Through a new award of advertising rights to bus shelters, the route is set to generate millions of pounds for public transport promoter Centro to spend on passengers.

Centro boss Rob Donald and Stevie Spring, chief executive of outdoor media company Adshel, today signed the deal – described as one of the advertising industry’s biggest contracts of its kind.

The tender covering the whole of the West Midlands will provide a guaranteed income to Centro over the next ten years. Together with a profit-sharing element, it could raise more than £60m to be be ploughed into the upkeep of shelters and other improvements for the bus network.

Adshel was awarded the contract following a highly competitive pitch, as part of a complete review of Centro’s shelter operation. The market leader in bus shelter advertising claims it has now secured the UK’s largest street furniture contract of the last 20 years. Three other companies have been awarded separate contracts for shelter maintenance, cleaning and development work for Centro from this month.

The Birmingham Outer Circle is one of the flagship routes targeted for investment – with new shelters and bus platforms, 27 interchanges, CCTV, 15 kilometres of bus lanes and satellite-driven digital displays to tell passengers when the next bus is due.

Together with the latest easy-access vehicles provided by private bus operators, the Showcase routes are starting the change the face of bus travel in the West Midlands – already the busiest network outside London.

“Every day in the West Midlands over a million people wait perhaps ten minutes for the bus and it rains on average more than 175 days a year – that shows just how important shelters are to making bus travel a more attractive option,” says Centro director general Rob Donald.

“We want to move from the days of the ‘humble bus shelter’ so that at key interchanges there are platforms for level boarding, full timetable and route information for passengers, digital displays and shelters that have seating and are well-lit. This new contract package gives us a sound financial base to deliver improvements for passengers across the West Midlands,” he adds.

Adshel will pay a fixed fee each year for the exclusive sales rights to advertising panels on more than 90 per cent of shelters throughout the West Midlands including the cities of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry.

“The West Midlands is the second most important advertising region in the UK after London,” comments Adshel chief executive Stevie Spring. “This new contract will strengthen our coverage of the UK offering a host of new and genuinely exciting opportunities for our advertisers,” she adds.

Centro is the publicly-funded body charged with developing and promoting public transport. Although the buses themselves are run by the private sector, Centro provides support infrastructure including bus stations, shelters and passenger information. The Passenger Transport Authority also makes a considerable contribution by paying for elderly and young people’s concessions and subsidising more than 200 socially-necessary services which the bus companies consider unprofitable.