We have voting for a figurehead Mayor ...

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We have voting for a "figurehead" (Jonathan Walker) Mayor with no official powers when Chairing Combined Authority Board meetings.  Andy is an excellent spokesperson and public relations man but, he told us in May 2017, with "no formal powers" (BBC 'Today' interview).

Scandalously, there is never allowed a single debate and voting to spend £15 BILLION (of greenhouse gases) to 2040 to convert our mass rapid transit system of buses and trains to one of trams, buses and trains to cause further changes and delays in using public transport.

Yet, in Scotland, they do uphold democracy with debates and votes before going ahead with their tram extension in Edinburgh.

And, this, at a time of climate emergency when we are meant to be drastically cutting greenhouse gases - urgently!

Trains NOT Trams

Dear Campaign for Better Transport

I have suggested as the new name, 'Trains NOT Trams'.

This is because many hundreds of millions of pounds have gone (and are still going) into replacing buses and trains with electric trams in seven towns and cities in the UK.

This, after the transport experts had closed and removed every mile of tram line in the 1950s, except for Blackpool.

Yet, the railway network still has many hundreds of miles of freight only and mothballed railway lines that should have their passenger trains returned to meet growing demand, relieve congestion and to clean up city air.

Or, the money from the tram networks could have been diverted into electric buses as well as modernising "our very old Victorian railway" (Sir Peter Hendy when Chief Exec of Network Rail in an interview on the 8 Jan 2013 on the 'Today' programme.  And he gave plenty of examples!)

Future tram money should be diverted into extending free bus rides for the over 65s and the disabled to everyone.  This might entice car commuters who do not need their cars for their jobs to use the bus, instead.  This would have a greater impact on reducing road and railway congestion and cleaning up city air.

Best wishes

The Land of Make Believe or, You Can't Make This Up if You Tried!

The Land of Make Believe or, You Can't Make This Up if You Tried!

This must be the biggest and longest running scandal in UK transport history -passenger trains kept off freight only railway lines and mothballed (or, 'out of use' designation ignored), alongside traffic choked roads and motorways!

This is all about the four Black Country boroughs and, supposedly, the Second (worst polluted) City in the land.  The Black Country and Birmingham - both bereft of sense; abounding in idiocy and bursting with incompetence.  Here are 40 points as the evidence for such a scathing but accurate description.  There is even more sad evidence - Metro One and Snow Hill Station - that I have not included, here (but see ** at foot).

I think, the excuse for inaction and wrong action by the railway experts at Network Fail is, "Well, we have to spend all our days writing reports, strategies and studies, don’t we?  Don’t blame us.  We’re just doing our job".  Thus, they end up:

1. ​Running homes, cars and shops ​down urban railway lines alongside main roads with bumper to bumper traffic (very mixed up kids run our transport, here in the West Midlands).
2. Putting Homebase on Kings Heath railway station, while still running some passenger trains on the line!
3. Forgetting to put trains and stations on the UK's only, it's all there, unused but easily reinstated, double track, mainline, strategic railway.
4. Even the Ordnance Survey think it is a working railway line in the Black Country section!  See all their latest maps.
5. Spending many millions of pounds on the underpasses and bridges as main roads have been widened and motorways built to cross this same strategic railway of phantom trains and invisible stations.  
6. In 2014, planning a test track for 2 Kms on the same unfinished, 120 Kms mainline railway to shuttle passengers to the next mainline in the neighbouring borough!
7. Then being told, "But we want it for Metro trams and have done so since the early 1980s."  This was in 2015.
8. These idiots - sorry, experts at Dudley Council - should have known that.
9. "Well," they said, "We'll just have to send the test track in the opposite direction through Dudley Castle Hill tunnel, then."
10. Next, putting it about that they have only done so because the test track needed the 'not one brick out of place', double track railway tunnel all along!
11. So why did the Warwick Manufacturing Group not tell them that in the first place?  Or, was someone lying?
12. Building a monorail at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the late 1980s and failing to connect it to the unfinished, with all the double tracks in place, 120 Kms mainline railway - the Black Country Railway, as I call it.  It fell short by 400 metres!
13. The monorail was built by the foremost and well respected Swiss engineering company, Von Roll.  But they closed it after about two or three years in the early 1990s.
14. Next, they sold it and reports indicated it went to Sydney.
15. Our railway experts spent £750 million (of railway money?) "to enhance the passenger experience" at New Street Station.  Quote is courtesy of David Golding of Network Rail in a phone conversation with me in 2014 or 2015.
16. Now called 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Station Tagged Along as an Afterthought in the Basement of the John Lewis Store'.
17. GCSC&DPSTAAAAITBOTJLS for short!
18. This must make it the longest name for a railway station outside Anglesey.
19. The longest name and the longest waits for trains!
20. Because, they are still failing to build the additional railway tunnels at both approaches to GCSC&DPSTAAAAITBOTJLS.
21. Negligent Rail failed to do so even when all the buildings above the existing tunnels had been razed to the ground!
22. And, twice too - at first Brindleyplace (80s/90s) and, then, when the Bull Ring Shopping Centre was rebuilt (90s/00s).
23. Failing to realise that they could have then, easily, put in the cut and cover tunnels (and even additional platforms, according to Railfuture).
24. Failing to twig that they could have "enhanced the passenger experience" by getting railway customers away on their trains more quickly and efficiently by building the tunnels and platforms when the obvious opportunities arose.
25. Illiterate economics in replacing buses and trains with electric trams at 4 to 14 times per Km more expensively than simply using diesel trains on important railway lines.
26. Each new tram is ten times more expensive than a new bus.  (FoI answer)
27. Only local "bus on rails" * trams ever go on railway lines; rarely, regional and national trains.  (the rarity was the 6 Kms from Smethwick Galton Bridge to Moor Street Sta; and, Walsall to Rugeley - but, this took 50 years!)
28. 11 Km Wolverhampton to Walsall railway line was tried but it was never extended to Brum via Sutton Park or to Derby via Lichfield and, therefore never got enough passengers.
29. It has been closed for some years but, it is this 11 Km that they want to resurrect, a second time, rather than returning the trains and stations to the unused 56 Kms out of the 120 Km Black Country Railway.
30. We run trees, trams, a test track and goods trains on our 120 Km Black Country Railway.  Aren't we clever?  (Actually, 64 Kms are normal with useful passenger trains.  56 Kms only are wasted or destined to have slow, "bus on rails" * trams!)
31. We can't blame Beeching.  Only today’s transport experts.  Simply because train services that were hardly used in the 60s should have been mothballed and not sold off, piece meal and lost for ever.  What complete stupidity!  The railway industry is wet behind the ears; is walked all over and, yet even today, good transport infrastructure is still wasted!
32. Our local and regional transport bosses are all subservient to Network Rail.
33. When this mighty organisation tells them that they don’t need the Black Country Railway until the 2040s, at the earliest, and then only for freight, the other transport bosses roll over, meekly accept it and start (in the 1980s) to turn it into a tram line!
34. Wasted and many kilometres of destroyed railway lines are the everyday business of Network Rail.  This government agency in the public sector has no interest in its own infrastructure so local and regional transport bosses come along and take over the railway lines from them to use as tram lines, housing, shops, test tracks and linear woodland!
35. See ‘The Times’ report of 12 October 2017 by Graeme Paton, ‘Network Rail’s upgrades monopoly shunted aside’.
36. Our, “still a very old Victorian railway” was spoken about by Sir David Higgins, Chief Executive of Network Rail on the ‘Today’ programme on 8 January 2013!
37. He mentioned, “500 Victorian signal boxes and 300 are from the 1960s”.
38. He spoke, in 2013, of Network Rail having £37 billion to spend in one year.  Now, ‘The Times’ report has, “Government investment in the railways of £4.2 billion was the lowest level in 15 years.”
39. Yet, the budget on defending the UK from attack by foreign forces is now 2% of GDP and is going up, in real terms, by 0.5% in every year of the present administration!!  (BBC ‘Today’ website earlier in the year)
40. Thus, top priority for two new aircraft carriers (£7 billion) that are the biggest and best ever but, now need a flotilla of warships around them for protection.

* as used by one Director from UK Tram Ltd and the Croydon MP on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, the day after the Croydon tram crash that killed seven passengers in November 2016.

** Metro Two, the extension that cost over £60 million/Km to take it to Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Basement Station means that there is no longer a tram stop for Snow Hill Station - since 2016.  The tram bypasses Snow Hill completely and goes straight to Grand Central.  Yet, it was built to connect Snow Hill with Grand Central!  Platform 4 at Snow Hill Station is still wasted and unused.  It would still be in use to this day if they had only put back the much more cost effective, financially prudent and responsible trains all the way to Wolverhampton Low Level Station (now no more).

Metro Three to Edgbaston is costing £75 million/Km for the 2 Kms to the west of Five Ways from Grand Central.  Putting diesel trains back on our Black Country and Brum 106 Kms of mothballed/wasted or freight only railway lines would could cost no more than £6 m/Km, according to the 2015 Borders Railway rebuilding (not needed for ours) to the middle of nowhere in the back of beyond but, beautiful Southern Uplands.

Tim Weller 14 October 2017

CONGRATULATIONS!

​

Dear James and team

Congratulations for winning the vote last night.  When will you win our wars in the Meddle East?

After four years of war, when will your side overthrow Assad to install our democratically elected, Western sympathetic leader?

Your side overthrew the Russian sympathetic President Yanukovych in Ukraine to replace him with our man, Petro Poronshenko.  War in eastern Ukraine ever since.  When will you win that war, James?

Your side has now lost four wars against 'weak', 'powerless' Afghanistan since the first 1839-42 war.

Your side overthrew Saddam but lost everything else; certainly, lost the peace in Iraq.

Your side overthrew Gaddafi (the friend of Tony Blair for a time) but gained anarchy in Libya.

You allowed terrorists to drive us brave Brits out of Palestine in 1947 to install our Judeo-Christian State in the Muslim Meddle East in 1948.  Many wars, over 67 years, ever since.  A failed state in successfully turning its neighbours into enemies. 

Your side overthrew democratically elected Mosadeq in Iran to install our man, the Shah.  Success for a time but little love and respect for the West for doing so, ever since.

Your side overthrew democratically and fairly elected Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to put in our Western sympathetic military government in Cairo.

After this 100 year record of Western and Christian misbehaviour, no wonder a very small minority of Muslims are radicalised and are raging against us!

When will your side make it safe, once more for white faces to move freely in the Meddle East and Tunisia without fear of kidnap and death?

The 'Today' programme this morning said that, in the second year of bombing there have, so far, been 7,500 air strikes to wipe Islamic State off the face of the earth.  Yet, the mightiest military force the world has ever seen, is nowhere near winning.  What is so inept about our armed forces, please James?

Winning votes for war to take place far from our shores, is so easy in safe and secure UK.  Victory in wars to bring tolerance and peace throughout the Near East and Meddle East is never delivered by your side.  Not even in our own powerful and WMD armed Israel!

Best wishes for the start of some true success for your side in 2016.  You certainly need it.

Tim