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.
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?
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
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