Railway and bus conversion to tramlines because ...

A spokesman for the Mayor of the West Midlands said: “The extension of the West Midlands Metro tram line, which is now under construction from Wednesbury to Dudley, Merry Hill and Brierley Hill, was identified as the most cost-effective way of providing this improved connectivity for both local residents and businesses.  The most cost-effective at about ten more expensive per Km to construct the tram on roads and railway than to put the commuter and regional trains back on the full, unused length, to finish the ready-built principal, mainline railway.  Existing buses would meet the trains - called integrated transport. 

“This is largely because the use of light rail enables a high frequency service to operate providing direct access to both the heart of Dudley town centre and the Merry Hill shopping centre.  Buses already provide direct access to both!  Trams to Merry Hill will be an additional attraction and spur to desert Dudley town shops.

“This would not be possible with a traditional train service, which would be unlikely to justify more than a half-hourly frequency service and which would be confined to the former railway alignment rather than providing access to those areas to which people actually want to travel.  The railway alignment from Derby to Devon via Dudley or, Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill is exactly where people want to travel.  Have buses taking people to the railway station and meeting the train at the other end!

“The West Midlands Metro Wednesbury – Brierley Hill extension will also be connected onto the existing West Midlands Metro line at Wednesbury, providing direct links to Birmingham, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich and will also provide the opportunity to change at Dudley Port Station for local train services.  Having the trains back on the railway line would do all this just as well.  And did do for 100 years until we fell in love with cars and deserted trains in the 60s.

Now, public transport is made worse with, sometimes, an additional change needed with trams added to the mix.  Multi-mixed up transport!  Eg, public transport passengers on the eleven bus routes using Hagley Road.

“Trains stopped running on this route many decades ago and their reinstatement has not been a priority for the rail industry.  The first priority was to destroy railway lines for roads and buildings.  Secondly, for HS1, HS2 and Cross-Rail to be built, instead. However, as a result of the investment in Metro we are seeing a number of bridges and structures along the route repaired or removed and rebuilt. This could potentially open up options longer term for the development of freight and passenger rail services, in parallel with Metro, along the wider Walsall to Stourbridge route in future.”  The existing or new bridges and tunnels are NOT being widened to take trains and trams in parallel.  Only freight trains may be possible at night when the trams are not running.  The experts are wrong.  The false and misleading magic of "passive provision" was always made up, concocted, to brush off those who had seen through their bad practice.  Indeed, their folly.

John Davison

It is true that you could not run freight trains along the route once the two tracks of the tram are laid. It was a two track railway and the tram is two track.

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• Tim Weller

  Thanks, John. But can the freight run at night?

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• John Davison

  only if the tram tracks are built to 'heavy rail' standards could a standard train run on them. There would be junctions so that freight trains would not run on the street sections that will have sharp curves. Then you get onto signalling. Midland Metro is almost entirely 'line of sight' with almost no signalling.

Extravagance for London, Scotland and Brum; austerity for Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall

Dear Laura and Cllr Roger

My subject heading, above is, for me, one example of one legitimate meaning of corruption.

If I may be so honest as to say so, there is this one big flaw in your argument:-

Money is no object for rail projects for London (£15 billion for Cross Rail east-west and now Cross Rail north-south in the planning at similar expense), two very expensive HS2 stations for Birmingham and tram extensions for Brum at over £100 million per mile, to end up replacing hybrid buses.  In other words, business cases are quickly written to make the business cases watertight, unassailable and more secure than Fort Knox - as we have seen with the £50 billion HS2 line - and, the very low priority rail line to the middle of nowhere in rural,depopulated southern Scotland at £10 million per mile.

Business cases are dishonest because they are always made to come up with what the right wing political masters want!  Like the cost benefit analysis that made the Kidderminster, Blakedown, Hagley motorway bypass essential to be built in the 1990s to bypass a mainly rural, dual carriageway and queues at traffic lights in Hagley (we stopped this wasteful idiocy).  So much for it being essential!

Like the business case that made Metro One essential because it would get 15 million passenger journeys a year.  It turned out to be five million every year or less and, been loss making every year ever since.  In other words, it was built under false pretences - corruption in my book.  So much for honest and accurate business cases.

In this age of supposed austerity (now in year six), you and Roger should be livid at the following weird and wonderful and very extravagant public expenditure schemes that go to London and Scotland, with crumbs from the rich man's table going to Birmingham and never the Black Country boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall.  This, in 34 years of fruitless endeavour that must have cost millions of pounds in salaries to the team of officers and, in generous expenses to the many PTA, ITA and the Transport Delivery Committee councillors.  This is all the exact opposite of Gordon Brown's prudent economics for the poor taxpayer.  It is what you get with right wing politicians out of control because there is no checks and balances from left wing politicians like me who never get elected - until, extraordinarily, one did on Saturday, 12 September!

For me, this is all corrupt economics and nothing like living with our means, limits and boundaries of steady state green economics.

In addition, passenger numbers on our urban rail network is increasing.  The demand is clearly there for more rail lines in the rail and road congested Black Country.  More capacity is urgent.  It cannot wait until the 2040s before you work on getting diesel (or better, electric) trains on the Black Country Line.

How to build a railway:

This is how it is done at £10 million per mile - ten times cheaper than Metro in Brum city centre:

http://www.bordersrailway.co.uk/project/how-to-build-a-railway.aspx

Example:

MOVING HEAVEN AND EARTH

Earthworks are often the first and most visible sign that the railway is being built. Firstly, surface layers – in this case cycle-path tarmac– are removed. The ground is then excavated down, or built up to the level where the railway line will lie. Embankments or retaining walls are built either side of the track, using earth sourced from other locations which is then stabilised or re-enforced. Some of the pre-existing embankments will also require improvement. Drainage also needs to be created, as well as installing pumps, laying pipes, building storage tanks and building culverts (drains) which allow rainwater to flow underneath, and away from, the railway. 

WORK TO STRUCTURES

There are a number of structures along the route: 137 bridges, 42 newly constructed and 95 in need of refurbishment. A variety of work is required to existing bridges in order to help them comply with safety standards and make them suitable for the railway to run over or under. We may have to demolish and re-build some structures, including the creation of entirely new roads. However, where parts of a bridge can be re-used, we will keep these in situ to minimise construction works and we only ever replace what is failing or unsuitable. 

​

LAYING THE RAILWAY

First we create a railway formation (the foundation on which the railway lies). This is flattened, ready for ballast to be laid on top. Ballast consists of layers of crushed stone which form the track bed and also help to drain the railway. We then level and stabilise this ballast using special machinery, before laying sleepers at precise intervals all the way along the route. Then the tracks are finally laid on top and fixed into place.​

Electrification and electric trams seem to be beyond the UK's level of competence:

Now in the sixth decade of electrifying our rail network we are, still, nowhere near seeing an end to it.  The Swiss did theirs in two decades before 1939.  34 years ago we went haring off into electric trams to replace mainly trains.  Only 22 Km would have been achieved by the end of the year when we were assured that 200 Km would be up and running by they year 2000, fifteen years ago.

This summer, there was an inexplicable delay of three months when all work was stopped on two major English electrification schemes.

Are we competent in building HS2?  Should TfL come to the West Midlands to advise us?  Should we get a further opinion from the European rail industry who do know what they are doing?

Yours sincerely

Scotland's independence might just cut England down to size - but I doubt it!!

Scotland: Stop subsidising England's excesses.  Get your independence, Scotland!

I know that, from the opinion polls, Scotland distancing itself further from England seems a hopeless cause.  However, for what it's worth, these are my:  interesting/alternative/tendentious/horrifying/warped (delete as you wish)
thoughts on why I think Scotland would be sensible to separate from England and be its own sovereign nation within the EU and UN instead of the UK.

The big-hearted Scots* are subsidising London as the hub of the UK with continuing plans for Heathrow expansion, the very expensive Cross Rail and Thames Link project that opens in 2019 and, last year's London Olympics.

After more than one hundred years of an "essentially a Victorian rail network" (Chief Executive of Network Rail, Sir David Higgins on 8 January 2013 on the 'Today' programme), England has decided, rather late in the day, to modernise it, with the Scottish taxpayer helping to foot the bill.  Does Scotland have even one Victorian signal box?  England has 500 dating back to Queen Victoria and 300 are 1960s vintage! (same interview)

The Scots subsidised HS1 and, now, they generously help us out with HS2 that, again, gets nowhere near Scotland, even when fully completed.

Scotland should be most upset at subsidising England's armed conflicts on 23 nations since 1945 (Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' slot in the 'Today' programme.  Repeated, on another occasion, without disagreement from the other team members, by the Green Party panellist on Radio 4's 'Any Questions').**

No doubt, there are some in the English Defence League calling for pre-emptive, unmanned drone attacks of self defence on the Muslim militant extremists before they kill another of our brave soldier heroes.  Heroes home in barracks, on leave from protecting the people of Afghanistan from the real killers.  Scotland should disassociate itself from this barbarity by no longer funding England's unappreciated occupation of, and drone attacks on, foreign lands (a total of thirteen years, in punishment for 9/11, when we finally leave Afghanistan in 2014).

Scotland provides a most convenient haven for England's submarines carrying its independent nuclear deterrent. The Clyde Trident workers might be redeployed in future proofing your nation from the accelerating, enhanced greenhouse effect and the exhaustion of the planet's oil and gas reserves. The subs and nuclear missiles might be sent off to Barrow to give employment to the English, who will be left with digging a little deeper into their pockets with the Scottish taxpayer no longer bailing them out.

With independence, Scotland would no longer be contributing to the very many billions of pounds for the replacement for the Trident subs. Preliminary work on the replacement began when either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown was PM.

Scotland's power from water, wind and sun could be used just for themselves or sold to the English at great expense! A golden chance for you Scots to become Great Scot - instead of the phrase being used simply as an exclamation! Great Britain, minus Scotland, would be just a little less 'Great' and a little less able to act, in tandem with the US, as the continuing great power and policeman around the world to get its way.

We English, have such an over-inflated view of our importance to the nations of the world, that we cannot possibly do without Scotland to enhance our prestige and weight! Without Scotland, how can we possibly continue to punch above our weight in the world?  Even more crucially, the US might not regard us quite so highly with only little Wales and littler N Ireland in tow.  Our special relationship might be that little less special without Scotland.

For us English, all this independence malarkey is diminishing our size and greatness. Great Scot, it might even threaten our place as a permanent member of the Security Council. We certainly can't have that!

Let Scotland raise its own taxation for its own spending - that is all independence is - like the fifty other countries that have gained their independence from London since 1945 "and not one has expressed an interest in coming back under London's control." Alex Salmond on 21 May 2013 on 'Today'.

I think, Scotland's taxation is essential for England to continue to fund her excesses; it also makes her also responsible for the UK's most unfortunate, aggressive, domineering and provocative foreign policy in Muslim lands.  That certainly is an excess, to put it mildly!

Tim Weller

* "Over the last thirty years, in every single one of these last thirty years, Scotland per head contributed more in taxation than the UK average.  So that does indicate the financial and the potential financial strength goes over a long period of time."  Alex Salmond interview on the 'Today' programme, 21 May 2013.

** "Since 1946, the UK has engaged in more armed conflict than any other country with a total of 23 if you include Libya.  Do we conclude from this that we are a nation of warmongers or, a country that values peace and justice?"  Rhiddian Brook on Thought for the Day on 25 March 2011.