The flash, the gross and the most expensive you can get - the Concorde complex/obsession!

I feel that HS2 is the railway equivalent of flying and is as expensive and as glitzy and glamorous but as shallow as Concorde;

Metro trams are simply the "bus on rails" equivalent of, and a pathetic replacement for, trains.  And, second in expense after HS2 in construction; and,

Sprint is the bus equivalent of Metro trams.  It is called Metro's little sister, in fact.  Never mind that "all that glisters is not gold".  We must have the flash and the gross - HS2, Metro and Sprint while bus travel flat lines or declines outside London, urban train lines get wasted, unused or even destroyed - like the present plans continue for the 120 Kms Black Country Railway.

We never seem to be satisfied with getting our bus and train travel as good as - just the average - on the mainland of Europe.  We want to impress and have something prestigious for other nations to gloat over.  Or is it about keeping up with the Jones's?

Do you agree with Bob Whitehead's Fare-Free Public Transport?

What has happened to the Road Traffic Reduction Act?  What was the point of it when the growth of everything and everyone has always been all the rage?  Living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet.

This Land is Made of Money

3 October 2018

Should this be called stealing from the nation's taxpayers?  And an abuse of trust?

In a time of continued austerity, hundreds of millions of pounds (£1,380 million to 2026) are being spent on converting some lengths of main line railway AND bus routes into tram lines.  Other bus routes are being turned into super special Sprint diesel bus routes with limited stops that mean today’s, less flamboyant buses will still have to be provided for the stops that the Sprint misses out.  Both Metro trams and Sprint, "Metro's little sister", are phenomenally expensive to buy and install. At over £60 m/Km for replacing buses, electric trams are the second most expensive transport mode after HS2 (apart from two Japanese maglev lines).  See my ‘Transport costs per kilometre’.

In addition, buildings are still planned for the tracks and the ONLY feasible site for the re-opening of Dudley Castle Hill main line station.  This idiocy, mind you, on a principal line that Network Rail and the Department for Transport maintain is "a railway of national strategic significance" (letter to self, dated 8 March 2018, from Network Rail and Dept of Transport).

Today, the Shropshire Star has highlighted how West Midlands Railway has caused travel chaos with too few trains and one that broke down.  Would there be more trains to and from Shropshire if the line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level had not been turned into a tram line, with the attendant loss of platform 4 at Snow Hill, Low Level station closed, plus 4 or 5 Kms of track?

I call it stunning ineptitude, corporate stupidity and financial illiteracy to disregard the costs of trams for taxpayers when the 120 Kms Black Country Railway desperately needs the return of its commuter and regional trains and stations - NOT  “bus on rails”, trams. It is criminal theft by the governing elite. If they cannot be more honest, they should be locked up. The stolen money should go to extend free bus travel for all (not just the young, the disabled and elderly, like me) and to give electric buses for all.  NO MORE ELECTRIC TRAMS!

Tim Weller (full contact details at the very foot)

timweller1@gmail.com 0791 380 4363       6 October 2018