Clean Kilo at 1 Gibb Street, Deritend, Digbeth

FROM:

https://www.facebook.com/719589581561370/posts/1745839045603080/?sfnsn=scwspmo

"Metro Line Works:

Another great initiative and we see the long-term positives. However, small businesses will be most affected during the construction. Lane closures/traffic/diversions and noise pollution make it undesirable to come in the area. Pneumatic diggers operating only a few metres away from our shop make our Ice Cream bar, outdoor café & Meet the Producer events unappealing - it’s hard to even hear customers talking! Our customer parking from the High Street was blocked off – customers must disregard the no entry sign to come in. There was no public consultation engagement with us prior the works."

MY COMMENTS:

Totally unacceptable, as is £5m for replacing tram tracks in Corporation Street after only 5 years; and buses being permanently excluded from Broad Street and even cycles banned from part of it. All at 10 times more expensive per Km than rebuilding a railway!

Self-aggrandisement, vanity, high greenhouse gas emitting in construction Metro tram is definitely NOT: "Another great initiative and we see the long-term positives." When we could have electric buses directly on roads, why have what the authorities call a "bus on rails" tram? And, at ten times per Km more expensive to construct than rebuilding a railway!

"The clean air zone is a fantastic initiative for the health of Birmingham residents & CO2 reduction. However, for this kind of initiative to work, good public transport and cycling infrastructure needs to be fully in place before it’s launched and allow time for city centre businesses to recover from Covid first."

First duty of local and regional government should be to defend the interests of the poor and not the rich elite, like them who can well look after themselves.

 30 August 2018

I was at the Halesowen Global Justice Group meeting yesterday and mentioned the hundreds of millions going into tram extensions and Sprint bus routes.  For me, this is a local justice issue of morality and of right governance by our well meaning councillors, MPs and MEPs - and party members.

There is a desperate need for modest sized, highly insulated homes for families and singles in bed and breakfast and other 'temporary' accommodation.

There are many brownfield sites in our borough that I have found and listed where low carbon, more suitable housing and apartments should be going.

Therefore, the first duty of local and regional government should be to defend the interests of the poor and not the rich elite, like them who can well look after themselves.

Instead, these councillors, MPs and MEPs see their top priority, is to provide prestigious, grossly extravagant and wasteful Metro tram and Sprint bus schemes on the back of the billions going into HS2.

These people see their top priority to provide free car parking for two hours at all council car parks.  Low income families do not have cars.  Google tells me that 24% of UK households do not have even one car.

Our local and regional politicians see another top priority is to spend many hundreds of millions of pounds on immorally expensive tram extensions and Sprint buses - Metro's little sister or the bus that thinks it's a tram.

Low income families need existing buses that have free fares.  Over 60s like me have had them for over ten years.  The money from scrapping tram extensions and Sprint buses should be used to give everyone free bus travel with bus lanes and traffic lights priority to speed them on their way at the expense of car commuters.

There would still be money left over for electric buses to replace diesel buses and to give us all healthier and cleaner air.

Instead, these hopeless politicians only want grandiose, vanity projects to project style over substance.

The money from the Clean Air Zone charges from 2020 should be going into these ordinary bus priority measures, too.  This would free up road space for car users who really do need their cars for their businesses by getting car commuters bussed into work.  One double decker can take 70 single occupancy commuter cars off the road.

At Merry Hill, the other week, I actually saw a double decker bus with 'STAFF BUS' emblazoned on its front.  Brilliant!

Our way below par politicians are happy to preside over bus routes being cut and a slow but steady decline in their use as we all think car and never bus - let alone bike!

PLEASE write a sentence or two about all these shenanigans to the people in the 'To' field, above that are getting this.

Steve Eling opposes Clean Air Zone

Dear Steve - I believe, I have not had one reply to any of my emails or texts, up to now.  Just complacency, apathy and negligence.  But you are not alone.

I am sorry to be so condemnatory, once again of your council's lamentable performance.  Last summer, it was the loss of 72 leaflets that I had been led to believe were to be placed in the 72 councillors' pigeon holes but were thrown away, instead.  Last week, I was told that my new leaflets could only be put in councillors' pigeon holes if they were in envelopes with each of the councillors' names on the front.  Ruth Darby kept them and they have not been returned.  Not one other Black Country council has this oppressive, rigid and unreasonable policy.  I am asking for the cost of the lost leaflets to be paid to me, please.

This evening, I have just read the report in the Halesowen News that you are opposing the Clean Air Zone extension.  Wrong move, Steve.  You are in a closed mind, tram rut and, are paralysed with inertia over increasing road and railway congestion and pollution as the population rises.  The report says you have plans for cleaner buses.  What plans are these?  You and your fellow WMCA leaders are planning SPRINT diesel buses at huge expense in Brum.  All that is needed are swift moves to get electric buses on 100% bus lanes where there is a dual carriageway, with traffic light priority for all buses; and, FARELESS buses for all and not just the few in my age group.  Old crocks like me need our cars as we lose our mobility.  The young and fit like you, who help to run UK plc need free staff buses to get you into work to free up the road space for essential vehicle users.

Over your years as a councillor, Steve, I expect, along with previous and current West Midlands leaders, you are responsible for the following:

Here is corporate corruption and idiocy and, corporate incompetence and negligence.  I think these are the only words that can appropriately and properly be used to describe this never ending financial and transport scandal, viz:

1. Scandal One: At a time of austerity and last week’s UN report on extreme poverty in the UK, £1.38 BILLION from 2018 to 2026 is to replace some buses and trains with the second most expensive transport mode after HS2. Tram extensions are even more expensive than nearly all Maglev train projects in China, Japan and South Korea. Proof here:
   
   
    Transport costs per kilometre
2. Scandal Two: building roads, housing and trading estates and retail units on over 100 Kms of urban railway lines - all since the 1960s closure programme that was so necessary as we all went out and bought cars. Councillors gave planning permission.
3. Scandal Three: decades of 106 Kms of under-used and completely unused, urban, double track railway lines in the Black Country, Brum and south Staffordshire, as we've all crawled along bumper to bumper in car or bus on choked roads and motorways.
4. Scandal Four: While, at the same time, many tens of millions of pounds were used to build tunnels and bridges for the Black Country Railway for new road and motorway schemes to pass over or under but, then, never to take the next step to put the trains and stations back.  Only trams on two short sections, totalling 6.7 Kms!
5. Scandal Five because, since 1981, yet more tens of millions were being used to promote - not getting the trains back on 106 Kms - but, Midland Metro trams with a team at Centro House and glossy brochures produced to show what was going to be done.  But, the 15 lines covering 200 Kms never was done! Only one line was ever done, in 1999 on a railway line, of all things.  Instead of simply putting the commuter trains back! Now, being extended to Edgbaston to replace and push out buses that have to and will always have to take a much longer route to avoid the trams, six to ten every hour, in narrow Broad Street.
6. Scandal Six: Metro One extended in the other direction, on an even more important railway line, to wreck any possibility of finishing the 120 Kms, principal, mainline railway between Worcester and Derby!
7. Scandal Seven: Two piddling sections of tram line to muck up a 120 Kms principal main line railway. A similar short section, of 11 Kms of passenger trains, is to duplicate the 529 Platinum bus route. The bus takes 33 minutes outside the rush hour and 45 minutes in the rush hour between Walsall and Wolverhampton. 11 Kms, when the whole 41 Kms via Walsall, Aldridge, Water Orton to Brum needs to see the return of its commuter trains. And last decade's attempt at the same thing failed. Nothing quite like failure breeding failure, of course. A parochial stitch up by Walsall and Wolverhampton leaders, perhaps. Leaders who cannot or will not see the bigger picture. Leaders who cannot get their priorities right. Blind leaders ineffectually failing to show any leadership.

This is the proof that all seven leaders, the opposition leaders and, Andy Street who rubber stamps whatever you leaders want, are in no way up to the job. You have let us all down.

This is all a bigger fiasco than Brexit - by you politicians.

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