Midland Metro history and costs

Dear all

The Wikipedia account of Midland Metro tells us that it was in 1981 that a joint planning committee between the West Midlands County Council and Centro "formed a joint planning committee to look at light rail as a means of solving the conurbation's congestion problems.  In the summer of 1984 they produced a report entitled "Rapid Transit for the West Midlands" which set out ambitious proposals for a £500 million network of ten light rail routes which would be predominantly street running, but would include some underground sections in Birmingham city centre."

In 34 years and, still to this day, there has never been any kind of consideration given, it seems, to reversing the urban Beeching cuts for our own national and local trains that had been so successful for about 100 years.  To this day, no trams, let alone the much easier to achieve trains, on nearly 50 miles of freight lines for 50 years in a densely populated and growing urban conurbation!

When you don't deliver even just the ten Metro tramlines from 1984 when you are paid to do so, it must be a mixture of corrupt practice, incompetence and negligence.  Especially, when you were given 31 years to get it done.

Even after many years of many people working on the project, it was never delivered - yet, you all came up with even more!  Hence, I read: 

"The first of up to 15 lines was intended to be operating by the end of 1993, and a network of 200 kilometres was planned to be in use by 2000.^[7]   Annual Report 1988–1989, West Midlands PTE."  Fifteen lines and 200 Km (124 miles) in 12 years is preposterous and totally unrealistic, especially after their previous experience, above!

When after, say 10 years (1994) you are not being given the money to do the three tram lines - and, most were to be on rail lines that should never have had their trains and stations removed - you should have got the message and changed to something more obvious, cheaper and, therefore, easier to achieve, namely putting right the idiocies of the 1960s urban rail closures.  Yet, you and your predecessors have all gone on taking the money in salaries and expenses without, it seems, any feeling of unease, let alone guilt.

The Wikipedia account of Midland Metro history ends with this:

In 2005, "The Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) gave an overall cost estimate for British systems of £3.79 per light-rail vehicle-kilometre in 2003–2004, compared with £0.94 per bus kilometre in 2002–2003, according to Rapid Transit Monitor 2004. CfIT estimated that the fare required for Midland Metro to break even was twice that of Manchester Metrolink, London Tramlink and the Tyne and Wear Metro.^[89]"

Therefore, Midland Metro's running cost is four times more expensive than buses.  In addition, it seems, from the figures I have been given in recent weeks, Metro is ten times more expensive to build than reversing the rural Beeching cuts in depopulated southern Scotland for the return of trains.  That cost is £294 million for 29 miles, according to RailNews (March 2015).

In a letter dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, wrote, "light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."  To tell me that light rail Metro was needed to be put on the Black Country Line in order to be able to restore heavy rail services at a later date on that line is complete nonsense.  That idiocy is now repeated with the insistence that Very Light Rail must go on that intercity line but that it will not stop express and local trains returning at a later date (conversation with David Golding, Principal Strategic Planner, Network Rail at ITA meeting on 16.7.2015)  No wonder, I am thinking that there is something very corrupt, very wrong at the heart of Network Rail, ITA, Centro - and, for decades, too.  They all want express and local trains returning but want Light Rail and/or Very Light Rail, first to help get the everyday trains back!

This scandal over the misappropriation of public funds for trams on rail lines instead of trains (and stations rebuilt) has gone on for long enough.

Yours sincerely