Crucial indicator for being a climate activist!

My apologies for missing the meeting.  Now home after granddaughter's birthday party.

I want to emphasise, for I fear I am in a minority, that opposition to HS2 extensions, Metro "bus on rails" tram extensions and even Sprint extensions, is absolutely essential as an indicator that people are genuinely convinced that anthropogenic climate change is a reality and is made worse by these totally unnecessary, over-indulgent, luxury projects.

They are highly energy-intensive in their construction.  That means highly greenhouse gas emitting.  That means an acceleration of what we are now, quite possibly seeing, as the runaway greenhouse effect.

They also divert attention away from getting trains back on our region's half-used or mothballed railway lines.

And, all fail to address the bus priority measures that are essential for modal shift from car commuting to bus, train and tram.

Please tell me if you think I am wrong and why!  THANKS!

From Kidderminster, go to all destinations north, by TRAIN, missing out on Birminghams' stations.  Please ask your MP and councillors to get behind the regional push to finish the Kiddi to Derby railway line for freight and, commuter/regional TRAINS!  NOT Metro trams and Very Light trams and cycle hire on a principal mainline railway.  SEE MAP, HERE:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

to Mel Jones, BCC transport planner

Dear Mel

Please check this out:

I thought the whole idea, Waseem is NOT to spend, spend, spend as if there is no tomorrow but, to reduce our consumption of everything, to leave something for future generations to inherit.

You said at Carrs Lane the other Sunday that you wanted mass transit built to make public transport the best it could possibly be.  Or, words to that effect.  That means Andy Street's £15 billion to 2040 for underground and overground trams over 150 miles, 8 additional lines and 380 tram stops to duplicate/replace some buses and trains in the W Midlands.

Spending means yet more fossil fuel burning and more greenhouse gases to exacerbate the climate emergency.  The ongoing Metro "bus on rails" tram project is a very BIG spender indeed.  Especially, when all it does is duplicate or replace buses and trains and, to escalate the runaway greenhouse effect.

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

SUGGESTIONS:

Where there is a dual carriageway, electric buses on a dedicated bus lane with traffic lights switching to green as buses approach?  All other vehicles are confined to the outside lane.

Electric taxis and electric cars to use the nearside lane outside the rush hour?

Work bus to collect employees and then take them home at the end of the day?

Compulsory workplace parking levy to deter motorists - as in Nottingham?

Most car parking removed within the Clean Air Zone?

Don't destroy the remaining, last half of the once free-flowing, low pollution, inner ring road, A38.

Minimise our fossil fuel use and all consumption to act responsibly, effectively and logically over the Covid, climate, nature, ecological emergency.

Best wishes

to Alex Read

You made the good point, Alex that trams will entice more motorists out of their cars.  Unfortunately, much as I love using trams, this is done by replacing trains and buses that could also be made as desirable as trams with less impact on the Covid/climate/ecological/nature crisis.

You made the very true point that there are no stairs with trams that are a danger to use when the bus is moving.  Unfortunately, it is impractical to replace every bus with a tram.  Therefore, instead of complicating life with more changes and delays between the different modes of bus, train and tram (and LR, VLR, ULR, too), just make the two basic modes as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.

The WM Metro Trouble on its 40th birthday

6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of Metro!

SUMMARY:

• former mainline railway gets given to trams!

• even a former, principal mainline “of national strategic significance” (8 March 2018 letter from DfT) goes the same way!

• the cost is exorbitant for Metro trams - even on railway lines.

• £4 million for electric “bus on rails” tram; £325,000 for electric bus.

• major underpass for buses get excluded so trams can use it.

• buses diverted from their former fast, direct route because of trams!

SCANDAL 1 - former mainline railway gets given to trams!

1. West Midlands Metro tram project started in 1981, according to Wikipedia.

2. This was only twenty years after they had closed and dismantled the first tram network!

3. Soon realising that they had closed and destroyed many railway lines, they promptly set about rebuilding the tram network - but, on the closed railway lines not yet built on!

4. The first tram operation started in 1999 on a mainline railway between Snow Hill, Wolverhampton Low Level and Shrewsbury.

5. This meant that 25% of Snow Hill station was taken out of use.

6. Plus Wolverhampton's second, principal mainline station, Low Level.

7. Plus 3 or 4 Kms of double track railway line between Brum and Shrewsbury in the Wolverhampton area.  All gone for ever!

8. Then, came the next idiocy.  The tram was connected to the bus station only.  They forgot all about the railway station!

9. Never fear, next year, the tram arrives at the railway station, too.  Only 40 years late!

10. The Wolverhampton railway station for Snow Hill trains was isolated and remained redundant before becoming a conference and events centre.

It would have been quicker, simpler, more obvious and very much cheaper, even to this failed 11+ dunce, that the train could have taken the strain and, 15 years earlier, too!  Fewer stops for the commuter train but, always a bus to take passengers to the station and onwards at the arrival station.  Called integrated transport.

SCANDAL 2 - even a former, principal mainline “of national strategic significance” (8 March 2018 letter) goes the same way!

1. An even more important mainline railway has been blocked for freight and commuter/regional trains for 40 years.

2. This is the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline between Worcester and Derby.

3. The middle 56 Kms, between Burton on Trent and Stourbridge, is built with all motorway, road and canal crossings completed for trains but, not a single train has ever run for over 50 years.

4. Instead, they are using it for the 10 Kms Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) for trams, only.  Not trains!

5. Two short sections, totalling 6.7 Kms of the 56 Kms, will get Metro trams.

6. In the middle of the 6.7 Kms there is a Very Light Rail test track of 2 Kms through the former mainline railway tunnel under Dudley Castle Hill.

7. The section between Brierley Hill and Stourbridge may get the third kind of tram on the mainline - the Stourbridge Shuttle, extended from the world's shortest branch line between Stourbridge Town and Junction stations.

8. This makes for three kinds of "bus on rails" trams when, for 100 years, passenger and freight trains used it between Crewe/Derby and Worcester/Oxford/Bristol.  Talk about incompetence!

SCANDAL 3 - the cost is exorbitant for Metro trams - even on railway lines.

1. The cost is half a billion pounds for the light rail Metro "bus on rails" tram over 10 Kms.  £47 m/Km for the WBHE.

2. The cost is £75 m/Km for the Westside extension.

3. In Sept 2015, the cost of a 50 Kms rebuilt railway from Edinburgh to the Southern Uplands to terminate at Tweedbank was £7 m/Km

4. Compare this to the Metro Eastside extension at £133 m/Km.  How can they spend so much of our money like this?  A big difference between £7 m/Km and £133 m/Km!

SCANDAL 4 - £4 million for electric “bus on rails” tram; £325,000 for electric bus

1. This year, the Corporation tram tracks had to be dug up and relaid after only five years (2016 to 2021).

2. The 1999 tram had to have its tracks relaid near the Wolverhampton end after 16 or 17 years.

3. Three or four small businesses in Bilston Road lost custom and closed during the months it took for the tram line to be relaid.

4. The electric "bus on rails" trams cost £4 m each.  Chassis cracks in trams have closed the complete tram network since November 13th for at least four weeks.

5. The electric bus, minus the supposedly ever so important and essential rails, costs £325,000 each (source: email from Ember buses, Scotland).

SCANDAL 5 - major underpass for buses get excluded so trams can use it.

1. Eleven different bus routes used Five Ways underpass for many decades.

2. Tram not bus is top dog and every bus is now excluded from this quick passage into Broad St, to allow only the tram.

3. Two colossal concrete crash barriers allow only trams to pass each other in the tunnel.

4. Yet, TfWM insist that some buses will still use it - and Broad Street, too.

5. After they have smashed to smithereens the two concrete barriers they built this year?

6. Meanwhile, every bus is delayed by queues at the traffic lights above the tram-only underpass.

SCANDAL 6 - buses diverted from their former fast, direct route - it’s given to trams.

1. Everyone from Dudley town centre and Dudley borough has a slower and longer bus route into Brum centre.

2. And, our Dudley tram is now further delayed, to autumn 2024, before a much poorer rail service is finally reinstated.

3. This will be the mighty Dudley and Sandwell Metro taking Dudley borough residents into Brum via Sandwell, instead of the former commuter and regional train service direct from Dudley Castle Hill station into our Big Brother Brum!

timweller1@gmail.com 29 November 2021

Unless we provide a safe route, we are complicit with the people smugglers

 https://bit.ly/3xqvYL1

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard 

(CB)

Sharethis specific contribution

It really is not a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, because he raises the bar far too high. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for this appallingly well-timed debate, to which I would just like to contribute three sets of facts. First, overall refugee numbers are currently running at about half of where they were 20 years ago. We are not the preferred destination in Europe. We are, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, well down the list of preferred destinations.

Secondly, yes, small boat numbers are up, partly for the reason the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, adduced—the fences, patrols and heat sensors around the train tracks and marshalling yards mean that people are now driven to the even more dangerous sea route. But the principal reason clandestine numbers are up is that official resettlement routes are shut. Our schemes, in practice, no longer exist. We have closed the Syrian scheme, we have scrapped the Dubs scheme, we have left Dublin III and we have not got an Afghan scheme up and running. The largest group crossing the channel in the last 18 months, by nationality, were Iranians. In the last 18 months, 3,187 Iranians came. In the same period, one got in by the official route. How many came from Yemen in these 18 months? Yemen is riven by civil war and famine. None came by the official route —not one.

My third set of facts is as in the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The Home Secretary says that 70% of channel crossers are

“economic migrants … not genuine asylum seekers”.

That is plainly not true. Her own department’s data show that, of the top 10 nationalities arriving in small boats, virtually all seek asylum—61% are granted it at the initial stage and 59% of the rest on appeal. The facts suggest that well over 70% of asylum seekers coming across the channel in small boats are genuine asylum seekers, not economic migrants.

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That is hardly surprising because the top four countries they come from are Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria—not Ghana, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. These people are fleeing persecution and destitution, and the sea route from France is the only one open to many of them. Why not have a humanitarian visa, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said? The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, gave the answer to the objection of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. Those who had a valid claim for asylum would not be at peril on the sea.

Unless we provide a safe route, we are complicit with the people smugglers. Yes, we can condemn their case and we mourn yesterday’s dead, but that does not seem to stop us planning to break with the refugee convention. Our compassion is well controlled because it does not stop us planning, in the borders Bill, to criminalise those who survive the peril of the seas and those at Dover who try to help them. Of course, we can go down that road. But if we do, let us at least be honest enough to admit that what drives us down that road is sheer political prejudice, not the facts, because the facts do not support the case for cruelty.

HMG is the real criminal gang

I think Bob's "criminal gangs" are what the right-wing capitalists, entrepreneurs and free enterprise types are encouraging, are they not?  Except, our business people and entrepreneurs are often creating the public's greedy appetite for evermore consumer and ever so desirable products in order to boost their profits at the expense of future generations.

At least Bob's enterprising "criminal gangs" are meeting a desperate need created by the UK in not having a fair and safe system to take its correct quota of asylum seekers in a civilised process, without them having to risk life and limb.  The UK has a very uncivilised, barbaric policy of flimsy boat travel and then using the RNLI to occasionally rescue them, in order to get round their legal obligations under the Refugee Convention of 1951.

I am ashamed of living in the UK for our HMG'S immorality and incompetence in so many areas of life (and drowning).  HMG is the real criminal gang.

to Stuart Richardson

COPIED TO Customer Services for any factual error to be put right, please when you reply

Thanks, Stuart.  Yes, indeed.  You are quite right about the reporting back.  Simon emphasised joining a campaigning group.  I was wanting more of our individual responsibility to act, in all good conscience.

It is over 100 towns and cities, worldwide that have FFPT, I believe.  Dunkirk and Luxembourg in western Europe are our nearest.  It's a carrot, not a stick like CAZ and, would end the woeful discrimination against the young and middle-aged.

MY SUMMARY for campaigning against Metro:

1. Metro is a wealth flaunting, self-aggrandisement, vanity, 'solution looking for a problem' project.  NOW BEING INDEPENDENTLY REVIEWED by the light rail industry after so much has gone so very wrong -  for years!
2. Construction is ten times more expensive per Km than the rebuilding of Scotland's Borders Railway in 2015.  This alone should be Metro's death knell.  Scandalous.
3. Metro has destroyed two mainline railways, nearly a third; caused deaths from accidents and turned a Wolverhampton principal railway station into a conference and events centre.
4. 11 different bus routes are now inconvenienced by being pushed out into narrow back streets on a diversion because priority is given to trams.
5. Five Ways underpass is blocked by the two most colossal concrete crash barriers I have ever seen.  Only the tram can use it.
6. Every bus has to join the traffic jam and traffic lights on the Five Ways roundabout.
7. Public transport is made worse. Simply for prestige and a cosmetic, all style over substance sham.
8. It is unreliable and every tram has been out of service since 13 November for at least four weeks.
9. Diverts attention and money from addressing the climate crisis by doing these things:
    MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

MY SUMMARY for being against Sprint -

• the bus that thinks its a tram on its own dedicated bus lane without the railway tracks;
• fewer stops than Platinum buses but they must be retained for all the stops that Sprint speeds past;
• grass, trees and front gardens get taken, so yet more concreting of Nature;
• prestigious, flash, new and absolutely irresistible to the car commuter who will gladly flock to the new, smart-looking Sprint bus, of course;
• yet more splashing out on unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions to speed us to merry extinction!

Tim

NET ZERO, GROSS ZERO or just zero?

"A zero carbon house is one that does not increase the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere (net carbon emissions over the course of a year)."

Net zero = we don't emit more CO2 than we soak up.

Gross zero = bare minimum of all greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted.  A very necessary and worthwhile attempt to achieve that bare minimum existence!

Please could you explain what you mean by zero "net carbon emissions" that I have always felt is a loophole to avoid more stringent lifestyle/behavioural changes.  I'm striving for gross zero of all greenhouse gases (GHG).

And how do you measure net zero?  Gross zero is measured by being totally off-grid for both electricity and gas, isn't it?  Net zero must depend on peat, soil, plants absorbing CO2.  Is that right?  Yet, forests are burning in hotter summers and peat continues to be depleted and degraded by drought.  Ten of the most important forests are now giving off more CO2 than they absorb, I read the other week in the Guardian!

We can't have the lot AND a planet fit to live in

 We can't have the lot AND a planet fit to live in ...

Integrated Rail Plan cancels E arm of High Scam 2

Grant Shapps said the Oakervee review of HS2 had shown a rethink was needed, and a subsequent National Infrastructure Commission report meant “a flexible approach” and “strengthening regional rail would be most economically beneficial”.

The Conservative MP Huw Merriman, the chair of the transport select committee, said the announcement showed “the danger of selling perpetual sunlight and leaving it to others to explain the moonlight”. He said ministers had long said it was not “either/or” HS2 or NPR, while people in the north would now think they had neither.

Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said the north-east had “heard these promises again and again” to improve rail lines. He said while HS2 was “a white elephant”, it was now “a white elephant missing a leg”.

However, Stop HS2 campaigners said the cancellation of the eastern leg of the project was “vindication of everything we’ve been saying for a decade”. A spokesperson, Joe Rukin, said: “You can deliver more benefits to more people more quickly for less money without the massive environmental impact by upgrading existing infrastructure, reopening old lines and providing sustainable local transport.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/18/hs2-rail-leg-to-leeds-scrapped-grant-shapps-confirms

UK Light Rail News

Dear Trevor

METRO IS GOING BADLY WRONG and it deepens the climate emergency/crisis

I wrote this, yesterday to Jamie Swift who edits, at 16 Summer Lane (Transport and WMCA HQ), 'UK Light Rail News':-

I much appreciate your news and know it is important to keep up to date with UK light rail news.  However, this week you have not reported on the problems we are facing with our own tram operation.  I think you should do so.  Today, this from:

https://www.wmca.org.uk/news/independent-review-to-be-launched-into-west-midlands-metro-operations-and-governance

"The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Board has today asked Transport for West Midlands to conduct an independent review into the WMCA’s oversight of the region’s metro services.

"The review, to be carried out by an industry expert, will look into the way Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) manages the delivery of new extensions and operation of metro services through a wholly-owned company.

"This is to ensure TfWM, which is part of the WMCA, has the right structures in place to hold both metro delivery and operations to account."

I think, to be fair on us all, for sceptical and disappointed observers like me and, for the most ardent supporters, we should be able to get an all-rounded view on the UK light rail news.  Both good and bad.

I am also concerned about you all sharing the same building, at 16 Summer Lane.  This brings improper influence by vested interests = collusion = corrupt practice.

MY OBSERVATIONS:

• Manchester's Metrolink is very successful.  Only because they diverted many hundreds of millions of pounds from modernising and upgrading their railway network in northern England, into using that money for replacing trains and buses with trams!
• Brum is doing exactly the same in giving top priority to trams instead of trains, to be followed by Bristol and Leeds that want a tram network, too.
• You ain't a proper city unless you have trams.  This is immature and deluded thinking.
• 50 Kms Borders Railway through the Scottish Uplands rebuilt at £7 m/Km in 2015 when reopened;
• 2 Kms Brum's Westside trams are blocking buses using the direct, fast route into the city centre at £75 m/Km for construction.  Ten times more than rebuilding the railway.  This is scandalous!
• You are destroying Dudley's seventh railway - the mainline railway from Worcester to Derby via Dudley.
  
• 56 Kms of double track exist but are wasted from Stourbridge Jct to Burton on Trent.
• 6.7 Kms, on two nibble sized sections get the LR tram, along with the VLR test track through the Dudley Castle Hill tunnel and a possible ULR extension from Stourbridge Jct to meet the LR tram at Brierley Hill.
  
• Yet, Andy Street, in an email to me, wrote that he wants this kind of "multi-modal transport".
• In fact, it breaks up a principal, mainline railway between Derby and Devon that could take freight off both roads and the Kings Norton to Moseley to Grand Central railway that is very slowly being returned to passenger trains instead of Metro trams.
• That means freight is needed to be put on the railway that 16 Summer Lane is breaking up into HR, LR, VLR and ULR.
• It results in far greater complications for our railway authorities to either go without freight trains being extended on this line or, freight being used only at night with three different kinds of trams at daytime.
• It is more sensible and simpler to abandon converting railway lines into tramlines.  Therefore, NOT to follow Manchester's foolish decision that has resulted in such a very poor northern England railway provision.

ZERO CARBON = MINIMUM FOSSIL FUEL USE means NO unnecessary spending!

to Peter Allen

Please explain how it allows "better train services on the other lines" when every intercity service must remain, as now, to serve the lesser towns and cities that HS2 goes flying past.

We, in the Black Country, have a 120 Kms principal mainline railway already built but, it is being turned into a tramway on two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms slap bang in the middle! All six of the lesser railways have already been built on.  For both HS2 and Metro trams, you have high cement use that is very high in GHG emissions, all the steel that demands coking coal, plus the high energy use of high-speed trains.  All this to reduce overcrowding, to increase more long-distance travel and, to speed us on our way to the runaway greenhouse effect, as venus has - somewhat disastrously.

Could we, Peter lose the small prize of HS2, for the bigger prize of life for all, in greater social justice, with less travel, extravagance and luxury but, greater contentment in a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle?

Metro is a wealth flaunting, self-aggrandisement, vanity, 'solution looking for a problem' project

Metro is a wealth flaunting, self-aggrandisement, vanity, 'solution looking for a problem' project. It has destroyed 2 mainline railways, nearly a 3rd; caused deaths from accidents and turned a Wolverhampton principal railway station into a conference and events centre. 11 different bus routes are now inconvenienced by being pushed out into narrow back streets on a diversion because priority is given to trams. Public transport is made worse. Simply for prestige and a cosmetic, all style over substance sham.

Will Halesowen Pensioners write in support?

As was agreed, please could you write an email to customerservices@tfwm.org.uk and, to James Morris and elsewhere, for his/their support, to ask if our no 9 buses might be chosen as the few buses to be allowed to use Five Ways underpass and Broad Street, as soon as possible, now that work has finished on building the Westside tram extension to Edgbaston Village tram stop.  That direct route is so much quicker for bus users from Halesowen than having to go all round the Wrekin on the back streets diversion.

Secondly, as we agreed, could you also ask James if he would please support us in pressing for every bridge and viaduct to be strengthened for goods/freight trains as work progresses for Metro trams on the former, principal mainline railway between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent, on the Derby to Devon via Dudley railway.  The additional email is customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com

My own bold emphasis is here in this email from

From: <Customer Services> <customerservices@tfwm.org.uk>
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2021 at 09:44
Subject: REBUTTAL REQUIRED to my statement from yesterday, please. CRM:004501016
To: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>

"You have also specifically asked for clarification on the reinstatement of heavy rail and freight services and how light rail investment supports this. Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) has acquired an approximate 7km section of the old railway corridor from Network Rail. Although Network Rail currently has no plans to bring this line back into operation, as part of our agreement we will make passive provision for freight trains to return to that section of track. This means that we will be carrying out work that could enable this to happen in the future. In its current state of disrepair and without the work we will be undertaking, the section of route we have procured cannot be used by freight trains.

​"​Our plans for Metro construction involve upgrading or replacing several structures to be suitable for use and accommodate heavy freight where possible. We have also acquired Parkhead Viaduct which needs considerable remedial work to make it safe, before carrying trams or freight trains could be considered. We are also moving a small section of track near to Round Oak to allow for both Metro and rail/freight.

​"​Please note our agreement with Network Rail will not make the full line ready for freight, so some additional work would be carried out if the reinstatement of freight trains was agreed.​"​

Quite honestly, I do wonder why, if passive provision is being made for freight trains, why passenger trains cannot be delivered on the full 56 Kms between Burton on Trent and Stourbridge Jct.

Many thanks, Tony and Tony

Tim

NET ZERO DELUSION

Please slam net zero and support gross zero (I'm now over 95% off grid for all electricity, even in cloudy mid-winter and we both can do without gas heating until 6 pm every day.)

(NET ZERO = we don't emit more greenhouse gases than we can soak up)

that is a sham, a delusion.  It is quite impossible to achieve when only peat, soil, plants, trees can soak up carbon dioxide which is one of many greenhouse gases.  Technological 'solutions' take finite resources and finite fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases, too.  We are seeing a net loss of the world's forests and the ten biggest emit more CO2 than they absorb, I read recently.  Alarming!

Slam HS2, Metro and Sprint extravagant, luxury, wealth flaunting, delusions of grandeur, vanity of vanities of GHG emissions!

to some Dudley councillors

30 October 2021

Dear friends

Literally for decades - since about 1980 - I have been following climate science reports on, mainly BBC Radio 4.  The science goes back to the 1850s, in fact!  It is urgent that you leading Dudley councillors now act to help turn things round, instead of business as usual as we carry on regardless with our fingers crossed.

Patrick was brilliant, yesterday in letting me put my own 25 suggestions in your pigeon holes.  An even more famous Patrick, Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, was on the 'Today' programme two mornings ago.  He "called on leaders to take urgent action to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – beyond which more severe impacts of global warming will be felt.

"The statement, signed by nearly 40 chief scientists and equivalents, said it was still possible to curb temperature rises to 1.5°C, but only with steep reductions in global emissions by 2030 and reducing them to zero overall by 2050."

"Vallance said that most of the technologies needed to shift to a greener world are already “visible”, and warned against relying on a “magic new technology” coming along in future years that would solve the problem.

He added that the “green choice needs to be the easy choice”, including on price and convenience, and that people need a clear understanding of what they can do on an individual level to make a difference."

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2295076-eat-less-meat-and-fly-less-to-help-climate-says-patrick-vallance/#ixzz7AlG0jBxj

Sir Patrick is urging behavioural change on all of us.  I am leading by example, as I mentioned in my 25 suggestions.  I am walking the talk.  Therefore, I can rightfully urge you never again to move Dudley Leisure Centre that Google says is a 15 mins walk away from Wellington Road leisure centre that is much newer than Halesowen's.  (Thanks for our refurbishment that will cut greenhouse gases considerably, I hope)

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

INSULATE DUDLEY BOROUGH

This must now be your top priority.  Secondary glazing must be used where double or triple glazing cannot be.  Council housing stock must be brought to Passivhaus standard and every other building in your ownership, where at all possible.

Smaller, highly energy efficient homes and apartments must be built in the town centre and people encouraged to walk to the shops there, if at all possible.  And, certainly, not to use Metro to get to Merry Hill more quickly and easily.

It is almost certainly still much cheaper to cancel the Dudley and Sandwell Metro and pay those fees than to persist in the destruction of the borough's 7th railway line between Worcester, Walsall and Derby.  There is still room for the return of Dudley railway station on the east side of Tipton Road.  BCIMO should use the Brierley Hill to Himley via Brockmoor and Bromley 3 Kms line, as I pointed out in 2014.  This is a second line they could still expand onto, as well as use Castle Hill railway tunnel as they do now.  This, eventually, returned to railway use between Derby, Dudley and Devon to relieve Brum railway stations and to regenerate Dudley.

 Dudley's Seven Smashed railway lines

Best wishes

Tim