The Black Country Rail Line (BCRL) re-opening proposal

The fifty years, mothballed, Black Country Rail Line (BCRL) re-opening proposal:

1. It runs through three of the four Black Country boroughs and connects with the national rail network at either end - at Stourbridge Junction and Walsall (a major rail hub), via Castle Hill in Dudley.
2. It is shown on every map of Birmingham and the Black Country, including the Ordnance Survey, the A-Z and Google Maps.
3. The current proposal to put Metro trams on the middle section only has failed to materialise in 34 years of our councillors and officers trying so very, very hard.  Time, now, to try the simpler and cheaper solution of trains and stations returning, linked to buses to take passengers to and from the trains.
4. The BCRL will improve capacity on our national rail network more quickly, more cheaply and with less impact on human climate change and resource depletion than HS2.
5. It will reduce congestion at the UK's foremost rail congestion bottleneck, New Street Station by allowing inter-city and commuter trains to bypass New Street.
6. It will give choice to car commuters sitting in nose to tail traffic to leave their cars at home and get to work quicker and more responsibly by bus and, train on the BCRL.
7. We have had hundreds of millions of pounds spent building the Black Country Spine Road and the Black Country New Road and the more recent grade separated junction on the West Bromwich Expressway.  Now, its time for trains to reduce road and rail congestion - and air pollution and greenhouse gases.
8. I think, Cllr Will Duckworth supports trains and stations being put back on the line from what he told me at the November GP meeting.  He did not realise that it went on to Walsall.
9. In the last decade, hundreds of people supported my two Downing Street petitions for trains back on our existing 20 miles of double track rail lines that includes the six miles alongside commuter congested Alcester Road and Moseley Road (A435).
10. Spending £200 m on the 13.5 miles BCRL is more responsible and cost effective than more road building and HS2 to improve capacity.
11. At a time of supposed austerity, £600 m is being spent on a cosmetic revamp of New Street Station that does not improve rail congestion or, road congestion to the Drop and Go parking (actually, Stop and Crawl through the exhaust fumes polluted tunnel - in peak times).
12. The two leaders of Walsall and Sandwell councils are sympathetic to having trains returning to the whole length instead of trams on the middle section, only.  I have not yet asked the new Dudley leader, Peter Lowe what he wants.  Birmingham and their leader, Sir Albert Bore, wants more Metro trams, more HS2 and is not interested in the Black Country Rail Line (from his response when I spoke to him on the 5 December at his advice bureau in the Council House).

ALLOW THE BLACK COUNTRY TRAIN TO TAKE THE STRAIN!

"Revealed: £4bn plan to get city moving" Post 13 Nov

In nearly fifty years of living and working in Wider Birmingham I have seen umpteen of these magnificent transport plans that promise so much and deliver so little, if anything.

I came to Brum in the 1960s when the Victorian New Street Station had just been demolished and rebuilt to be a virtual underground station filled with poisonous diesel fumes.  In the 1970s, the Victorian Snow Hill Station went the same way - bulldozed.  Realising their error, it was quickly rebuilt but, to only half its former grand size.

In the 1980s and 90s, Midland Metro trams were all the rage but, by 2000, instead of nearly half a dozen new tram lines to replace trains and buses, we had a measly ONE and that was almost entirely built on a rail line that should never have had its trains removed!  Even then, it was never extended to New St Station.  Extraordinary!

In this year of our Lord and Master, Cllr Albert Bore - 2014, we STILL have the six miles double track rail line through Kings Norton, Kings Heath and Moseley without stations or trains.  Nose to tail rush hour congestion alongside an empty double track rail line.  Scandalous!

In addition, we have the 13 miles of the Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall double track rail line also devoid of trains and stations.  It goes within half a mile of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, almost next to Dudley Zoo and Castle, very near to the Black Country Living Museum, links with the West Coast Main Line and our precious, one and only tram line at Wednesbury.  Empty of trains; not even any ghost trains.  Fifty years of unparalleled negligence and, after the stupidity of the line being closed in the first place!

The one triumph was the re-opening of the cross rail line from Longbridge to Four Oaks.  Amazing!  How was it done?  Nothing like it has ever been seen since by our pie in the sky transport experts.  But, today things have changed for ever by these same visionary transport officials.  We can now rest happy in our beds knowing that things are looking up - at long last!