Please remember that, in your position, you can ask for commuter and regional trains on the double tracks that don't get Metro or the VLR test track - nearly 50 Kms for passenger/freight trains to relieve chronic congestion on M5/M6 and main roads.
On page 30, here, W Midlands Rail Executive in Oct 2018, were wanting passenger trains and two stations between Stourbridge Junction and the Canal Street tram stop on the tram line/railway line. Look for the green line on the map with two stations marked. You'll need to enlarge it.
In that case, they might just as well put the trains all the way through to Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield and Derby!. Plus nine stations all for less than £200 million on 56 Kms, instead of half a billion for trams on 10.7 Kms!
Please remember that in the most outstanding democracy in the world, a world-beating democracy in fact, there has not been a single debate, let alone a vote in any of the seven council chambers in the West Midlands about spending Metro millions and, it taking over perfectly good railway lines to give us a multi-modal, multi-mixed up mainline railway. Hopeless! Not one debate or vote since Metro started in 1981. This is no better than China - in the news this evening.
I would like you to join me in asking about the complete absence of following the most basic democratic requirement of a properly conducted debate and vote before going ahead with spending £15 BILLION to 2040, to replace some bus routes and railway lines with mainly Metro trams. Edinburgh City Council debated and voted first, I think in 2018 and, certainly, in 2019 before going ahead with their new tram extension to Leith and Newhaven. The vote went 36 to 26, if I remember correctly. The Edinburgh Council Conservative Group were opposed and voted against on the grounds of cost and because the inquiry into the shenanigans and failures over the first tram line was not complete.
Scotland seems to have higher standards and does things correctly as regards elected members being properly informed over the full implications of big decisions. Our councillors, in all seven authorities, need to be fully informed of both the pros and cons of reinstating a £15 BILLION tram network. A network, the first of which they saw fit to completely obliterate in the 1950s and, since the 1980s, are reinstating on the railway network and roads! Instead of restoring our railways, first.
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