Hi Cathy - and copied to Laura Shoaf to correct any inadvertent misrepresentation, here.
I hope to attend and observe tomorrow's Scrutiny Committee meeting.
I wonder if tomorrow you might feel able to make any reference to the matters that are of great concern to me, in the earlier email, below that I sent you in November.
Laura's "passive provision" phrase was reaffirmed when being interviewed by Transport Correspondent, Peter Plisner. It was recorded and televised by the BBC in one of their 'Midlands Today' programmes in the second half of the last decade. Passsive provision for heavy rail to return has been a very long standing ambition of both Centro and Dudley MBC since the 1990s. It magically enables track sharing between trams (both light rail and very light rail), freight, and commuter/regional trains all on the same, one set of double tracks, 24 hours a day!!
I do fear that your ambition is being quietly sidelined in the face of the multiple crises now confronting the region and nation. Or, is passive provision impractical, anyway and was only ever introduced as a sop to those of us who have wanted the middle section of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway to be competently finished with the trains that had been so successful for about 100 years? This was when the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company ran trains from Oxford and Worcester over the last two centuries. The first GWR company ran the service from Dudley to Derby, I believe and the line has been safeguarded/mothballed ever since with every motorway, road, canal crossing in place but all unused despite road/motorway congestion and poor air quality leading to 60 mph speed limits!
In addition, senior officers at 16 Summer Lane, including Laura, have all consistently maintained that trams are the catalyst for freight trains only, to return "in the 2040s at the earliest", as Network Rail has proclaimed for decades and technically safeguarded by Order, I understand.
What passive provision, exactly, is being made? Only standard gauge track? And how practical is it? Am I correct in what I have written here?
Best wishes
No comments:
Post a Comment