Dear Libby and Ros for Stourbridge FoE
Thanks so much for giving my 30-year-old campaign to save nature, landscaping, housing land, public open space and my guerrilla garden at Merry Hill Shopping Centre some publicity. I've succeeded for nearly 30 years but, the time is getting nearer when Transport for W Mids (TfWM) will start work on converting more of the UK's last, principal mainline railway, in Dudley, into a Metro tramway, instead of connecting it to the national railway network to help more passengers. Their 40-year-old plan remains to take it into Merry Hill Shopping Centre after they built and quickly destroyed the very useful, genuinely marvellous monorail there in the early 90s!!
- Work on the ground starts in January at, possibly, the Dudley town centre end.
- An already wealthy property developer is given, for free, an asset to boost their riches further with our taxes.
- Shoppers from Dudley town will use the trams to get to Merry Hill instead of the bus service that needs boosting with more people using buses instead of their cars.
- Subsidising the 23 Kms tram is nearly the same as the cost per passenger Km travelled of the subsidy given to thousands of miles of bus and train travel in the W Mids!
- The 10.7 Kms tramway (over half on the UK's last London to Edinburgh mainline railway) is now costing £700 m and some official reports say the final figure will be nearer £1 BILLION!
- £15 BILLION is being planned for converting more bus routes and train services into 150 miles of tramways in the West Midlands.
- But that money is needed to boost bus/train travel at the expense of thoughtless car commuters blocking the roads and giving us more poisonous air to breathe.
- Fare-Free Public Transport for all (not just my old crocks age group) throughout the W Midlands is vital. The funds need redirecting to slow the Climate Emergency, not worsen it even more.
Tim (I've been involved with Brum FoE since the 70s and a national FoE life member since the 80s)
No comments:
Post a Comment