Multi-modal transport is a mix up mish mash!

Dear friends - and our Transport representative, Trevor Eames    PLEASE RESPOND with your own thoughts/ideas/opinions!

I would love us all to campaign for a more sustainable, safer and fairer world for our children and grandchildren.

SUMMARY

Public transport continues to be divided up, broken up, into Heavy Rail trains, Light Rail trams, Very Light Rail trams and Ultra-Light Rail Stourbridge Shuttle trams.  In addition, 2nd Class buses and First Class Sprint buses.  It all means more confusion, waiting around and, as a result, a slower and complicated journey for those thinking of others and leaving the car at home.

MORE DETAIL

HS2 will, of course, reduce overcrowding for those travelling between the Big Four cities (London, Brum, Manchester, Leeds). However, the intercity stations, between the Big Four terminus city stations, that HS2 is too fast to stop at, must continue.  That means the intercity trains will continue to have priority on the intercity lines.  So nothing is gained.  If there is not enough seating on the intercity trains, put more carriages on!  And, in any case, the HS2 trains are planned to join the intercity lines up to Glasgow and Edinburgh, north of Manchester and Leeds.

First Class for the Big Four.  Second Class for all the other intercity stations missed out but, they must still have a second class service.

BUSES PUSHED OUT onto narrow roads with parked cars and diversions  

I have now checked out Broad Street.  It really is utterly impossible for buses to use that road ever again. Pavements are widened and, at tram stops, the road is narrowed further.  There are two bus shelters opposite Centenary Square but no others until you get to the 'Hagley Rd/Francis Rd bus stop on our, W side of Five Ways.  The intention is to take the tram onto Bearwood, along Hagley Road.  However, this simply means multi-modal mix up with more changes and delays.  And, at the most colossal expense in cost and in weight of greenhouse gases at a time of climate and ecological emergencies that WMCA has declared.  The money should be going for electric buses and Fare Free Public Transport for the young and middle aged, to end that discrimination against them.

Eleven bus routes travel down Hagley Road and they will all get tied up and delayed by the trams.  Far better to have electric buses directly on roads without the railway tracks needed for the "bus on rails" trams on roads and railways!

Since I moved to Halesowen in 1976, the authorities have been turning railways into roads, homes and trading estates.  Since, 1981, with the introduction of Midland Metro, they have partly rebuilt the tram network they destroyed in the 1950s with trams on two mainline railways, instead of commuter and regional TRAINS. First, railways into roads and then roads into railways, as tramways!!

The railway trains are a poor relation to the swish, smart, showpiece, super extravagant trams that keep getting involved in accidents with cars!  And tracks that need replacing after only five years, at a cost of £5 million of deadly greenhouse gases!

Tim