Whistleblowing summary

SUMMARY OF ALLEGATION:

£1.8 BILLION of public money is being spent on trams and Sprint diesel buses to replace trains that have the unintended consequence of destroying other transport infrastructure, too. eg: Metro One now gives an inferior service for train users between Snow Hill Station and Shrewsbury because the principal station and railway lines have all gone for good to allow for trams.

WBHE is stopping for ever any future possibility of finishing the middle section of the Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance" when many millions have already been spent on every tunnel, bridge and viaduct for commuter, regional and even intercity trains!

Over £300 million is being spent to replace smart looking Platinum diesel buses with less frequent stopping Sprint diesel buses.  What is the point of that?

£1.8 BILLION would be more wisely spent on giving everyone fareless, electric buses with traffic light priority on 100% bus lanes on every dual carriageway to entice those wedded and welded to their motors to free up the road space for those who really do need their vehicles for their jobs.

7 June 2019

DEMOCRACY DENIED BY THE VERY PEOPLE WHO GO ON THE MOST ABOUT IT!

As regards Metro and Sprint spending, discussion and debate is excluded, quite apart from consultation and voting that are all conveniently overlooked as being irrelevant!  This is done to spend over £1.8 BILLION of taxpayers’ money, to 2026, in only part of the West Midlands, to increase road congestion and pollution, to worsen overcrowding on our commuter and regional trains and to ruinously accelerate the rise of greenhouse gases and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  £1.8 billion wasted at a time of austerity and poverty for many!

It seems that every political party, even the West Midlands Green Party, co-operated with this policy of scandal, idiocy and dictatorial behaviour by TfWM/WMCA.  It appears that not one local or regional political party has ever bothered to discuss any of this, let alone vote, in even one of their meetings. Including the Green Party, I believe.  I would love to be corrected. Will the Brexit Party do any better?

Certainly, not a single political party is sufficiently broad minded or, at all bothered, to hear a different point of view.

TfWM/WMCA remains strongly influenced by - even colluding with - the nation’s tram promotion group to continue the fifty year old policy of doing everything with Beeching’s closed urban railway lines in the Black Country, than to put the trains and stations back.  This summer, Metro trams and a test track are to go on the UK’s only mothballed, easily reinstated, half finished mainline railway - the Black Country Railway “of national strategic significance”. A tram stop and a £30 m innovation centre is to be built on the only feasible site for Dudley railway station that will also prevent the re-opening of the Black Country’s second railway line.  Hence, the second to be destroyed by trams and, in total, the fifth to be given over to everything but commuter and regional trains - and the kitchen sink!

Tim Weller timweller1@gmail.com 8 June 2019