Michael Denholm is not comparing like with like. The Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro tram extension will have 17 tram stops at every 630 metres on average, with six to ten trams an hour on only 6.7 Kms out of the 56 Kms that are available for passenger trains from Stourbridge to Burton on Trent. The empty 56 Kms is the desperately needed middle section on the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance", says Network Rail and DfT. Trams are costing £449 million for the full 10.7 Kms of road and railway running trams. Yet, Network Rail is parting with it knowing that Birmingham stations urgently need a mainline railway to bypass them to relieve "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" (BBC 'Midlands Today' reporter Peter Plisner)
The Taxpayers' Alliance, now on my side, says reinstating trains would cost £120 m, with three new stations between Stourbridge and Lichfield because every crossing for two motorways and every main road is already built for commuter, regional and intercity trains. Why spend nearly half a billion pounds to stop the 56 Kms from being finished with fast trains on the full 120 Kms between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby?
Our wasted, empty 56 Kms has new settlements in south Staffordshire and runs through the densely populated and traffic choked Black Country boroughs with their 1 m population and about 100 Kms of railway lines destroyed for roads and buildings over the last 50 years. The Metro tram has resulted in only three out of four platforms at Snow Hill now being used; is responsible for converting the impressive Wolverhampton Low Level principal station into an events and conference centre; and, for obliterating three or four Kms of double track railway line on either side of this former principal and busy station.
The UK tram promotion group has its HQ in the same building as Transport for West Midlands and the W Mids Combined Authority. Hence, for nearly four decades, the money has gone into trams instead of stopping the destruction of our railway network and in returning the fast trains to the UK's only, easily reinstated, mothballed, mainline railway "of national strategic significance".
From this damning evidence, every layman must agree that West Midlands Metro, since 1981 is responsible for the biggest and longest running scandal in UK finance/transport history. Yet, the slow "bus on rails" trams have the full and active support of every section of the railway industry, including the unions, Railfuture and every railway periodical, including 'Railnews'!
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