issue states that cars 'lane hopping' between the inside and middle lanes would be a safety issue, but apparently if HGVs were to do this there are no safety concerns. So that's all right then.

I was interested to read the new report by Anne Power about Birmingham's housing. As Political Hack has pointed out, the Cabinet Member might wish to ignore the report, but it does highlight that community based housing organisations can work, and should be considered as real options. There are numerous groups across Birmingham doing Section 16 work to look at local management models, in addition to the Pathfinder projects in Hodge Hill and Northfield, but Birmingham has fallen behind in taking devolution and neighbourhood management of housing forward, and we have yet to hear any proposals on improving the service.

The saga of the Tyburn Road Bus Lanes continues - we had another meeting this morning as we had requested a call in. Back in September 2004, an experimental Traffic Regulation Order was used to suspend the bus lanes on a length of the Tyburn Road. This order expired on 9th March 2006, meaning that the bus lanes should have been reinstated (as the experimental order has a maximum life of 18 months). However, as a spokesperson told the Birmingham Mail last week, and as we were told today, someone in the Highways Department has found that they have a one week 'grace' period, meaning that the new Order (which will be permanent) does not have to put in place until 17th March 2006.

The issue today was about what should have happened when the experimental order expired. The bus lanes will have to be suspended again in June, due to works on the M6, so the principal argument from Highways was that it would be confusing to drivers to open the bus lanes again only to suspend them in a few weeks. It has also been agreed that there will be a period of consultation after the roadworks end (in December 2006) about whether the suspension should be continued or not. Objections have already been received from Centro, Travel West Midlands, Transport 2000, and over 2000 residents, whereas comments in support of the suspension appear to be limited to private conversations which the Cabinet Member has had.

The argument today was that the bus lanes should be reinstated and we should take that opportunity to do a proper, independent evaluation of their use, effectiveness and the impact on journey times. We were presented last month with reams of figures relating to traffic flows after the suspension, but the only comparision figures provided were from 2001. During our discussions last month we talked about changing the bus lanes to cover peak times only - this would be an ideal time to experiment and start trying to live up to the commitments that the City has made regarding increasing bus patronage. However that opportunity has been denied because the Cabinet Member would rather ignore bus passengers than risk confusing motorists by taking an innovative step.

We lost the vote to call in, predictably enough. At last month's meeting we won a request for call in vote because one of the Liberal Democrat Councillors voted with us, saying he could not put his name to the removal of bus lanes. He then wrote this post which picks up on the argument that we need to gather more evidence and consider why bus lanes do or do not work. So why didn't Martin Mullaney attend or send apologies to today's meeting?