Dear Max - please forward this to your other commissioners and political advisors, especially to John Coughlan who knew me in the 1980s. And please forward my previous emails to each of them, too - thanks. Tim Weller
The ordinary people are the sacrificial pawns to allow the political leaders to have their grossly extravagant, fancy, flash trams gliding slowly through the city while 100 Kms of railway lines are mothballed or only partly used. STILL, NOT ONE RAILWAY LINE OR RAILWAY STATION IS RE-OPENED AFTER DECADES OF NEGLIGENCE!
Ian Ward was the leader of BCC for some years when he was also the Transport portfolio holder for the WMCA. Ian and his fellow members of the leadership team at 16 Summer Lane, along with the Conservative and Labour leaders, with their Opposition leaders, of all seven local authorities are wholly responsible for -
- Advising and guiding Andy Street, from his election in 2017 to put his multi-billion plan for 150 miles of Metro trams of 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040.
- That Jan 2020, £15 billion plan for mainly Metro and Sprint roll out duplication has now been cut to £6.1 billion between 2017 and 2032.
- Andy's 2021 requested, supposedly 'independent' report into Metro failures has still not been published. He was ignored!
- Birmingham leaders of all parties have always had 16 Summer Lane as their HQ for their glitz and glam road building and then road destruction projects - like the free-flowing Inner Ring Road built and then destroyed in two places to bring traffic lights and one way streets for worse air quality and congestion.
- Bankrupt Brum and the other six over ambitious, over spending authorities are all obsessed with trams since they destroyed the entire tram network in the 1950s and one third of the railway network from the 1960s to the present day.
- The last 43 years has seen Bankrupt Brum lead the way in getting only 23 Kms of tramway built in all those decades.
- Of the 23 Kms only 3 Kms are on roads to duplicate and replace buses.
- Nearly all of Metro is on a former mainline railway between Snow Hill station and Wolverhampton Low Level station that is now a conference and events centre!
- The second Metro line to be built in 43 years is finally being built, this very day, on an even more important, this time the UK's last, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
- Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership at 16 Summer Lane (Tram HQ for both the UK tram promotion group and the WMCA, incidentally), one of only two north-south UK mainline railways on the western side of Bankrupt Brum has now been wrecked with Light Rail trams due to operate in time for Christmas and a Very Light Rail tram test track, of all things, already in use!
- Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership, not only did they destroy their former free-flowing Inner Ring Road but also accelerated their own self-declared Climate Emergency by wiping out the London to Edinburgh, Black Country Railway that was supposedly safeguarded for TRAINS to return, not trams. What mind-blowing idiocy and incompetence!
- The remaining 50 Kms of fresh air on this railway line still await commuter, regional and intercity trains to take the pressure off "one of the worst railway bottlenecks in the UK" which is now grandly called, the £750 million Grand Central Station (Peter Plisner, BBC transport correspondent for the Midlands in the 1990s. On 'Midlands Today')
- Metro was supposedly extended to connect Snow Hill station to Grand Central. That was a lie. When it opened, we found that the Snow Hill tram stop soon had to be renamed because that tram stop and Snow Hill station were not linked, so you could not get the tram from Snow Hill to Grand Central! The funds for the work were granted by the gullible Transport Minister, Norman Baker MP who was misled or did not read his brief thoroughly.
- Bankrupt Brum/WMCA accelerated their 2019, hypocritically declared Climate Emergency by boosting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in totally unnecessary spending to increase road congestion and pollution in the West Midlands by giving their top priority to trams brought back on railway lines instead of trains re-introduced and, buses modernised!
- The Dudley Tram extension off the railway "of national strategic significance" into the privately owned Merry Hill Shopping Centre to boost the profits of the two international companies, will destroy much needed housing land, vital nature needed to counteract GHG emissions, and public open space.
- One sensible answer to chronic congestion, air pollution and Climate breakdown can now, at best, only ever be a TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN mainline railway between London, Oxford, Worcester, the Black Country, Derby and all stations north to Scotland!
- Bankrupt Brum and the West Midlands saw three major transport spending projects suspended in 2022 but totally denied by Top Man, Andy Street on Radio WM on 25 July 2023, in an interview with me!
A In the 1990s, Brum transport bosses forgot to connect the first tramway to both the bus and railway stations in Wolverhampton. Extending it cost over £50 m for 700 metres that took seven years to build!
B From tiny, overcrowded University railway station to Gigantic Towering Red Brick railway station cost another £50 m.
C Work on the ground, after 38 years of planning to build the 10.7 Kms Dudley Tram, began in 2019. This is the second Metro, this time on 6.7 Kms of the missing, unused 56 Kms of the 120 Kms railway
between Worcester and Derby, that had to be broken up into four phases in 2022. Phase One may open as a bonanza of a Christmas present, this year, after decades of 'work'!
Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership we see failure, low standards in performance and obvious incompetence.
EVERY NOLAN PRINCIPLE IS BROKEN - see here:
TO ALL Commissioners and Political Advisors - not just Max Caller:
You cannot separate out Bankrupt Brum's leadership from the shenanigans at the WMCA, as you are so anxious to do. They are all integral one to the other under Andy Street's guiding hand, along with Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry councillors and their very highly paid Chief Executives who have advised them so badly. All have missed the blindingly obvious, time and time again - even when told - for nearly thirty years by me!
With best wishes for some sensible action, at long last, where the pawns are treated as royal princes and the king and queen are brought to order on the Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry chess board.
Tim Weller
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