I have serious concerns, even though no-one else seems bothered

I expect I am the only one who writes to the TfWM/WMCA about these matters.

1. Only Albert Thomas, Richard Worrall and I use our right to attend your committee meetings as members of the public.
2. However, we are not allowed to say a dicky bird.  And, Albert and Richard are allowed to go straight up on arrival, I believe but I have to wait until just before the meeting before I am escorted up from reception by your good self.  This is to minimise my chances of approaching an officer or member to spill the beans!
3. At the end of the meeting, I am then quickly ushered out and away from the VIP top brass on the Committee - by your good self, Dan once again!  Officers and members must NOT be tainted by my (Trump) garbage.
4. Yet, Albert Thomas told me to "Fuck off" when I asked him to remind me of his name last Monday 4 November.
5. Before Covid, when he was Council Leader of Wolverhampton City Council and the Transport Lead, (name forgotten!) told me to "Stick it up your arse" when I invited him to take a leaflet from me.  Ignorance and intolerance are rife.
6. Many or, certainly, too many of your councillor members on all the WMCA committees and boards change once a year.  This means that no sooner do they get up to speed with their brief, than they are moved off altogether or, go on to a different committee or board.  Or, get voted off in a yearly election.
7. The members are meant to check, challenge and question.  However, many also hold down jobs or, are old geezers like me who are well past our prime.
8. Therefore, how do you expect us to read the most voluminous reports of great erudition, witten in professional jargon and in much detail?
9. In the summer, the seven leaders were presented with a 500 page report on bus franchising, I believe.  The Coventry leader, I think it was, said he would take a look at it in his summer holiday - by then too late.  The decision to continue the expensive process was agreed by the Seven (or, is it Eight with Richard Parker?) at that same full Board meeting!
10. Had the seven leaders actually agreed for the 500 pages to be written and the long, expensive process to franchising be started?
11. Or, was it an initiative started by your top officer(s) to make sure the W Midlands was not left behind by go-ahead Greater Manchester, with no approach to even a single Council Leader?
12. After 43 years of very well-intentioned endeavour started by your continuing and respected member, Cllr Phil Bateman, how is it we are still fragmenting two regional mainline railways into part tramways in a densely populated conurbation that needs important railway lines used for railway trains?
13. Understandably, I think, I am very angry that my 1990s vertical guerrilla garden, with the passive permission from all the owners of Merry Hill since the 90s, is soon to be wiped out, buried by your £100 million, 400 metre tramway viaduct.  It also destroys the rest of nature, public open space and housing land at Merry Hill.
14. The sensible, cheaper and less Climate damaging alternative is to keep the tram, from Flood Street, Dudley town centre, on the former principal mainline railway to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.
15. Your Top Director, Anne Shaw is saying that work on the ground (planning started in the 1980s!) will finally start in January 2025, to take the Dudley Tram off the railway line into the Waterfront.  Or, is this a euphemism for bringing the tram into Merry Hill, at even greater expense of taxpayers' money and even more tragic, unnecessary destruction?  As in these PHOTOS.  These trees, and much else on either side of the photo, get wiped off the face of the earth by the 400 metre, Climate worsening concrete and steel tramway viaduct:
    
     6 glorious white trees.jpg
    Most of the trees, below are my planting and tender care over the decades.  Nearly all will be lost:
    
     Overview contrast.jpg
16. I am now approaching Leigh Day, the solicitors with expertise in these matters, to seek an injunction from a Court of Law to put a stop to the Dudley Tram wreaking havoc on the land between the main car park at Merry Hill and the Dudley No 1 Canal.
17. The beautifully landscaped Level Street roundabout is also obliterated by the Dudley/Merry Hill tram because a further double track tram viaduct has to be built over the top of it.  See top right hand corner in their PLAN, here
    
     WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
18. I am prepared to spend a maximum of £10,000 of my lifetime savings for judges to put a stop to the idiocy that trained, professional transport planners have been intent on since the 1980s.
19. About 1980 was when BBC 1's 'Tomorrow's World' first alerted me to what Climate scientists had been reporting since the 1820s.  Yes, the 1820s!  Do your research, as I have, if you don't believe me.
20. On Monday, 4 November, Anne reported to the meeting that she was "moduly agnostic" over the public transport mode that is chosen to be used to take over from buses.  In other words it could be any mode out of heavy rail (HR), light rail (LR), Very Light Rail or Ultra Light Rail (eg, Stourbridge Shuttle).
21. Why does a "bus on rails" (UK Tram Promotion Group at your own  HQ!) have to be used at all when we already have TRAINS for railway tracks and BUSES for roads?  USE THEM!  And, remember, Anne is "moduly agnostic", ie, she doesn't mind which transport mode is used - anywhere.
22. NO!  I think she should get it right - regular buses and trains, from now on, at least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.
23. Don't spend £15 BILLION by 2040 (Jan 2020 figure) on 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops in the West Midlands when your accelerating Climate Breakdown has just been seen in Valentia, Spain.  And, fast melting glaciers in the high mountains of the planet!

Best wishes

to Cllr Andrew Burrow, Chair, Overview & Scrutiny, WMCA

Dear Andrew 

Thanks for the reply and for forwarding my email to Tim Huxtable who owes me a reply to an earlier email - please Tim.

My concerns are wide and embrace the Climate Emergency that you declared in 2019 but where actions are sadly lacking as we carry on with business as usual.

Is this because, for 40 years your top expenditure and most staff time is on the issue which takes the biggest slice of the budget pie - transport?

Out of transport, it is buses and trains being replaced by trams that has turned out to be the biggest and longest running expense and scandal in UK finance/transport history. Please read my summary of what has gone so wrong for so long:-

   40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

Do you now understand why Overview and Scrutiny must be involved, must be concerned and must be challenging, checking and questioning why you have had over 70 years of councillors and MPs destroying tramways, then railways and now rebuilding the tram network on what survives of the railway network?

All that money could have gone into putting trains back to relieve congestion at a fraction of the price that has been spent, since 1981, on rebuilding the tram network and failing!

All that money and effort could, and still must, go on helping the lowest incomes with their housing, food and energy needs - for the sake of Climate justice and social justice.

It starts with you and your committee, Andrew.

Assist dying for those who wish it and are terminally ill

I had prostate cancer in 2017 but survived.  Dying and death is a natural and normal event and need not be feared.  We don't have to suffer to the bitter end without morphine.  Doctors already administer it, anyway and, in the process, it does hasten death.  FINE!

Our side is killing many more of our fellow humans than Russia is

1948 can be seen as our side's 'illegal invasion and occupation' of Palestine.  Britain retreated from Palestine and relinquished the mandate in the face of two years of violence from the Jewish terrorist gangs.

The West and Israel should not have profited from an opportunity to gain territory out of aggression and by rewarding terrorism.

2014 saw Russia take back Crimea after over-enthusiastic Western/European/NATO fanatics overthrew the pro Russian and fairly elected President Yanukovych.

Western expansion into the largely Muslim Middle East (Israel taking, holding and expanding land in Palestine over 76 years), together with American/NATO wars over that time, must have seen much more death and destruction than Russia has inflicted all around the world.

RAILFUTURE SAYS on 10 November 2024:

"On the issue of connecting Dudley to Stourbridge Junction we do agree with you about the need to provide some form of co-ordinated transport between these two places.  Our preference is for this to be rail based and eventually we would expect the tram service to do so, whilst retaining also the possibility of heavy rail usage.  As an interim a VLR solution or even dedicated electric bus might be appropriate for some years so that connectivity was provided as soon as possible.

"I will certainly raise this with my committee when we next meet with a view to pursuing it with TfWM and/or WMRE." 

Dr Stephen Wright

Railfuture – Chairman, West Midlands Branch

This makes it clear that, as was the case in the 20th century, Railfuture want heavy rail, light rail and very light rail or, whatever is on offer - nothing has changed!

I want an injunction ...

... to stop the official policy of converting bus and train services into TRAMWAYS by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and West Yorkshire Combined Authority.  200 years ago, UK tramways were being replaced by railways.  Present policy is backward, stupid, and is similar to our ancestors allowing the superb road network, bequeathed by the Roman Empire, to fall into wrack and ruin.

REASONS:

This enormous expenditure, since the 1980s in the case of the West Midlands, has accelerated the Climate Emergency, officially acknowledged by the WMCA by their declaration in 2019.

£ spent = lb weight in greenhouse gas emissions, as a very rough rule of thumb because of our addiction to finite fossil fuels.

Construction of tramways is the second biggest expenditure per Km of any transport project after HS2.

That money should be going to help the lowest incomes with food and energy bills.

That money should be going to insulate/upgrade the homes of the poorest.

That money should be going for Fare-Free Public Transport and to make buses and trains as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.

TIM WELLER   0791 380 4363

So sorry to miss you this morning

Hi Andy

I go to more Sunday mornings than I miss, especially when Linda is speaking.  I would have forgone today's Sunday morning sunny walk in the wild Worcs countryside if I had known you would be at church.

My Christian beliefs have changed over the decades since I went on summer beach missions in my teens and 20s.  Now, I'm not far off 77 years.  I have always been a Christian believer in non-violence since watching the BBC 'Great War' series in the 1960s on the 1914-18 tragic, foolish, inexplicable war between the immoral European empires.  For me, the crime of imperialism (that brought the even more disgusting crime of slavery) that, in itself, is wholly contradictory to Christ's teachings, quite apart from the stupid warfare that is even more so.  I am a Conscientious Objector at all times, in peace or war and have been all my life.

I am horrified by the enormously high majority of believers who do not see it that way.  Especially, evangelicals who regard life at both ends of our time on earth as being of far greater preciousness than slaughtering the hale and hearty in the prime of their lives!

I do still love to go to church with Linda and to be preached to by our much loved and respected Leading Trio of Joy, David and Linda!  I love the karaoke element too but, for many years, have not been taking communion.  I let it pass me by to reduce my hypocrisy quotient.

More sounding off follows - or ignore!

EXTRACT FROM A BLOG POST of mine:

Pastor Michael Youssef of Atlanta, Georgia voted for Donald because saving the unborn is his more important issue, according to his interview on the 'Sunday' programme on Radio 4.

Why are the large majority of born-again Christian believers on the side of Israel, regardless of their War of Self Defence on the defenceless non-combatants, must be regarded as yet another War of Aggression, fueled by the Wicked Wild West?

Why is replacement theology denigrated when it is the State of Israel that is acting with impunity and contrary to the wishes of the international world order, certainly, to the Laws of the Sermon on the Mount?

AND, BELOW, SOMETHING ELSE!       WMCA = W Midlands Combined Authority

Monday, 4 November 2024

WMCA involvement in Lebanese/Palestinian slaughter

Dear friends

W Midlands businesses are selling/giving/subsidising drones and weapons of war to our partner, friend and ally, Israel to murder/kill/maim up to 50,000 children, women and men in the area of the unHoly Land since the 7.10.23 atrocity.

Israel, part of our Wicked, Wild West, is out of control.  And we are letting them get on with it.

What is the WMCA doing to stop it?

Why are you not issuing a statement/press release condemning our murderous behaviour and distancing yourselves from it?

What grants and moral support do you give to the despicable, disgusting W Midlands arms trade?

Or, are you guiltily silent?

Best wishes and every blessing to you and Mandy

Transport for Greater Manchester report extract = conflicts with ecology and Climate realities

Emerging priorities for new tram and tram-train lines, faster bus routes, and an underground service being considered to sustain long-term growth and economic prosperity

DO WHAT JAKE THRUSH ADVISES but use the existing Metro tram

JAKE ADVISES:

"This suggests that the feasibility of tram-train, from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill, and then onto Dudley, Wednesbury and Walsall needs to be explored further."

BUT, IF YOU IGNORE YOUR OWN JAKE THRUSH and persist with the WBHE into the Waterfront and Merry Hill, abandon the route along the centreline of the canal embankment at Merry Hill and choose the easier line along the top of the embankment next to the canal towpath.  It is sufficiently wide for a double track of standard gauge.

This can be achieved by bringing the tram onto the top of the canal embankment after it soars over the Level Street roundabout but before the Merry Hill tramstop at the top of the concrete steps down to the road.  Exit the tram off the TOP of the embankment by swinging it over the canal to bring it into Cottage Street.  My vertical guerrilla garden is thus saved, more of the housing land too and some of the existing Scots Pine.

HERE IS CONSENSUS - JAKE THRUSH HAS GOT IT!!

Dear Neil

WHAT JAKE THRUSH IS ADVISING, IN CONCLUSION BELOW (his 24 Aug 2022 report), IS VERY NEAR TO WHAT I AM SUGGESTING/AGREEING WITH!  JUST DO WHAT WE BOTH SAY!

We (Neil and I) had a chat yesterday about whether or not I had spoken to an Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  At the time I could not recall having done so.  However, later in the day it occurred to me that I had been granted an opportunity to say something to the committee both before and after Jake Thrush had written a report about why, after forty years of hard endeavour, it was still essential to put trams and not freight, commuter, regional and intercity trains on the 120 Kms former principal, mainline railway through the densely populated, one million population of the Black Country.  That train has long since departed the station!

JAKE WROTE, with my comments in blue:

Conclusions
1. While the option presented by Tim Weller could lower costs for the WBH extension, it would
not directly stop at Merry Hill and The Waterfront, two of the line’s main attractors. This
would impact patronage and thus the overall viability of the scheme.

So why, in the early 1990s, did you allow Don and Roy Richardson to build the monorail from very near to the freight and mainline railway at Round Oak (but without the rather vital connection!) and to take it into the heart of the shopping centre at Central station which is still there?

Why was the monorail only used for about three years?

Why was it never connected to the major Black Country Railway at that time AND, with the mainline brought back into use then?

Do you agree, it would STILL be much cheaper to reinstate the monorail than spend over £300 million on 5 or 6 Kms of tramway with a 400 m concrete and steel viaduct, a flyover at Level Street and two bridges with their diagonal crossings over the canal?

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

2. From 2021 assessments, the most promising option to link Brierley Hill and Stourbridge Junction is to share the live rail freight line from Stourbridge Junction to Round Oak terminal with a tram-train just stick to the tram now you have it coming down from Flood St, Dudley with freight at night and "passive provision" being built in and then proceed to join the Metro line to provide direct services without interchange to Merry Hill and The Waterfront without diverting off into the Waterfront and Merry Hill, you mean I think. This enables higher service frequencies to attract significant patronage. Light rail and Very Light Rail services would require a separate single line which would only give low frequency services, attracting less patronage. This suggests that the feasibility of tram-train, just call it the Metro tram now you have it, from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill, and then onto Dudley, Wednesbury and Walsall needs to be explored further.

TIM WELLER

Weller's Last Ditch Stand

Dear Cat - my plea, my last ditch stand, in blue

"You are Alex's constituent and I have reminded him that due to strict Parliamentary procedure, I can only take up issues from my own constituents."  Since the 1990s, although I live in Halesowen, I've been working by writing, texting, attending meetings, challenging Andy Street on Radio WM and at his 'Ask Andy' public meetings, pleading at umpteen Community Forums all over Dudley ... all to try and get you wonderful Stourbridge people, your very own former principal mainline railway up and running again.  To get your train connection north and north east to Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield, Derby, with stations reinstated.  Cat, please can you be your own constituent and the MP for yourself, to ask a Parliamentary question to Louise Haigh?

"I resent your suggestion that I haven't acted on this issue. I am doing a lot of work and research and reaching out to key people. You know I agree with you on the destruction of the land around Merry Hill.  THAT IS BRILLIANT AND REASSURING TO READ - THANK YOU!  Therefore, please tackle Louise in the Commons (and privately) over the idiocy and incompetence and the sheer scandal of spending over £1 BILLION for less than 11 Kms of tramway to wreck the UK's most important and last, principal mainline railway between London/Bristol and Glasgow/Edinburgh via the Black Country.

"Finally, I do not sit on the WMCA board and have no voting power in that forum."  Perfectly true, Cat but you are in a powerful position as the MP for your own home town.  Continue to be the first MP I have ever known who is jumping up and down demanding sensible railway trains on what is left of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby.  NOT FOR CYCLISTS, DOG WALKERS AND HORSE RIDERS BETWEEN WALSALL AND LICHFIELD!  200 years ago tramways were being replaced by railways.  We are going backward in time to the Georgian age!  And yet, TfWM wants the tram thinking it can be the catalyst for the freight and passenger trains to return all the sooner.  Honestly!  See below:

Letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro in the year 2000, 18 September of that year:-

"Light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."

A LIE, in fact.  And, it has never come in 24 years because TfWM/WMCA are obsessed with Metro trams - now 150 miles to 2040 costing £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure).  That money is needed to fight the Climate Emergency by helping the lowest incomes.

The full horror to entertain you, Cat is all enclosed in these 40 statements:

 40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

Thanks so much for acting to help your constituents preserve nature, public open space, housing land and my magnificent guerrilla garden at Merry Hill.

Please, don't let a Transport Minister sign off on WBHE Phase 2 this month or next.  Work on the ground begins in January, said Anne Shaw, Executive Director, TfWM.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Best wishes

to Robin Vincent

Dear Robin

It was great to meet you last night at St Peter's Baptist Church.

What was the name of the film you wanted me to watch, please?

Was it because you felt that my getting that perspective would help my understanding.  I certainly must watch it, Robin.

Why were you wondering if I thought you were racist?  Or, what on earth was that all about?!  Help my recall, please!

You said you were in the Police for ten years.  I was a little concerned that you were proud to mention you had been in the Police.  I have heard the most distressing cases on Radio 4 News in recent months and years.  It gives me no confidence that the Police are as honourable and as upstanding - or even as competent - as I would love them to be.

Far too many gross misconduct cases, miscarriages of justice like Andy Malkinson.  Shoot to kill I don't like either, Robin.

My initial question to Rob was this:

What do you consider the more important issue: The life of the unborn or the life of the born in Gaza, Lebanon and in Judea/Samaria?

How do you account for something like 70% of American evangelicals voting for Donald Trump this month?

Pastor Michael Youssef of Atlanta, Georgia voted for Donald because saving the unborn is his more important issue, according to his interview on the 'Sunday' programme on Radio 4.

Why are the large majority of born-again Christian believers on the side of Israel, regardless of their War of Self Defence on the defenceless non-combatants, must be regarded as yet another War of Aggression, fueled by the Wicked Wild West?

Why is replacement theology denigrated when it is the State of Israel that is acting with impunity and contrary to the wishes of the international world order, certainly, to the Laws of the Sermon on the Mount?

Private Operators and TfWM working in Direct Partnership

Save the money for FFPT.

Use the savings to cut fares and improve services DIRECTLY by filling the bus operators teeth with gold.

Financial inducements DIRECTLY to get them to do what we want.

Full local and regional council control in the 1950s completely destroyed the first tram network and, in the following decades, obliterated much of Beeching's very properly CLOSED, LOSS MAKING LINES, as we all rushed out to buy cars.

Local and regional councils are poor/hopeless at commercial enterprises/investments. Look at Dudley's ghastly commercial LOSSES!

Leave it to the private sector to take the substantial financial risks that comes with bus franchising.

for Leigh Day - FAILURE TO ACT over the UK's biggest finance/transport scandal

1. A brief chronology of events, including dates.

1981  Metro tram network announced, to be rebuilt 20 years after completing the total destruction of the first tram network.  1980s  plan to get 200 Kms, 10  lines by the year 2000.

1990 Merry Hill monorail built but never connected to the Black Country Mainline Railway only 400 metres away.  It should have had its passenger trains returned then but it remains for freight, only.  TfWM/WMCA want  trams, only FIRST, as the only way to get the full train service returned!!!

1993 The Swiss built monorail closed and may still be in use in Queensland, Australia.

1999  First Metro line of 20 Kms opened.  19 Kms on the first mainline railway were destroyed to get the 20 Kms of trams.

2016  Metro tram on the Camp Hill line on the Brum to Bristol mainline railway was abandoned.  Half hour diesel service to be introduced but nothing appeared, so far!  3 railway stations are being rebuilt - very slowly!

2017  West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Mayor, Andy Street was elected and boosted work on Metro tram expansion, at the expense of trains reintroduced on the remaining 100 Kms of existing, unused or freight only W Midlands railway lines.

2019  Work on the ground finally started to destroy the UK's last principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" on the former and popular mainline (for 100 years) in the Black Country between London/Cardiff and Edinburgh.  It is called Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE), aka the Dudley Tram.

2019 WMCA declared a Climate Emergency.  Resolute intention to deepen the Climate Emergency with trams taking over buses and trains continued apace!

Jan 2020  Andy Street announced a £15 BILLION programme of works to build underground and overground tramways to 2040 of 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops.

2020s  Postponements, cancellations, reprogramming of Metro tram projects after dire financial constraints emerged.

 

2.  Confirmation as to what it is you want to challenge.

SCRAP Metro expansion programme and concentrate on getting car commuters, who clog up road space for six hours a day, five days a week and have them use Fare-Free Public Transport to free up road space for essential vehicle users - LIKE BUS DRIVERS!

 

3.  Confirmation as to what it is you want us to do for you (i.e.: what your goals are).

INJUNCTION TO STOP WHBE tram wrecking nature, public open space, housing land and my magnificent guerrilla garden.  Work on the ground starts in January 2025.  NO TIME TO LOSE!

 

4.  Confirmation as to how you would propose to fund any assistance (i.e.: legal aid, ‘no win, no fee’, etc.).

No win, no fee.

Climate and the poor get subordinated to power, privilege and wealth

17 April 2024

Hi Siobhan

Climate and the poor get subordinated to power, privilege and wealth

The first duty of regional government is to protect the interests of the poor and the weak.  You don't do that by spending £15 billion by 2040 on a gross, grandiose, but very nice, 150 miles of tramways when urban railways are unused or partly used and the existing bus network needs car commuters rewarded for leaving their motors at home to travel on a bus, train, tram to work.  This, to free up road space and bring greater efficiency for essential vehicle users.

The second duty of government is to do what it says.  It piously declared a climate emergency in 2019 but then carried on with business as usual.  It was all words and no action apart from the most determined action, from the 1980s, to rebuild the tram network the powerful elite had completely destroyed in the 1950s.  And, what was more, to simply rebuild it on the urban railway network that they had not obliterated in the last decades of the 20th century!  That action, far from mitigating climate breakdown, accelerates climate disaster.  Concrete and steel, heavily used in High Scam 2 and Metro construction, are both very energy intensive and, therefore, accelerate climate catastrophe.

Throughout, integrity and honourable behaviour (the Nolan Principles) are meant to be at the heart of government.

 How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA

PHOTO - the likes of which you have never seen before, I'm pretty sure!:-

 NOLAN cannot possibly approve this two tier practice

Yet, morality is sadly lacking in regional governments as well as national.  The people and politicians are quite happy to support a never ending war of self-righteous defence in wiping out Palestinians because they cannot hit back.  Murdering them, in their case, is morally acceptable and reasonable because of 7 October.  However, it's a very different matter when it comes to attacking Iran for their 300 drones and missiles on 13/14 April or, fighting Russia to the death for invading and attacking Ukraine.

Bankrupt Brum means poverty for more and deepening poverty, too.  Is it, therefore, acceptable to pour billions, in price and in weight of greenhouse gases, into flaunting our wealth in a very fine and prestigious new tramway system of 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops, as the WMCA wants?

Best wishes

to Leslie K

Very many thanks, Leslie for your encouragement and support.  Wonderful!  You are the first - almost!

I do need to be fair on all the political parties by writing here, that every one of them, including the Green Party (strong in Solihull!) have been in agreement with Metro trams ever since I started writing in opposition to rebuilding the tram network on the two surviving mainline railways, only 20 years after the councillors and officers had destroyed the first tram network.

Labour's Cllr Phil Bateman and former PTA/TfWM Chair, Richard Worrall, who still attends Transport meetings at Transport/Tram HQ as a member of the public now, were the leading lights for starting Metro in 1981.

Solihull, already well blessed with buses and trains, is getting the lot - HS2, Metro and Sprint - the full slate!  The subsidy for trams is also many times more per passenger per Km travelled than for buses.  SEE:

 Bus/tram subsidy 22/23.pdf

 Service Total subsidy 2022/23 (source: Transport for W Midlands)

Please work on Ian Courts who knows me and on Bob Sleigh who also has met me.  They are both happy with Andy Street's £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure) to 2040 for 150 miles and eight lines of Metro tram expansion.  Both Ian and Bob are longstanding and leading members in the WMCA and are on the full Board, of course.  They are VIP decision-makers who should be stopping this scandalous misuse of taxpayers' money.  But they are doing nothing.  Unless you can persuade them, please Leslie.  The 15th Nov is largely a rubber stamping exercise, I fear.  You, Ian and Bob need to please cancel, scrap, withdraw the WBHE Phase 2 finance package BEFORE Friday, please.  Phase 2 must not proceed.  Andy Street's Metro review request of 2021 or '22 seems never to have been done, either.  Scandalous!

Many thanks and best wishes.  By the way, I voted for Andy on all three occasions - 2017, 2021 and 2024 - even though he was desperate for Metro expansion.

Over £1 BILLION to destroy UK's last principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" = SCANDAL

11 Kms of tramway for £660.8 million PLUS cost of Wednesbury to Flood Street 5.5 Kms = over £1 BILLION total = idiocy and incompetence when the railway is

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

and is now a tramway, a VLR test track, VLR/BCIMO HQ, a cycle-walkway and fresh air!

 40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

June 2023 cost of 11 Kms WBHE tram was to be £650 m from https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2023/06/06/wednesbury-to-brierley-hill-metro-extension-cost-rockets-650-million/

November 2024 cost for the last half to be built is now £660.8 m from Flood Street to Merry Hill Shopping Centre, according to https://governance.wmca.org.uk/documents/s20364/Wednesbury%20Brierley%20Hill%20Metro%20Extension%20Phase2.pdf

and para 10.4 that shows, Flood Street to Merry Hill alone is £660.8 m for 5.5 Kms.

DO NOT APPROVE THIS MADNESS ON FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2024 WMCA BOARD MEETING

Tim Weller

Why HS2/Metro/Sprint thinking should be anathema to all right thinking people

Hi Carol - thanks so much for writing.  Lovely to hear from you and of your concern.

Why HS2/Metro/Sprint thinking should be anathema to all right thinking people

These mega projects reflect how society feels so entitled, already but wants ever more!

£15 BILLION to 2040 (Jan 2020 figure) for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops for Metro expansion.

These three projects reflect our greedy and selfish idea of entitlement - of our right to have them - whatever the cost.

We can afford these luxuries, so we are going to have them.  When we already have plenty!

Metro trams are a lovely, greedy, luxury that I take every opportunity to travel on.  I travel from home in Halesowen to Wolverhampton via the bus and then the tram from Edgbaston Village.  But Metro expansion, that you fully support, is deepening the Climate Emergency by taking money that should be going to the poor to insulate and future proof their homes.  And to help with their food and energy bills.

HS2/Metro/Sprint are all deepening the Climate Emergency by very high greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting concrete and steel in the construction of all three.

Deepening the Climate Emergency in this way, too:

There are lots of unused or freight only railway lines that we will not use because we want to give the money to trams instead at the most colossal expense in price and in weight of GHG emissions as well as being many times more expensive per kilometre to construct then if we simply rebuilt the stations and put the trains back. Climate justice and social justice mean we must cut back on expenditure that makes the Emergency even worse.

PHOTO, below

You see the climbers and trees, of mostly my vertical guerrilla garden, and a small part of the 400 metre long, Dudley No 1 Canal embankment which are wiped out with the concrete and steel tramway viaduct, costing over £100 m for the 400 metres of Climate catastrophe concrete and steel:​

 Overview contrast.jpg

​My guerrilla garden cannot be relocated to another site and this is just one of many sites that I have beautified and greened up over the decades!  My other main site that I have worked on since the 1990s is at Frankley Services Northbound.  The owners, Moto, give their passive permission, as the owners do at Merry Hill SC.  Do take a look at both, Carol.

PHOTO:  The same canal embankment.  All wiped out and very much more for £261.4 m (see below) to destroy the embankment:​

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​

I think you councillors and MPs need to think again because the money now going into Metro expansion in the W Midlands, as well as for the West Yorkshire tram network, takes money away from HMG's 'Restoring Your Railway' section at the DfT.  SEE:

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/43m-spent-by-dft-on-restoring-your-railway-projects-that-hang-in-the-balance-06-11-2024/

Tram expansion is stopping our remaining railway lines from getting their trains back.  What a waste!  No more 'Restoring Your Railway' because you good councillors and MPs prefer tramways built on railways and bus routes.  Extraordinary.  And we are all so entitled, wealthy and well provided for, compared with the Global South!

FROM: https://governance.wmca.org.uk/documents/s20364/Wednesbury%20Brierley%20Hill%20Metro%20Extension%20Phase2.pdf

" ... on the delivery of the Metro extension Phase 2b totalling £261.4m.

Phase 1: Wednesbury to Flood St., Dudley

Phase 2a: Flood St, Dudley to Waterfront Business Park

Phase 2b: Waterfront to Merry Hill Shopping Centre

Phase 2c: Merry Hill Shopping Centre to Brierley Hill Town Centre

"Since rewriting and submitting the FBC and the SAF appraisal in May 2024 it is noted in this report the total projected cost of Phase 2a, 2b of the WBHE project remains at £654.9m."   END OF QUOTE

For another £261.4 million for only a maximum ONE KILOMETRE (1 Km) of the route from Waterfront to Merry Hill, is SCANDALOUS!  And it is deepening the catastrophic Climate emergency instead of urgent mitigation, that is still not seen (apart from my house that is a warm home).

The £15 BILLION to 2040 (Jan 2020 figure) for ourselves in the W Mids, is taking money away from returning passenger trains to our freight lines and, both to the other forgotten, empty, wasted railways in our region.

You councillors, led by Cllr Phil Bateman in the early 1980s and Richard Worrall, turned your Bilston railway station into a shuttle tram stop with Metro.  Bilston was on the mainline railway from Snow Hill station to Shrewsbury via Wolverhampton Low Level station.  It is now a popular tramway.  But it was a popular railway and could have had its trains back in the 1980s instead of waiting for the trams when the tramline eventually opened in 1999 - and TRAINS for a fraction of the price, too!  And, it was a lie that it would reduce congestion on the parallel A41.  It has not because it took bus passengers off the road and not car drivers with their polluting cars.  What a deception by members and officers at the time - and it's still going on with WBHE!

The full scandal is recorded here and Bilston is mentioned.  Can you find it?:​

 40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

​​

 4 reasons why we all love trams

​

Very best wishes

We all stick our heads in the sand and hope for the best!

For 200 years, we have known that burning finite fossil fuels emits global warming gases.  Out of sheer self-interest we need to act more sensibly and show a lot less greed and selfishness and much more self-restraint.