The Hub Revolution
In Halesowen, near Birmingham, something new is taking shape. Where once there might have been another row of parking spaces, three mobility hubs now stand across the town, offering a range of bike hire, electric vehicle charging, travel information, parcel lockers, and social space. These are some of the UK's first network of mobility hubs, and they represent the culmination of two decades of European experience finally crossing the Channel.
A mobility hub combines multiple transport options and community services in a single location. They are designed to fit inside existing parking areas and small public spaces, making it easier for people to travel without using private cars.
The West Midlands pilot, funded by a £400,000 Department for Transport grant, may look modest compared to the grand infrastructure projects that typically capture transport headlines. But for Christopher Brown, Senior Future Mobility Developer at Transport for West Midlands, these practical hubs have huge potential.
"We wanted to be among the first in the UK to put these on the streets and see how they'd work in the West Midlands," Christopher explains. The question wasn't whether mobility hubs worked – two decades of European success had already answered that – but whether they could work here, in Britain's post-industrial heartland.
Learning from Continental Pioneers
Bremen, Germany, launched the world's first "Mobil.Punkt" stations back in 2003, pioneered by Michael Glotz-Richter, who was looking for new solutions to reduce cars on the road and reclaim street space. His insight was straightforward: if you make it easier to access multiple transport options in one place, people might just leave their cars at home.
The numbers speak for themselves. Bremen now has over 42 mobility hubs, and the city's 290 carshare cars have removed more than 4,200 privately owned vehicles from the road. The key, Glotz-Richter discovered, was strategic placement around thriving transit stops and targeting areas with high parking pressure – places where, as he puts it, "people are a little pissed off with car ownership."
Bremen's success sparked adoption across Europe. Belgium's Flanders region launched "mobipunten" in 2017, with more than 50 cities planning implementation within a year. The Netherlands followed with its own interpretation, integrating mobility hubs into new housing developments and creating "BuurtHubs" in Amsterdam that offer everything from shared cars to cargo bikes.
The key ingredient across all these implementations? They weren't just about transport, they were about community. The most successful hubs combined mobility services with social spaces, package lockers, bike repair stations, and even small shops. They became neighbourhood focal points, not just transport nodes.
A British Test Case
When Transport for West Midlands began exploring mobility hubs, they had a specific brief: use innovation funding to address social inclusion through transport. The question was what kind of intervention would actually work.
The team identified focus areas in East Birmingham, North Solihull, and the corridor between Birmingham and Smethwick – places where transport options were limited and social exclusion was a real challenge. But rather than deploying another app or digital solution, they chose physical infrastructure that people could touch, use, and gather around.
Halesowen wasn't the obvious choice for a mobility hub pilot. As Christopher puts it, "We knew Halesowen would be tough, it's not exactly a cycling hotspot." But that was precisely the point. If mobility hubs could work in a small town in the West Midlands – not in dense urban Amsterdam or cycling-friendly Bremen – they could work elsewhere in the West Midlands and the UK.
Confronting Community Concerns
When Transport for West Midlands presented their plans to the Halesowen community, some residents had concerns about anti-social behaviour and public safety.
"We transport planners see benches and shelter as positive community assets. But residents often wonder: what will people actually use these benches for?"
The gap between planning theory and lived experience often manifests in community resistance to well-intentioned interventions. The West Midlands team knew they had to prove their concept wouldn't become an attraction for street drinking or vandalism.
Six months into the pilot, the results have been reassuring. Transport for West Midlands' own research found that around 90% of people surveyed reported feeling safe in and around the hubs. Vandalism has been minimal, and the feared anti-social behaviour hasn't materialised. More importantly, people are actually using the services – the West Midlands Cycle Hire bikes at the hubs are performing well compared to similar schemes elsewhere in the region.
Unlike apps or digital services, mobility hubs need land. And getting that land proved tricky when no one knew what these things actually looked like in practice.
"Making something temporary actually cost more than installing it properly," Christopher explains. "So we decided: if it works, we'll leave it in place."
That commitment to permanent infrastructure created a chicken-and-egg problem. Landowners were reluctant to sign up for an unproven concept, but without working examples, it was hard to prove the concept worked. Only now, with the Halesowen hubs up and running, are those conversations getting easier.
Beyond Urban Cores
One of the most practical aspects of the West Midlands approach is its focus on smaller urban centres rather than city cores. As Christopher points out, places like Birmingham New Street are already mobility hubs in all but name – they offer intercity connections, regional services, and local transport options.
"The real transport gap is outside urban areas," he explains. "Mobility hubs give us a simple model for bringing everything together in local centres, instead of having the bus stop over there, parcel lockers down the road, and cycle hire wherever we could find space."
This represents a shift from the European model, which typically focused on major transit nodes. The West Midlands pilot suggests that mobility hubs might be most valuable precisely where traditional public transport is least comprehensive: in the suburban and peri-urban areas that make up much of the UK.
The challenge, as Christopher acknowledges, is making the economics work.
"The elephant in the room is profitability. Shared transport works fine in cities, but in these wider suburban areas? There is a large challenge to make this sustainable.”
The success of the Halesowen pilot has opened doors for expansion. Transport for West Midlands is now developing a business case for 14-15 additional hubs across East Birmingham and the Smethwick-Birmingham corridor, with installation planned for March 2027.
The next phase will take the lessons learned in Halesowen into other challenging urban environments, including sites on NHS land.
But the ambitions extend beyond the West Midlands. Richard Dilks, Chief Executive of CoMoUK, the national charity for shared transport that backed the pilot, sees potential for rapid national rollout.
"With further investment and focus from the government, this pipeline of innovative transport projects could be built up rapidly and the benefits felt sooner and more widely," he told Zag Daily this year.
The West Midlands pilot demonstrates that progress in transport doesn't always require disruptive new technology. Sometimes it means learning from neighbours who solved similar problems years earlier, then doing the hard work of community engagement and practical implementation.
As Britain grapples with achieving net-zero transport goals while addressing social exclusion and local economic development, mobility hubs offer a tangible solution. They won't solve every transport challenge, but they provide a practical framework for making sustainable transport options more accessible in precisely the places where they're needed most.