Factually correct evidence is dismissed as "an opinion"!

D​ear friends

Dismissed as "an opinion" by your 'Good Governance' experts, no less!

Over the decades, I believe I have uncovered the biggest finance/transport scandal in the history of the UK, with reams of evidence supplied that I'm sure is never read.  It can't be because you persist in digging an ever bigger hole for yourselves.

W​hat you have done is weird and wonderful​.  It is ​truly bizarre and invite​d derisive laughter​ from one member of the prestigious Lunar Society, no less. Honestly!​  This was when I correctly quoted, from memory, the written words of your Centro Passenger Services Director, Tom Magrath from his letter to me dated September 2000:-

"Light rail provision provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" - on the principal mainline railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​​that you have all nicely destroyed for a tramway, a test track, a cycle-walkway, buildings and fresh air.  What utter incompetence and stupidity.  What a joke!  Station Hotel in Dudley now has to be renamed 'Tram Stop Hotel' - it is bang opposite Castle Hill tram stop where the important mainline railway station used to be for 100 years.

Clear and obvious financial misspending and destruction of TWO mainline railways is not called incompetence or sheer stupidity as motorways clog with traffic BUT, A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION!!

I have "an independent whole-life assessment ... " from CNNCT, below.  I have lots of facts and figures (see below) collected over the decades of Brum's Tram Tragedy.

Last year's transport consultant's report to TfWM is here:

 CNNCT Costs Comment September 2024.pdf

and Bob Whitehead's report, here:

 The Case for FFPT in Birmingham.pdf

FFPT should have the money saved from abandoning the billions going into tram expansion (£15.6 BILLION in England and Wales for mainly trams on Thursday 5 June, Rachel Reeves announced.).  FFPT would be so much more cost effective in cutting congestion and getting the W Mids more Climate compliant.  But there has to be the stick of stiffening penalties, as well, on thoughtless/selfish car commuters who clog up the roads unnecessarily.

My own research has come up with this:

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure building costs

100s of miles of bus routes but only 23 Kms of tramway between Wolverhampton railway station and Edgbaston Village tram stop and most of that on the first mainline railway destroyed!

 Bus/tram subsidy 22/23.pdf

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

No one is interested, apart from me!  The elected councillors are spineless, change so often and, therefore, simply accept the word of the full-time professional officers who advise them how to vote when they do have the occasional, hurried vote.  A rubber stamping exercise from beginning to end!  So much for democracy.

Very Important Document here:-

40 years of scandal, carefully researched and chronicled, is exposed here:

  Trumpland Transport in the West Midlands since 1981

T​IM WELLER