A new 10 year Birmingham Transport Plan was formally adopted during a meeting of the City Council’s cabinet committee yesterday. It features an ambition to transform central Birmingham through the creation of a network of pedestrianised streets and public spaces, integrated with public transport services and cycling infrastructure.

But fears were raised over a suggestion that the Queensway tunnel – one of the busiest routes through the city centre – may be shut to private vehicles.

The plan states that access to the city centre for cars will be limited in future, with no through trips allowed. As part of this, it says different options will be looked at for the central section of the A38 Queensway including the possibility of rerouting traffic to an upgraded A4540 ring road.

The council’s Conservative group leader Robert Alden told the committee meeting: “The plan is very clear that private vehicles will not be going through the tunnel anymore. It says the tunnel will be repurposed; that will be disastrous for the city.”

He said the implications of such a move would be that “tens of thousands of journeys a day will be going above ground, worsening the air quality and worsening the congestion on the ring road”.

“Those journeys happen quicker, over a shorter distance and with less congestion in the tunnel system, which is underground and could easily have a filtration system to clean the air. It would be far better for air quality in the city than putting those people into traffic jams above ground.”

The council’s plan says the tunnel currently forms a ‘restrictive barrier segregating areas of the city centre and restricting growth’ and diverting through traffic onto the ring road could free up space for the creation of green spaces as well as active and public transport.

Conservative councillor Ewan Mackey urged the Labour controlled City Council to provide greater “openness and transparency” around its plans for the tunnel and added: “We have a situation where were are looking at reducing cars coming into the city while the public transport isn’t there to back it up at the moment.

“I would suggest getting the public transport system in place first and then you give people genuine choice.”

The Council’s cabinet member for transport and environment Waseem Zaffar told the meeting that there are currently “absolutely no plans” to close the A38 tunnel to private cars and said transport modelling would be carried out to assess options for interventions.

He urged Government to commit investment to ‘level up’ the city’s transport system and warned that continued reliance on the car would result in “a gridlocked city with hundreds dying every year because of air pollution”.