Why Centro has always wanted a network of tram lines rather than the more obvious, simpler, cheaper, easier to achieve Beeching reversals!
- Originally, only a network of tram lines throughout the W Midlands was thought to be able to reduce road congestion in Birmingham.
- Now SPRINT buses - the tram that thinks its a bus - is thought to entice car commuters out of their cars.
- Hence, we are still going to get Metro trams along Broad Street and part of Hagley Road, along with limited stop, super-smart SPRINT buses also to run the full length of Hagley Road as far as Quinton, only. These two along with the usual buses and vehicles of all kinds. Yet more congestion!
- The ITA/Centro have always considered the 200 Km of 15 Metro lines by 2000 was always their pet project from 1981. For 34 years our local councillors have been trying to empire build with trams but are now in their fourth decade of failure.
- First Railtrack, then its predecessor Network Fail (whoops, I mean Negligent Rail), have been uninterested in making more work for themselves by reversing the Beeching urban closures (only rural Beeching closures, as in southern Scotland this year). They can't even do electrification without having to be stopped (suspended) by the Sec of State, from June to September, as happened this year.
- Once you get the Establishment moving in the tram rut of road and rail running trams as the answer for congestion, instead of trains being returned, it is quite impossible to get them out of that rut. It needs a strong minded, free thinking political Master in power, as we have and have had in London.
- The people have not been sufficiently interested to question this conventional transport wisdom. Everyone expects the transport planners and councillors to get on with it - but, they don't get on with it. Hence, wrong decisions are made and never reversed or even achieved - apart from Metro One, only and, on a rail line too!
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