Campaign against Climate Change

Dear Claire

When are climate jobs not climate jobs?  When they are VLR and LR trams!

I am very concerned about the scandalous greenwash scam that, in the West Midlands, means that bus routes and railway services are being turned into tramlines.

This foolish very expensive policy is:-

Diverting money from making bus services more popular and attractive.

Stops the extension of Fare-free Public Transport to all younger age groups. 

Continues to take funds from restoring our 100 Kms of railway lines without commuter and regional trains. 

Indeed, is breaking up the Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" into heavy rail, light railway and very light rail - HR, LR, VLR.

While our wasted railway lines remain unused, unfinished without trains and stations, LR and VLR get top priority and  turn our second mainline railway into a train-tram-train railway between the 120 Kms Worcester, the Black Country and Derby. Complete idiocy and incompetence.

There is an obvious green point here that confirms my argument for trains back on the tracks and not trams.  Trams are ungreen because of the enormous expense that is directly correlated with the weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  Very high energy use from making all the steel and concrete for the new tramlines means very high GHG emissions.

A social justice point that for reasons of levelling up the poor to the level of the wealthier, FFPT and bus priority measures must be done with the £100s of millions wasted going into totally unnecessary trams.  And give 'em help with food and energy bills not a "bus on rails" tram that is the second most expensive mode to construct after High Scam 2.

A common sense point that existing assets must be used instead of being wasted and even destroyed, as our West Midlands councillors and officers are so enthusiastic for!

The much vaunted, mult-modal public transport of bus, HR train, LR tram, VLR tram, ULR tram, so loved in the West Midlands, is NOT a good idea when it breaks up the UK's last, half-finished, half-used principal mainline railway!  More changes, delays and a slower journey.  Jump in the car then.

Best wishes