Hi Nick and Jesse - this is an outrage
Service Total subsidy 2022/23 (source: Transport for W Midlands)
Bus £9.695m - for 1000s of Kms of bus routes in the TfWM area
Metro £7.6m - for only, after 43 years, 23 Kms of tramway, of which 18 Kms are on the first mainline railway destroyed by the tram.
When there are only 23 Kms of one Metro tramway, this is a scandalous amount of public money going to a totally unnecessary but highly prestigious and extravagant transport mode to replace or duplicate bus and train services that desperately need the money and upgrading.
The massive Metro subsidy should be going to extend the concessionary bus fare scheme to everyone - called Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT). Guardian editorial on 8.1.24 on FFPT, I have just heard on the Radio 4, 'Today' programme. And to boost bus use at the expense of trams and car commuting by doing this
This is outrageous:
2015: £7 m/Km to rebuild the 56 Kms railway through the Southern Uplands of Scotland from Edinburgh to Tweedbank.
2023: £144 m/Km for the Birmingham Eastside Metro through Digbeth. Expected to open in 2027!
The principal Black Country Mainline Railway, between London and Edinburgh,
destroyed by 6.7 Kms of trams, plus Very Light Rail (VLR) innovation centre and test track put on it!!
Next up for destruction is at Merry Hill Shopping Centre - nature, public open space and housing land - all for Metro when it could stay on the mainline railway down to Stourbridge Jct and the national railway network!
Expose this idiocy, this immorality and wrong doing. Write to the VIPs responsible, above.
TIM WELLER 0791 380 4363
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