SCANDAL over Five Ways underpass blocked to buses - forever

Dear Trevor

Very many thanks for this.

You wrote,  "The Five Ways Underpass will re-open to traffic in late summer 2021".  This is a lie if it means buses along with your intended frequency of trams.

I would be glad to receive what the latest thinking is on whether buses would ever again be able to return to the Five Ways underpass.  All eleven bus routes, I believe until 2019, used the underpass to speed them on their way.

Please could you confirm that not one bus will be able to use the underpass, ever again, because of the weird and wonderful decision to replace buses directly on roads with "bus on rails" trams going on roads, instead.  This, at a cost of £75 m/Km when rebuilding a railway in Scotland cost £7 m/K in 2015.

As a consequence, we end up with a slower, longer and worse public transport journey from west Brum, Dudley and part of Sandwell into the city centre.  You call this disgraceful state of affairs, "Our offering".  Some offering!

Before sending this email I have, this afternoon, cycled to Five Ways as today's coronavirus exercise, to check on the current state of the underpass.  I spoke to three workmen and saw that the tunnel work now makes it completely impossible for buses to return.  I saw the two highest and most substantial concrete crash barriers I have ever seen.  Crash barriers to prevent trams colliding in the event of coming off the rails.  Massive crash barriers to prevent trams from hitting the tunnel supports to bring the roof crashing down.

We once went from Dudley Castle Hill to Brum city centre by TRAIN.  Part of that railway line was converted to a road.  Another part of the same railway line is being converted to tramway at the most horrific expense.

You all need to immediately stop this foolish and greenhouse gas-guzzling exercise in bringing to pass Sir David Attenborough's dire warnings.  Just give us fareless electric buses on bus priority roads without the idiocy of railway tracks.  And use the transport £15 billion budget to 2040 for regional Fare-Free Public Transport for EVERYONE in the West Midlands - for the obvious reasons:- Covid, climate catastrophe, congestion and polluted city air.

Best wishes for some sanity to return.

Tim

WHAT IS LEFT IS STILL WORTH DOING!

But was Corbyn's unsought fall from grace fair on him?  Was the punishment proportionate and reasonable, especially when it is our opponents who have brought him down, aided by the very political party he has probably been a member of all his adult life?

Your minutes are very well and accurately composed.  Not too much but sufficient.  And helpfully laid out.  One small correction: it is 56 Kms, in the middle of the half-used 120 Kms, that are wasted, unused but was ready for passenger and freight trains until the present changes to have Metro "bus on rails" trams on 6.7 Kms.  Plus, 2 Kms test track for Very Light Rail and, Innovation Centre on the only feasible, former site for Dudley Castle Hill Railway station.

Dudley will now, permanently, be the largest town in the UK without a railway station - only a tram stop to shuttle passengers between the mainline railway to Worcester to the south and to Derby in the other direction.

I would like Left Unity and all other political parties to insist on commuter, regional and freight trains on the other 48 Kms.  Still worth doing, especially from Wednesbury, in Sandwell to Derby!  It seems odd to me that the left and the green movement show such little interest in what is going on with public transport.  Hence, since the summer of 2017 I have been declaring as an Independent candidate in the Metro Mayor election - but I don't want any votes, only to use it as an opportunity to highlight more of the other obvious and sensible action to improve our prospects in the light of rising greenhouse gases and depleting resources.  Hence, FFPT and railway lines used - and much more, as you also know.

Their "passive provision" is so passive that it is non existent!

I have re-read your email, below. 

Your crusade, you mention, needs to be, I think, on the most achievable and urgent goals. That  means:

Helping me stop the folly of building on the only feasible site for the rebuilt Dudley Castle Hill railway station.​  ​This, when the authorities SAY they want the passenger trains to return but are only building in "passive provision" for freight trains as they use the line for six to ten trams every hour!​  ​This is either a lie or incompetence or, to put it more kindly​, ​the top people are being disingenuous,

Do you think, Andi as men of integrity, that we should be doing all we can to point this out?​  ​Should we politely point out that their "passive provision" is so passive that it is non existent?  How about a little activity to end the dearth of absent trains in the congested, traffic choked Black Country?

Should we helpfully point out to them that they are planning to spend ten times more per Km on the glitzy glamorous trams than simply putting back the commuter, regional and intercity trains​,​ with Railfuture's nine stations?​  ​Do you think that all this might just be in line with your "political and financial constraints that exist", below?

Did you know that national FoE wrote​,​ earlier this year​,​ that there are 100 ​towns and cities with free bus travel, including 30 in the USA and 20 in France?

How about the W Mids GP arguing for this rather than​, at a time of continuing austerity,​ nearly £2 BILLION on Metro and Sprint?

Please comment, Andi. You are our leader, after all.

5 Clever Tricks

1. Why is it that for decades our political leaders and transport experts are so useless that they dismantled our extensive tram network?
2. Their next clever trick was/is to rebuild the tram network using the railway  network, of all things!
3. At the same time, idiocy no 3 is still to think that homes, shops and offices are meant to run down railway lines!!
4. Today, £35 m is to be spent to build an innovation centre on the only feasible site for the Dudley Castle Hill railway station. This, on the UK's only mothballed and easily reinstated mainline railway.
5. But it's being turned into a piddling little shuttle tram line! THIS IS SUCH STUPIDITY THAT WE NEED THE EU TO BAIL US OUT!

We can change what seems inevitable

This WOM business seems to have been resurrected by Maria who was on TV last week, I think!

Her address is  mcadmin@midlandsconnect.uk

She is another of the transport bosses who are all stuck fast in the grossly extravagant and irresponsible tram rut of putting this "bus on rails" on a half finished mainline "railway of national strategic significance", instead of doing the bleeding obvious!

Other addresses are here:​

 May 2018 A5 flyer - double sided

​

Please flood them with e-mails just saying, perhaps, those five words: 'WESTERN BYPASS RAILWAY BEFORE tramway or motorway'.  Or, whatever you want to say but, say 'Yes' to something better, so as not to appear negative.  Thanks!

Pam's "decision makers" can be moved/changed.  We can change what seems inevitable eg:

1. In the 1990s, we stopped both the 16 Kms KBH and the 87 Kms WOM in their tracks!  That was a huge victory.
2. 2015 decision to put trains not trams, after all, on the 9 Kms Camp Hill railway in Brum.
3. 2016 decision for train operating companies to bid for the new franchise by putting forward a proposed passenger service on the half used 120 Kms Black Country Railway.
4. 2017 decision to put trains on our main line railway from Stourbridge Junction to Canal Street tram stop at Hart's Hill.
5. The decision was made to get the freight and passenger trains back but, the very costly "bus on rails" trams must be done first - you pay twice to get what you really want all along - a proper railway passenger service!
6. The decision to put the Very Light Rail test track on the railway from Dudley Castle Hill to Dudley Port was reversed in 2015 or 2016.  It now goes in the opposite direction.  And, still, on a nationally important railway!!
7. 8 March 2018 letter, Network Fail and the DfT finally conceded that our railway is "of national strategic significance".
8. More recorded here:​
   
    10 quotes: Bring the ghost of Queen Victoria ba...
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MANY THANKS TO YOU ALL.  PEOPLE POWER; PEOPLE PRESSURE; PEOPLE PREVAIL!

Tim

Oddities galore from very odd and dud, Dudley Council!

More ODDITIES from Dudley borough:

1. The Muslims were palmed off with a shabby, old, Victorian school as their Dudley Central Mosque on Castle Hill, Dudley.  For many more years than ten, as was reported on BBC Radio 4!
2. At the bottom of Castle Hill is Station Hotel but, NO inter-city station for 50 years!
3. For the previous 100 years passenger trains from all over the UK called at Dudley Castle Hill Station.
4. The transport officials and councillors in Dudley now want this inter-city, double track line to be a test track for a Very Light Rail tram to be developed by Warwick University.
5. When tried and tested on this forgotten but nationally important line, it will shuttle passengers to the Virgin trains at Dudley Port station on the West Coast Mainline.
6. But, Dudley people don't want a DIRECT connection with London and Scotland that they used to have - for about 100 years!   How strange is that?
7. As far as I am aware Dudley, for about 50 yrs, has had the only major roundabout (30 metres in diameter) in the UK, that is totally tarmac with not even a single weed growing on it.  How very negligent not to landscape it!
8. 5 or 6 years ago it was moved, all of one or two metres, with one approach lane blocked to widen the little used pavement.  But they must have known it would slow left turning commuter traffic (with only one lane instead of the previous two), on its way to the M5 and Birmingham!  How very odd to deliberately increase congestion and carbon emissions!
9. How peculiar for Dudley to build a monorail at Merry Hill Shopping Centre but not to connect it to the Beeching closed national rail line that should have been re-opened at the same time.
10. Not surprisingly, the monorail never got its rail passengers from all over the UK and has been closed for years.
11. Only Cllr Les Jones (interviewed by Eddie Mair on Monday, 23 March on 'PM') seems to have shown any concern about re-opening our 72 Km of double track, freight only lines in Brum and the Black Country, all of which had passenger trains for about 100 years - until the bizarre Beeching cuts axed many train services even in growing urban areas.
12. Dudley no 2 Canal in Leasowes Park supposedly 'restored' at a cost of £200,000 but then, the job was done so incompetently, it could only be partially filled with water because, if filled to the top, the whole high canal embankment might collapse!  The whole job was supervised by, and the responsibility of, an engineer at Dudley Council.
13. Dudley Southern Bypass was opened in the 1990s but, even then, there was never a cycle/walkway built alongside the new road for zero carbon travel!  How very negligent and odd is that?

Dudley CAN have a direct connection with London and Scotland!

Please try and persuade Khurshid that Dudley having a direct connection with all parts of the UK, as we used to have for about 100 years, is more sensible and advantageous than having a tram shuttling passengers between Dudley Castle Hill and Dudley Port on the West Coast Main Line and then having to go via Brum or Wolverhampton to other parts of the country.  Additional points:

• The ultra-light rail tram (VLR) idea appears to be a project at Warwick University in Coventry from the Warwick Manufacturing Group, there.
• It still has to be developed, tested and then to pass all the H&SE requirements before it can come into public service on our major inter-city line.  This will take years from past experience with the Stourbridge Shuttle. 
• It will be a refinement of the 3/4 mile tram that is the Stourbridge Shuttle - ideal for that short branch line but NOT on a nationally important, last remaining, unopened, north-south, double track line!
• There is no other (opened or unopened) north-south line between road and rail congested New Street Station in the east and the Hereford-Shrewsbury line in the west.
• The VLR would stop, for ever, inter-city trains using the Black Country Line, once more
• One mile, for now, for the tram between Castle Hill and Dudley Port and then extensions in small bite sized chunks.
• The bite size chunks strategy failed to get Light Rail Metro (LR) trams on this same line.  Now, Khurshid wants VLR trams as well or instead - and, using the same failed strategy!
• Khurshid and his predecessors failed in 34 years to get LR Metro between Wednesbury and Brierley Hill - a distance of 7 miles.  Now Khurshid is trying with getting VLR trams on only one mile!
• His plan will cost £20 to £25 million; mine will cost under £200 million, even with £10 million spent on Parkhead rail Viaduct in Netherton (figure from Toby Rackcliffe of Centro).
• My figure is based on the £300 million for the 48 Km (29 miles) line from Edinburgh to the middle of nowhere in southern Scotland (a small community at Tweedbank) - I exaggerate not!  It re-opens in September.
• This is a big enough scandal in its own right when we constantly get passed over for even a 7 mile tram on this former 13 miles inter-city line!
• Khurshid's plan is for one mile; mine is for 13 miles.  Therefore, mine is better value for money! 
• Bridges, one viaduct and one tunnel (all of which cannot be widened) prevent shared use of VLR and heavy rail inter-city trains.
• For about 20 years, DfT, PTA/Centro and Network Rail official transport policy - in every single document - was for freight trains, only on the full length and LR Metro on the seven miles middle section.
• Now, all of that is over-ruled by Martyn Holloway, Head of Traffic and Transportation in Dudley Council, advising Khurshid that every single strategy and study, policy and plan - written and poured over for years by transport officials - can be walked all over!
• Martyn should have known that the far more sensible and suitable site for the VLR project and Innovation Centre is the vacant Brierley Hill Steel Terminal site on Moor Street and using the mothballed, 3 Km, Pensnett branch line.
• The VLR tram then road running to the Waterfront and Merry Hill and, a second line road running to connect with the Stourbridge Shuttle at Stourbridge Town interchange.
• There has never been any public consultation over this weird and wonderful idea from Khurshid and Pete Lowe.