page_title: Birmingham
section_title: Transport
hierarchical_section_title: Birmingham / Transport
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view of Gravelly Hill Interchange, w:Birmingham a.k.a. Spaghetti Junction, September 2008.
context_page_description: Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. It is the second-largest city, urban area and metropolitan area in England and the United Kingdom, with roughly 1.1 million inhabitants within the city area, 2.9 million inhabitants within the urban area and 4.3 million inhabitants within the metropolitan area and lies within the most populated English district. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom.
  Located in the West Midlands county and region in England, approximately 100 miles from Central London, Birmingham, as one of the United Kingdom's major cities, is considered to be the social, cultural, financial, and commercial centre of both the East and West Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately 20 miles west of the city centre.
context_section_description: Partly due to its central location, Birmingham is a major transport hub on the motorway, rail and canal networks. The city is served by the M5, M6, M40, and M42 motorways, and possibly the most well known motorway junction in the United Kingdom: Spaghetti Junction, a colloquial name for the Gravelly Hill Interchange. The M6 passes through the city on the Bromford Viaduct, which at 3.5 miles (5.6 km) is the longest bridge in the UK. Birmingham is planning a Clean Air Zone from 2020, which will charge polluting vehicles to travel into the city centre.
  Birmingham Airport, located 6 miles (9.7 km) east of the city centre in the neighbouring borough of Solihull, is the seventh busiest airport by passenger traffic in the UK and the third busiest outside the London area, after Manchester and Edinburgh. It is a major base for Ryanair and TUI Airways. Airline services operate from Birmingham to many destinations in Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.
  Birmingham New Street is the busiest railway station in the UK outside London, both for passenger entries/exits and for passenger interchanges. It is the national hub for CrossCountry, the most extensive long-distance train network in Britain, and a major destination for Avanti West Coast services from London Euston, Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley. Birmingham Moor Street and Birmingham Snow Hill form the northern termini for Chiltern Railways express trains running from London Marylebone. Local and regional services are operated from all of Birmingham's stations by West Midlands Trains. Curzon Street railway station is planned to be the northern terminus for Phase One of the High Speed 2 rail link from London, due to open in 2026.
  The National Express headquarters are located in Digbeth, in offices above Birmingham Coach Station, which forms the national hub of the company's coach network.
  Birmingham's local public transport network is co-ordinated by Transport for West Midlands. The network includes: the busiest urban rail system in the UK outside London, with 122 million passenger entries and exits per annum; the UK's busiest urban bus system outside London, with 300.2 million passenger journeys per annum; and the West Midlands Metro, a light rail system that operates between Library in Central Birmingham and Wolverhampton via Bilston, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. Bus routes are mainly operated by National Express West Midlands, which accounts for over 80% of all bus journeys in Birmingham, though there are around 50 other, smaller registered bus companies. The number 11 outer circle bus route, which operates in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions around the outskirts of the city, is the longest urban bus route in Europe, being over 26 miles (42 km) long with 272 bus stops.
  There is currently no underground system in Birmingham; it is the largest city in Europe not to have one. In recent years, ideas of an underground system have started to appear, but none so far have been planned in earnest primarily due to the ongoing expansion of the West Midlands Metro tram network being viewed as a higher priority.
  An extensive canal system still remains in Birmingham from the Industrial Revolution. The city has more miles of canal than Venice, though the canals in Birmingham are a less prominent and essential feature due to the larger size of the city and the fact that few of its buildings are accessed by canal. The canals are mainly used today for leisure purposes, and canalside regeneration schemes such as Brindleyplace have turned the canals into a tourist attraction.
caption: The Gravelly Hill Interchange, where the M6 motorway meets the Aston Expressway, is the original Spaghetti Junction.
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