Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny on 30.3.22

Can there be an explanation for the extraordinary bungled closure of Five Ways underpass to every single bus from now to eternity, with the two most colossal crash barriers I have ever seen?  This is no way to address climate or congestion or vehicle pollution or resource depletion!

With the closure and built destruction of the Dudley to Brum Railway (and the 7th is well on its way!), can Dudley buses be given priority to use Broad Street, if only some routes can use it from now on?

Concrete and brick was used for Dudley No 2 Canal restoration but made the embankment at risk of collapse!  Why was such a clanger dropped?  What will the authorities do to put right their own incompetence?

Concrete is used for the double-track tram viaduct to smother the whole of the Dudley No 1 Canal embankment, the only public open space at Merry Hill.  What are the alternatives?

Concrete is highly greenhouse gas intensive.  Please do NOT use it to fill the waterlogging, or the great puddles on the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway!

TWO CONTROVERSIES ON DUDLEY CANALS

SAVE WHAT LITTLE NATURE THERE IS AT MERRY HILL

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I am asking for my immorally expensive, planned Metro tram at Merry Hill to be moved from being next to the canal, for it to go ABOVE it on steel stilts, instead.  SEE BELOW.  Please use the addresses below if you would like the public open space saved - and our taxes, too!  There is still time for the destruction of the public open space to be cancelled and the tram tracks to be built above the canal, instead. 

I'm also asking for our council to finally put right something, after only 25 years, that took national government a full 40 years to put right in their case!!  SEE BELOW.

Dudley's address is dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk and their leaders' addresses: Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk   Kevin.OKeefe@dudley.gov.uk     Cllr.Qadar.Zada@dudleymbc.org.uk (leader of the Opposition)

And the three Customer Services, here:

customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com;

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk; 

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Dishonourable and Dysfunctional Dudley MBC refuses to put right its own incompetence

TWO CANALS TAINTED BY DUDLEY'S LESS THAN MAGIC TOUCH!

Just as it took over 40 years to force HMG to discharge a £400 m "legitimate" debt to Iran, after only 25 years, Dudley MBC still has absolutely no intention to put right its own unbelievable failings in spending a quarter of a million pounds of public money in overseeing the work of Barhale Construction Services in executing the most perfectly incompetent and useless canal restoration in the history of the UK.

This was Dudley No 2 Canal, aka the Lapal Canal, in 1997 when a 400 metre section of the canal was supposedly 'restored' but never fully filled with water for fear of collapse of the canal embankment, in Leasowes Park.

Dudley Council is also involved in gladly destroying the one and only public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre with a 400 metre concrete viaduct right on top of the steep canal embankment, when it could go on steel stilts directly above the water of the canal.  And, probably, at less cost.

This is in addition to six Dudley railway lines obliterated and a seventh, a railway "of national strategic significance", well on its way to the unfortunate rail graveyard in the sky!

Earlier this year, a very modest improvement to fewer than ten stiles on public rights of way, by putting steps on them, cost over £9,000, I have been told.  Or, is it taking them years to spend the £9,000?

Dishonourable and Dysfunctional Dudley MBC refuses to put right its own incompetence

PHOTOS to be shocked or intrigued or to laugh over:

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Half a billion pounds of Metro destroys the above half-finished 120 Kms Worcester to Derby railway and these trees, all for a stranded, 'shuttle' tramline on a former mainline railway that does not even connect with the two railway sections between Worcester and Derby, at either end.  It is needed for freight trains, anyway.  So what is the point of Metro?

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Exactly where the mighty tram viaduct goes!

Tim Weller  28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

0791 380 4363

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?