Region

West Midlands, England, UK

Summary

The i54 is technology-based business park under development on the boundary of South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton.

In August this year the site was given Enterprise Zone status. The aim of the Enterprise Zone is to accelerate local growth through a number of measures including tax exemptions and simplified planning processes.

Following the Enterprise Zone decision Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have announced that they intend to build their new engine plant at the i54 site creating around 750 jobs directly with many more expected to be created in the local supply chain. Furthermore, about 600 additional jobs will be created by other companies.

It is expected that these developments will act as a catalyst for growth in the surrounding area.

In order to allow the development potential of this area to be fully realised improvements to the local transport network will be required. The key radial route between Wolverhampton City Centre and the i54 site (Stafford Road) is already heavily congested with little scope for traditional highway improvements, such as road widening, bus lanes etc, due to the constrained, urban nature of the route.

Objectives

• mitigate the impact of a large scale new development at the periphery of a key regional centre within the constraints of an existing urban transport network where there is limited scope for increasing highway capacity.
• accommodation of new development in an existing, at capacity, urban environment by using new technologies and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

Partner

Centro

More information on: www.i54online.com/Home

Contact: Sandeep Shingadia