GOOD NEWS

GOOD NEWS

Twelve months ago, in the  December 2015 Strategic Transport Plan, the plan for "buses on rails" on the 9 Km Camp Hill line was reversed and now it is down for passenger trains and stations to be, eventually, reinstated.

From September 2016, the DfT is wanting the tocs, that are up for franchise renewal or commission, to see if Worcester, Black Country, Derby man line could be progressed and delivered in the future." (W Mids Stakeholder Briefing Document, Sept 2016, paras​ 5.49 and 50)
In October 2016, Chris Grayling talked of "a looming capacity crisis on our railway network."  Completing the 120 Km strategic railway between Worcester and Derby would be a huge help to him, if you could please mention it to him when you next meet him, Stephen.
In November 2016, a TfWM/WMCA report spoke of "the expansion of the West Midlands Rail franchise."  (See quote 1, below.) But, it meant only passenger trains on Brum's double track railway lines, not ours in the Black Country!

EVIDENCE:

106 Kms = 56 Km Stourbridge to Burton - still nothing after 50 years

            +39 Km Camp Hill and Sutton lines - now all down for trains and nothing for "buses on rails" even after 35 years of being very trying.

            +11 Km Walsall to Wolverhampton - still nothing after one failed attempt (it went off half cock) at a passenger train service last decade.  They chose the wrong line. It should have been Stourbridge to Burton but, that was down for "buses on rails" on 20 Km, to be achieved in tiny, nibble sized chunks.

Meantime, over the last 50 years, London and the SE got

• new underground and overground lines
• Eurotunnel
• HS1
• Cross Rail 1 - and, Crossrail 2 to go ahead.
• Docklands Light Railway - superb, driverless, automatic trams swinging in, out and through buildings and linked at both ends to the London Underground.
• Thames Link

The Black Country and Brum got:

• "buses on rails" as second best, on a train line, after Terry Davis MP of Hodge Hill stopped Midland Metro going through his constituency of Hodge Hill in the 1980s or 90s.
• Wolverhampton Low Level railway station demolished and 2 Kms of double track railway line lost.
• Only one railway re-opening of 6 Km between Moor Street and Smethwick Galton Bridge
• The Brum, north-south, Cross City line was upgraded, with two or three new stations, I believe (University, Five Ways - any others?)
• Brum is still bereft of its desperately needed additional tunnels and platforms at New Street.  But, a £3/4 billion, magnificent, 'all that glisters is not gold' shopping centre and diesel perfumed railway station tagged along as an afterthought in the basement of the John Lewis store.
• A 1990 (circa) monorail at Merry Hill Shopping Centre that soon closed when it fell short by 400 metres of the Worcester, Black Country, Derby nationally important railway line that was never reinstated then or, still to this day.  This must be the absolute exemplification of both stupidity and incompetence! Or, was it meant to be one ever so funny joke by the authorities and I have missed the humour of it all?

The rest of the UK got:

• 6 trams systems - Blackpool, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram, Croydon Tramlink, Nottingham NET and Edinburgh (Edinburgh cost for 14 Km and 15 tram stops is over one billion pounds over the 30 years of loan repayments and, the bus is quicker and cheaper, anyway - in 2016!)
• UPDATE: In April 2018, 6 out of the 7 have extensions planned or being built.  Not Croydon.