400 m Merry Hill Viaduct or, Use Existing Railway Infrastructure?

 On Thu, 23 Jun 2022 at 10:21, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Chairman, Cllr Mark - and copied to the members of the Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee

Once again, I feel I need to cycle up the hill and ask for your forbearance to let me speak in the Public Forum item this evening, please.  SEE MY EMAIL TO SANDEEP AND MARILYN, below.

I want to ask that each member might like to write one email

to Mayor, andy.street@wmca.org.uk and

to the WMCA Chief Executive, Laura Shoaf Laura.Shoaf@wmca.org.uk

to review the wisdom of going ahead with the wholesale destruction wreaked upon the only Public Open Space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre by the Dudley Tram, aka WBHE.

In SUMMARY

• it might cost as much as £100 m for the two canal bridges and the 400 metre, standard gauge, double-track, concrete and steel viaduct.
• It will bury Nature at the very time when we need to have a far greater respect for her because we, ourselves, are part of nature.  As we bury her under concrete, brick and tarmac we end up burying ourselves!
• There is a perfectly good alternative that connects the trams running on the railway line from Cinder Bank roundabout with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.

Many thanks

Tim

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2022 at 16:26
Subject: 400 m Merry Hill Viaduct or, Use Existing Railway Infrastructure?
To: <marilyn.grazette@tfwm.org.uk>, Sandeep Shingadia <Sandeep.Shingadia@tfwm.org.uk>

Dear Sandeep and Marilyn

I would like you and your colleagues to reconsider the WBHE devastating the 400 metre Dudley No 1 Canal embankment at Merry Hill and think, instead of keeping the trams on the railway line to Stourbridge Junction station.

What is destroyed is the only public open space, the nearest thing to a Nature site with my landscape enhancement scheme against the corroded metal sheet piling at the southern end of the embankment.  In the light of the ongoing climate emergency declared in 2019 by the WMCA, and the inflation, energy, and cost of living crises today, I think it is best not to bury Nature under concrete, brick and tarmac, by the planned standard gauge, double-track, concrete and steel, 400 metre railway/tram viaduct for Metro trams on the Dudley No 1 Canal embankment.  Instead, the trams might stay on the mainline railway "of national strategic significance" all the way to Stourbridge Junction station, with tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor.

Part of the embankment that gets destroyed:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

I would prefer the carbon dioxide absorbing grass and tree embankment to be allowed to be naturally rewilded into first long grass, then the natural succession to shrub and finally woodland as part of the Black Country Urban Forest and the WMCA Virtual Forest.  This is essential to slow the climate crisis.  The mowing of the embankment seems to have temporarily stopped, perhaps in expectation of the eventual construction of the 400 metre concrete and steel viaduct.  However, there is still time to permanently stop the destruction that comes with the viaduct being built and start recovering more of the railway that Network Rail and the DfT insist is "of national strategic significance" (see letter, below).

Many thanks if you could review this part of the scheme, please.