You wrote, "If indeed the Leadership Team are the persons responsible then perhaps there needs to be a concerted approach to them, both by direct letter and through the media."
Yes, my dear friend, you are so right. I have been doing this since the 1980s but only you, train driver Dave Parsons and one or two others have been at all interested over the decades. In the 80s, I led the campaign against the Kidderminster, Blakedown, Hagley (KBH) motorway standard bypass. Our positive, practical and helpful suggestion then was that the first action they needed to take, after cancelling the road, was to return commuter and regional trains to the part freight only, Stourbridge to Walsall railway line. After we stopped the KBH (we won!), I learnt that the wasted, unused railway ran from Stourbridge Jct, all of 56 Kms, to Burton on Trent via Lichfield and the UK's National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas - literally alongside the wasted railway but no station and only freight trains! However, every councillor and officer, for forty years remain insisting - and now achieved - that they must convert a small part of the London to Edinburgh railway via the Black Country
into a 7 Kms tramway, 2 Kms VLR test track and the HQ of the Black Country Innovative Manufacturing Organisation (BCIMO), with the purpose to promote, test and deliver VLR trams throughout the UK. This, despite the fact there is an excellent facility, already to do that elsewhere. My fellow campaigner and train driver, Dave Parsons wrote: "all light rail manufacturers ie CAF, Stadler, Siemens have their own testing and innovation management centres. There's also other places in this country such as Long Marston former MOD depot, which has light rail testing facilities."
We have to influence the decision makers by power of persuasion and by appealing to their consciences. As simple as that. But, I know I have been doing all this, on my own, for decades! No wonder I am such a successful failure, John.
They no longer want to hear from me, so it is over to you - PLEASE! Every email of mine only, ending in @wmca.org.uk is blocked. All I can do is resort to printing out my stuff and posting it or delivering it in person! Even then I'm not sure personal delivery gets passed on because I never get a reply. There is total silence and apathy from the officers. But there is hope. There is your good self, John!
We have to go via the members, the councillors who I can email, still and text. Even then, there is much apathy and immoral acquiescence in whatever the officers and the Snr Leadership Team want. And all they want, at the expense of the poor and Climate, is four totally unnecessary and highly expensive rail modes, viz:
Ultra-light Rail
Very Light Rail
Light Rail
High Speed
and a new bus mode, Sprint.
Please join me, John in writing, emailing, phoning, texting to the Top People, the VIPs. Use the internet or my past email addresses or the WMCA website. Attending their committee meetings, too, to try and win them over!
By the way, I've been writing and campaigning about green growth for decades and for social justice so that deprived areas don't get tramways for a billion pounds in price and weight of GHG emissions but sensible, practical help with energy and food bills and homes made Climate compliant.
You wrote, "The forthcoming report on growth could be the trigger, even while it is being prepared." It is already prepared, John. It is called 'The Growth Plan'. Yet another one!
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