OTT transport provision for W Mids but not Stoke!

Dear Nigel

​We have everything; you have nothing!  I know it is all relative. 

I was the skinny, balding old man who sat next to you for the last session with the MPs on Friday afternoon.  I gave you the pink sheet you are welcome to give me feedback on, if you wish.  Email attachment, at the foot.

I said to Gareth Snell, at the close that all the transport projects on all of your wish lists could be met if only you would oppose the TfWM/WMCA/Midlands Connect £15 billion (Jan 2020 figure) by 2040 for 150 miles of 8 lines of trams and 380 tram stops.  We all love trams.  However, should the Climate Emergency override that and bring about a little restraint?  Gareth would not dream of questionning what the West Midlands is getting.

Is this a correct and a fair enough view, from me, of Friday's meeting, do you think?

4 STOKE MPs hanker after a Mayor

Midlands Connect Summit at Stoke, 12 September 2025

"As a Sub-national Transport Body, Midlands Connect", is to make "the Midlands region fairer, greener and stronger for everyone who lives here."

My attendance brings this:

FOUR STOKE MPs hanker after a Mayor.

In a conversation with me, Gareth Snell would not dream of questioning the projects that Mayor Richard Parker has secured for the West Midlands Combined Authority and Midlands Connect organisation.  In effect,

• "Good luck to what they get, I cannot criticise the billions coming their way and virtually nothing for us."
• 'It is of no concern of mine to be bothered about the billions in weight of deadly greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted'. (what Gareth was thinking!)
• CLIMATE EMERGENCY was never mentioned.
• Tens of billions secured for the highly prestigious HS2 for the West Midlands and not Staffordshire.
• This largesse is widely ridiculed as being nowhere near being completed after 16 years and will not be for another 10 years, just to Birmingham.
• The HS1 line never increased capacity.  Nor will High Scam 2 when it has no stations, so you have to keep the existing intercity service!!
• It ends at Handsacre, an insignificant village in Staffordshire.
• But even the much-looked-up-to WMCA failed to get its 200 Kms and 10-line tramway network by the year 2000.
• By that date, it had a paltry 20 Kms with 18 Kms on the first mainline railway.  This, to replace commuter trains for many times more per Km!
• It has a trifling 23 Kms, 
• Now, £15 billion to 2040 for 150 miles of tramway, 8 lines and 380 tram stops.
• Failed to complete its motorway box on its western side.
• Has such horrendous motorway congestion that drivers use it at night to escape long hold-ups.

The WMCA and Midlands Connect have destroyed the UK's only railway "of national strategic significance" that could have taken vehicles off the M5/M6.  Work is ongoing to turn it into a dog walkers' paradise of a cycle-walkway.  In other parts, our cllrs/MPs and transport experts have put buildings, a test track and, shortly, 6.7 Kms of trams (simply a “bus on rails”) on two sections.

120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  One of only two north-south railways between Brum and the Irish Sea now drowned, dead from political and transport expert idiocy, breathtaking incompetence and stunning indifference.

PHOTO of the principal, mainline railway for dog walkers/cyclists, near Brownhills!!

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

There are Staffordshire railway lines wasted and overgrown in the Stoke area.

• But brilliant for Nature and bees - and Climate compliance.
• The Stoke Midlands Connect Summit ended with the four MPs wanting top billing for the A50/A500 upgrade.  It's already dual carriageway!
• Yet more clamour for PRIVATE transport as public transport remains in the doldrums.

The enormous gulf in funding between Stoke and the West Midlands is laid bare, here:

4 rail modes for West Midlands.  NOT FOR STOKE - it has to make do with one.

3 bus modes for the W Mids.  NOT FOR STOKE - just one for them.

But Stoke MPs must not interfere in other MPs’ business - over anything, so they have to keep silent!

You wonderfully listed a number of places that could and should have improved transport but the names meant nothing to me.  I would love to have more details, please and I'll look them up on the OS maps.

What, exactly, are you campaigning for?

I would love to have your honest, frank thoughts on that pink sheet I gave you - please!

 Public Transport in the Doldrums

Near Brownhills on the Staffordshire section of the wasted 56 Kms between Stourbridge and Burton between London and Edinburgh.

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

Railfuture's full map of 2003 - no progress, whatsoever.  Just regress.  Only continuing destruction!

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

What do you think of my thought that your public transport provision is threadbare compared to ours in the W Midlands.  We have four rail modes:

High Speed - tens of billions in price and weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Heavy Rail - although about 100 Kms of railway lines in the heart of motorway-congested Midlands still unused or partly used.  About 100 Kms have been destroyed for roads, building and for:

Light Rail, and

Very Light Rail in Coventry and the test track at the former Dudley Castle Hill mainline railway station.

And three bus modes - the Sprint bus that thinks it's a tram;

Guided busways

Regular buses

Do you think that this is OTT as regards railway provision, when the national debt is rising with increased interest payments on them and, rising temperature, too from rising GHG emissions?

Was it you who told me that you would have cycled to today's transport meeting but you thought a suit was essential?  I always cycle to my local meetings in Brum from Halesowen, a distance of nine miles on over six miles of traffic-free routes - and I'm 77!