Friday, 10 October 2025

My answer to tramways being built throughout the UK

Do you think I am on the right lines with this?  Please be honest and frank!

Good news: We can write to our MPs, councillors to call for a cooler Climate by vigorously opposing the calls for high GHG emitting HS2 extension and trams replacing/duplicating buses/trains in W Midlands, West Yorkshire, Nottingham, Cardiff, Manchester Edinburgh ... The money saved to reverse the decline in bus use and existing/remaining railway lines used for trains, not trams, roads and buildings.  Am I right?

All rail based transport is like cream - very nice and smooth but the concrete and steel is very high in greenhouse gas emissions in producing the stuff.  Therefore naughty!!

Are you able to tell me who you liaised with in Brum at 16 Summer Lane, please?  Who is the most sympathetic to commuter/regional trains on mainline railways instead of trams?  And electric buses directly on roads instead of "bus on rails" on roads, as the UK Tram Ltd promotion group director, Andrew Broddick called it when interviewed on 'Today', at the time of the Croydon tram crash in November 2016.

I wrote this five years ago:

Tuesday, 16 June 2020

"Let's build new tram lines with routes where people want to go" - 'Inside Croydon' (only, please!!)

PLEASE FORWARD to Anthony and Stephen.  Everyone else please read, think and inwardly digest - to produce some creative answers for me.  Thanks.

Dear Anthony Norris-Watson and Stephen Spark (I can't remember who on earth they are!)
Why is it that only electric "bus on rails" trams can "take thousands of cars off our roads every day" but never electric buses linked into reinstated trains and stations?
"Bus on rails" trams was the description that Andrew Broddick of UK Trams Ltd gave on the 'Today' programme to help explain 62 injuries and 7 deaths on Croydon Tramlink in November 2016.
Why can only trams "relieve overcrowded existing routes" and not by making use of existing but wasted railway lines, with commuter trains, that would have avoided the tragedy in 2016?
Why only trams to "serve corridors where there is a high or rising demand" but never electric buses, linked into trains returned to existing railway lines, that would reduce the need for multiple changes?
Why is it always trams to "stimulate development in areas that suffer deprivation" like the four Black Country boroughs when its neighbour, Birmingham Grand Central station, remains "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" - Peter Plisner,  BBC 'Midlands Today'.
Why is it always trams chosen to "duplicate existing public transport links"?
When "Funds will be tight in a post-Covid, post-Brexit environment", why only tram schemes when they are the second most expensive mode to construct after HS2 and have a higher accident rate than either bus or train?

When tram extensions are often ten times more expensive per Km to construct than putting diesel/electric trains back on even rebuilt railway lines (cf Borders Railway), why are they always chosen to duplicate, replace and make for even more multiple changes between bus, train and tram?
Why are "bus on rails" trams chosen over commuter, regional and intercity trains on two short sections of a half-finished, 120 Kms principal, mainline railway "of national strategic significance"?

There are proposals and, active plans now being implemented, for three different kinds of trams over four short sections of this nationally important, partly finished railway!!  Pre Metro shuttle tram, Very Light Rail tram and Light Rail tram.
Why complicate public transport travel in this way?

Why cannibalise unused railway lines for tram lines?  And, leave many miles of unused railway lines wasted for more decades or forever!
Has no one thought of trains for train lines that have not yet been used for the bizarre, eccentric activity of running homes, offices, shops and roads down them?
Complete amateurs have rebuilt entire railway lines.  Why can't the professionals put TRAINS BACK on existing, entire, already built railway lines?

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