Richard Worrall wants cycles and railway reinstatements

Dear friends

I do understand that point, Richard and thanks so much for engaging with me.

It is much easier to have cycle-walkways alongside slower tram lines, as we have for some of the 20+ Kms between Grand Central and Wolverhampton.  That was a small crumb of comfort that you conceded in the 1990s when you destroyed 3 or 4 Kms of perfectly good urban railway line and a principal mainline station!  However, the unfinished 56 Kms are a completely different kettle of fish.  It is the middle, forgotten, wasted but vital, unfinished part of the full 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby via the Black Country.  The full length should be having even intercity trains on it, to take the pressure off Grand Central and to help our four Black Country boroughs to also flourish, like Brum.  In forty years, why have you NEVER wanted that?  Only HS2 since 2009!

At the very least, it should be having commuter and regional trains on the whole length.  In that case, it is much more difficult to put cycle-walkways alongside a narrow corridor that has fast trains back.  Therefore, the 13 Kms between Walsall and Lichfield must have the TRAINS back as the top priority before cycles and walking.  Otherwise, you are continuing to waste a railway "of national strategic significance".

Do you all get that, now?

I have even walked the existing cycle-walkway on the former mainline railway and asked two or three walkers if they would be happy with having the trains back.  One person even remembered the trains and all were OK about it and understood that one day the trains would have to come back.

You all also need to see the whole picture.  That is, the full line of 120 Kms that has tens of millions of pounds already spent on it for TRAINS and not cycles!  Every bridge, underpass, tunnel and viaduct are already built for TRAINS and not cycles.  Please, just do the full 120 Kms for the one mode of TRAINS and do not break it up into two or even three different kinds of trams, with all the attendant changing between the modes.

You say you want TRAINS, Richard!  In that case, please stop faffing about with trams and tram-trains (still trams) and do what the expert Victorian railway engineers built the line for - for fast TRAINS.  You would then have money left over to put TRAINS on the remnant of railway lines that you and your colleagues have not yet destroyed by bizarrely thinking that homes, shops, offices, roads and trams must run on them.  And, to modernise our Victorian railway!

Your really top priority for cycling and walking, after the towpaths, is the major, strategic, essential for commuting, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to be upgraded and made usable in even wet weather.

The state of this important superhighway is totally unacceptable - ESPECIALLY IN DUDLEY.

Tim Weller