Time to debate/vote over Metro expansion

Dear friends

This email from Mark calling on FoE members to attend the committee meeting on Thursday at 6 pm is brilliant.  Please attend and have your say, as I hope I will be allowed to.

However, I am very concerned that all of you who fully understand the dangers we are all in from climate breakdown, resource shortages and pursuing lifestyles in defiance of respecting and living in harmony with nature and her life support systems, are failing to oppose the idiocy of expanding multi-modal public transport.  Coming up, below are my reasons for opposing light rail trams (LR), very light rail trams (VLR) but fully supporting ultra light rail trams (ULR or Stourbridge Shuttle) on the world's shortest (1.8 Kms) branch line - that I helped to get, incidentally, with my letter writing, followed by emails, in the 1980/90s - and by supporting John Parry.

• In my opinion, there is not a shadow of a doubt that both main mayoral candidates (one of whom will win) are far too weak to stop the roll out of eight more tram lines over 150 miles with 380 tram stops over the next twenty years and costing £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure when it was announced by Andy Street's team).
• Since 1981, when it all started, hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been squandered on replacing perfectly good buses and trains with trams.  A paltry 23 Kms in 42 years of effort!
• Those buses and trains should have been electrified but, instead this mad, mad world we live in went for rebuilding the tram network (obliterated only 20 years previously) on what was left of the destroyed railway network, to also destroy even more of that!
• Hence, the UK's very last mothballed but virtually ready built, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
   has gone for ever because nearly everyone wanted the 11 Kms Dudley Tram to rush Sandwell and Dudley residents on the former mainline railway to Merry Hill to shop.
• All they had to do was to give us electric buses between Dudley town centre and Merry Heaven.  From its opening, there has always been diesel buses between the two bus stations.  All they had to do was to make them electric and not to bother with the highly expensive, in climate/resources and price, railway tracks for the flash "bus on rails" to run on!
• Just because something is public transport - like constructing then going on High Scam 2 and flying - does not make it sensible or right in the light of our totally unsustainable lifestyles.  How we all adore speed instead of sense, choosing style over substance and vanity of vanities!
• Under the Victorians, tramways were turned into railways.  In our so,so sophisticated, modern, highly intelligent age, we turn our railways into tramways.  We're just too clever by half!

Such is the seriousness of our plight and the accelerated worsening of our predicament from tram expansion, for the first time ever in any of the seven councils since 1981, there should be a discussion, debate, vote amongst the full elected members of the Climate Change Select Committee over this suggestion.  Edinburgh City Council did so, twice (opposed by the Conservative Group because "the money could be better spent") before building their two tramways.

As was wanted by one train operating company (toc) when all the contracts were up for grabs last decade, Jewellery line trains from the two Brum stations must reverse out of Stourbridge Junction station to use the Black Country freight line to meet the trams at Cinder Bank roundabout where the tramway must end.  An electric bus can take passengers from Brierley Hill transport interchange on the railway into Merry Hill.  For 100 years the Victorians and Edwardians ran passengers and goods trains on the same lines.

MAP to help you see what I mean:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

I will send this suggestion to the committee members and to the two Cabinet members who attend as observers.  But do any of you have any doubts over this idea, please?  Or, does anyone like it?  And these nine action points from the W Mids Climate Coalition that was none of my doing but I so like.  What do you think?:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

See you on Thursday

Local Elections May 2023

My own thoughts under:

1 b) Local Election 4th May - Results Round Up

My own Dudley MBC went from 45 Cons to 44 and from 25 for Labour to 27, with one Independent councillor.  Tories down one, Labour up two because there was a vacancy.

It just shows how bleak, backward and barren my ghastly Black Country really is!  No wonder they turn our disused railways into roads, offices, homes and tramways.  While our half finished, principal, 120 Kms mainline railway has been turned into two different kinds of tramways on one 7 Kms section in Dudley, slap bang in the middle, would you believe!

However, two Dudley disused and forgotten railway lines have some intrepid walkers and cyclists (like me!) but are in such a disgraceful state, I call it the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway from Brierley Hill in Dudley to NW Wolverhampton.

You wrote:

"At present the citizens of Birmingham have little idea of what their Councillors are doing in the Combined Authority."

My comment

But they hear through news/media channels about what is being done in their name, can see with their own eyes and, as a result, very few citizens are at all interested or up in arms about it.  They all agree with what is being done in their name.  Apart from me, everyone else accepts the scandals, the idiocies and tragedies over the 50 years I've lived in Brum and the Black Country.  Not one person seems at all bothered about these six scandals I have uncovered, let alone the 40, below!

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

Apathy, acquiescence and the always very small turnout at local elections proves my point.  Are you interested, Richard?  What are your comments over my emails?  Tell me where I am going wrong, please, sir!  You made some disparaging remarks about my emails this evening.  Certainly, an unkind, unnecessary aside, I thought.  Please be more specific, my friend and help me write better emails instead of slagging me off, in front of others too and, never replying (apart from once when I sent you something and you replied, "Thank you").

Oppose me with evidence and explanation, please!

I honestly think there is no difference in the local authorities/CA between Tory and Labour.  No difference between the elected members and the officers.  Democracy and elections are a complete waste of time because the politicians are simply rubber stamps, confirming whatever the senior officers want.  Committees are talking shops.  In all my years of attending, I can't remember a single vote being taken, apart possibly, from Planning committees and then they all obey their whips.  Please don't ask for more elections to the CA.  The Mayor is also powerless and has to work with his seven council leaders and chief execs.

The existing councillors need much political and every other kind of education, I think.  Don't let us have any more, I beg you and certainly no more MPs.

It is vital that more people in WMCC turn up at public invited committee/Board meetings to speak, informally to both officers and members, before and after meetings.  All of us can learn so much in hearing another point of view.  IT REALLY IS WORTHWHILE and great conversations can be had, for the benefit of all.  Honest!!

For the record, it was Labour who won the Tories over to Metro trams in 1981, in the days of the ELECTED county councillors and elected Cllr Phil Bateman.  But, if I remember correctly, he won them over after committee discussion but with no votes in full council in even one of the seven councils!  This was very different from Edinburgh City Council where the Conservatives vigorously opposed both of their highly expensive tram projects on grounds of cost and knowing the money could be more wisely spent on much more important priorities (SELF: like retrofitting and the poor first).

Ever since 1981, every single properly and fairly elected councillor was in favour of trams taking over our two important railway lines and some bus services.  Not one councillor has ever challenged the full-time, professional officers over the wisdom of continuing with the second most expensive transport mode to construct after High Scam 2.  And more on why High Scam 2 here:

  40 short statements never corrected or even ch...

Extravagant, very foolish, incompetent spending by the officers and members has worsened the climate emergency and put the CA in financial difficulties ever since last summer.  Projects, since then, remain seriously delayed and some suspended.  All those £100s millions could have gone to insulate and solar power the homes of the poorest in our region.  And for the apartments built on the 23,000 sq metres at High Plateau at Merry Hill, as well.

Best wishes

Tim

PS bonus of 3 photos, 2 cartoons and some tongue in cheek writing:

 Happy and glorious reigning by our VIPs (exclud...

Dear Helen

I'm forwarding my recent emails to Patrick Harley because I'm trying to influence you over:

1. A public forum item at the beginning of the agenda of every committee is important for reasons of public participation and for trying to get a more engaged and educated public.
2. Councillors are extremely important to check, challenge and question the officers.
3. I would like to see CA councillors being regarded as having that little more weight and seniority than when they sit in their local council chamber.
4. I would like you to encourage CA councillors to attend, in person, every committee meeting now that Covid is less virulent.
5. They need to be voting on policy and practice, I think so that their committees are less of a talking shop.
6. Edinburgh City Council, when it came to their tram projects, seemed to have the right idea as regards small group discussions, then council debates and finally votes.
7. Can the Combined Authority trump the local authority in some ways?  Certainly, I would have thought, when it comes to the climate emergency and the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that must dominate every decision by our leaders - of which you are one, Helen.

Best wishes

I think your idea for each (or most) Cabinet members having a scrutiny committee seems fine to me.  I want councillors taking a much more important role, with a public forum agenda item, than the WMCA's proposed Citizens' Panel selected by lottery that I'm not keen on.  (To be honest: because I wouldn't get on it)  But scrutiny really must mean expert scrutiny by people who know what they are talking about and are prepared to challenge, check and question.

You will remain as leader of the Council, of course after the May elections, so I'm very pleased with that.  I vote for Andy Street in his elections because he holds public meetings and listens to the concerns of ordinary people.  I also like the Edinburgh Conservative Group opposing trams on grounds of cost and would be voting for them, if I lived in Edinburgh, for that reason.  The Green Party has never supported me and, anyway, wants trams and some, even High Scam 2 that I strongly disapprove of and will never use, on principle - even if I'm still alive when it's finally opened.

to Richard Body

Hi Richard - thanks so much for writing

In summary - read this and skip the rest!:

Labour is worse than the Tories over loving trams and advancing them on roads and railways.

Both parties and the LibDems have destroyed two mainline railways and 2.25 mainline stations for trams!

Both are spending £72 m more for VLR trams in Coventry and still going ahead with £15 billion to 2040 for 150 miles and 8 tram lines in Coventry and throughout the region.

Nearly 100 Kms of freight only or disused railway lines in the W Mids still await their commuter, regional and intercity trains!

All this idiocy is the exact opposite of sensible action to address the climate emergency.

In other words, both main parties are even more hypocritical than when they declared a climate emergency in 2020 (was it?)!

At the next council elections, it is very likely that Labour will regain power in Dudley.  Unfortunately, every political party, including the Green Party, have been equally enthusiastic for Metro trams taking over both railway lines and roads - and have been since 1981 when Wolverhampton Labour councillor, Phil Bateman was the first among the prime movers for re-building the tram network that they had only just obliterated twenty years earlier.

Labour and the Tories were at the heart of destroying the tram network in the 1950s.  Next, over subsequent decades, all parties set about obliterating about one third of the W Mids railway network .  In the 1980s, what railway lines remained as unused, like Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level and the 120 Kms Black Country Railway began to be turned into tramlines.  Snow Hill to Wolverhampton by 1999 - NOT connected to either the bus station or railway station!  2019 in the case of our own railway "of national strategic significance" that was turned into heavy rail (HR), light rail Metro (LR) and very light rail (VLR) National Innovation Centre, exactly where our principal mainline Dudley station stood and was successful for 100 years.  What utter idiocy and incompetence by all our dear politicians!

Certainly, in the West Midlands and in Edinburgh, it is your party who is most enthusiastic for trams replacing or duplicating buses and trains.  The only support I have ever had in thirty years of campaigning for trains NOT trams on unused but existing railway lines were these emails from the Edinburgh Conservative group:

 Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...

Your party and the green movement have always been the most enthusiastic for the return of trams, including train spotters/enthusiasts who want a bigger and better railway but will sacrifice all that for trams!

Anyway, how are things going with your ambitious and worthy plans for the summer?  Include me in your news and updates.

to Mike Bird on opposing Metro extensions

Dear Cllr Mike,

Hundreds of millions spent on Metro and Walsall has gained NOTHING in 40 years of endeavour. 

Please insist that further extensions are scrapped, immediately. 

You were brilliant in speaking out in the Board meeting on Friday. 

Please speak out, privately to whoever at 16 Summer Lane.

Our Edinburgh Conservatives have been quite superb over the years in opposing their two tram projects on grounds of cost. They are right. And you are right, too Mike.

 Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...

Remember, although I am an eco-socialist, I voted for Andy Street for Mayor on both occasions - 2017 and 2021.

Best wishes

Edinburgh Conservative Gp OPPOSES their tram extension. WHY NOT OURS?

Edinburgh Conservative Gp OPPOSES their tram extension.  WHY NOT OURS?

 

Thank you for email regarding the Edinburgh Trams.  Myself and the Conservative Group have consistently opposed the completion of the tramline to Newhaven.   Kind regards,  Graham Hutchison  

 

The first section was completed at a cost (as you indicate) of £55.43m/km.  The proposed cost of the extension is £87.01m per km before overruns and before the ‘lessons learned’ enquiry by Lord Hardie has reported.  Cameron Rose  Conservative Councillor,  Southside & Newington ward 4 March 2019

 

Thank you Tim. Noted - the Conservative Group won’t be supporting the extension as we consider it too expensive and not the most pressing transport need in the city at the current  time and that better investment in road space, buses and park and ride would serve more of the population and address the congestion from inward commuting giving more people the opportunity not to drive by providing reliable alternatives. Regards Jo Mowat 4 March 2019

Isn't it funny - every business case is called robust;

‘robust’ justifies every kind of expenditure from spending £1 billion of public money on 14 Kms of tramline to duplicate a bus route in Edinburgh in 2014;

to spending nearly the same but, private money on the M6 Toll for 43 Kms in 2003;

to splashing out £17.6 billion of public money on 117 Kms Crossrail;

to justify spending £44,000/metre to extend your £1 billion tram line to Newhaven to replace buses;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to convert our ready made, but they forgot the trains and stations, 120 Kms mainline "of national strategic significance" into a piddling little shuttle tram line on two short, middle sections, totalling 6.7 Kms.   

"The latest work to refine the scheme and the efficiencies to be developed within the Midland Metro Alliance give a good level of confidence that the project can be delivered within the current funding envelope” (SELF: of £44,000 per metre, times 11 Kms.  Eleven times the cost per kilometre of the second attempt at returning trains between Wolverhampton and Walsall.  The first attempt was a failure last decade!).  

Every business case comes up with a great Cost Benefit Ratio that compels massive expenditure, eg to dismantle/destroy the tram network and to rebuild it on the road and railway networks a few decades later.  This is called high Value for Money when it is 2.03:1.  In other words, you double your money.  Therefore, whatever you pay up front, you get more than double that back in destroying yet another urban and intercity railway line, in the case of trams taking over the UK's one and only mothballed mainline.

Deborah Cadman, Chief Executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority, replied to my e-mail, in which I gave practical suggestions for reversing the decline in bus use, with this:

"Whilst the bus network is facing certain challenges, including falling patronage and declining speeds, it remains the most popular and important mode of public transport in the region."

Yet, she is spending £1.518 BILLION to 2026 on only 31.7 Kms (£48 m/Km) of trams taking over mainly bus routes but also 6.7 Kms of the half used, 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" (letter to myself from the DfT and Network Rail, dated 8 March 2018).  These are trams duplicating and even replacing buses and, also preventing forever the return of commuter and regional trains to a half used, nationally important railway.

timweller1@gmail.com 8 March 2019

Twitter to City Metric, City Monitor re Edinburgh's forgotten circle railway

What if I told you that we have a railway "of national strategic significance" alongside or near to the bumper to bumper M5/M6 and it was not open to passengers? Tim Weller Independent candidate for W Mids Mayor 2020.

3 Dec 2018

Governance changes to involve councillors BEFORE going to CA

Proposed items for discussion

I would like us to talk about these matters, please at our Teams meeting on Wed 17 March at 11 am.

1. Governance - full, frank and fair discussion to involve all councillors, and at full council, to hear both/all sides of every issue before voting.  Edinburgh City Council did that over their tram last decade and the tram extension to Leith and Newhaven in 2019.
2. Greater scrutiny of construction costs of innovative transport modes like Metro and Sprint and, greater scrutiny of Metro track maintenance costs before a decision to proceed is put to the WMCA Board members.  And only after the seven councils have properly, fully considered and voted on whether or not to proceed.  Those seven decisions are then brought to the Board meeting.
3. Disadvantages of proceeding to be fully laid out as well as the advantages, eg the extremely high greenhouse gas emitting in construction, of the two biggest concrete crash barriers I have ever seen, put in the Five Ways underpass that, with the trams, means that buses can never return.  And, possibly not to Broad Street, either.
4. Aside: I love trams because they look great, glitzy and glamorous. The problem is that for all their attraction, we now have a slower and worse journey into the city centre from the west. We either have to change and wait for the tram or stay on the bus and have a longer and slower ride. This is not progress!
   
5. Construction cost comparison, as here:
    Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...
6. Was the demolition of Perry Barr flyover because of Sprint?
7. What are the full implications of ULR (Stourbridge Shuttle), the LR test track for 2.2 Kms, Metro LR all being put on a former mainline railway that, for 100 years, brought passengers from London and Oxford to Dudley Railway Station and the Black Country?
8. What are the implications for freight that might need to come off the Camp Hill line in Brum and be diverted via the 120 Kms, half-finished but already built, Worcester, Black Country, Derby mainline?
9. Why has it taken 70 years, to only now for Andy Street to be able to make headway with the railway industry over the joint running of passenger and freight trains, when this was the norm for about 100 years?
10. Is the joint running of fast regional trains over the full 120 Kms mainline railway between Worcester, Dudley, Derby, with slower tram-trains, all on one set of double tracks, seen anywhere else in the world?
11. What plans do you have for the 3 Kms Pensnett branch line from Moor Street, Brierley Hill north to A4101 High Street, Pensnett?
12. Comparison study of Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) that is now seen in Dunkirk, Tallinn and Luxembourg - and many more in E Europe and around the world.

 

Edinburgh debated and voted over £207m; the W Mids did not over nearly £1.6 billion!

I am also very concerned about the grossly extravagant, over-indulgent, 'puff out our chests, aren't we so impressive' with our flash, vanity, Metro tram extensions.  It all means more greenhouse gases emitted and finite resources becoming in ever shorter supply as we lazily and complacently roll through the century.  Yet, FoE members love them and some even support HS2!

 

Every £ we spend = finite fossil fuels burnt = deadly greenhouse gases to threaten life on earth. 

 

Trams look green but you and I have to BE green and campaign for commuter, regional and freight TRAINS on our local railway line that doesn't get the 6 Kms of trams and 2 Kms test track. 

 

A pertinent question re absent of democratic mandate:

 

In March 2019, Edinburgh City Council had a debate and vote before going ahead with their tram extension costing £207 m for 4.7 Kms.  In the West Midlands, the seven district councils and the Combined Authority are spending over £1.6 BILLION for their five tram extensions without any debate and vote in any of the seven council chambers.  Should they have done?

 

A pertinent question re absent of democratic mandate

In March 2019, Edinburgh City Council had a debate and vote before going ahead with their tram extension costing £207 m for 4.7 Kms.  In the West Midlands, the seven district councils and the Combined Authority are spending over £1.5 BILLION for their five tram extensions without any debate and vote in any of the seven council chambers.  Should they have done?  Should they still?

Edinburgh Tram called "a green folly" and looking green but not being green

I’m not up to speed which tram project this is, but in the case of Edinburgh, I always saw it as a vanity project and, frankly, a green folly, as Edinburgh already had (and has) one of the best city-run bus services in the country. I think it was about looking green rather than being green.

Alastair Mc

Regional government by decree not democracy is totally unacceptable

Please remember that, in your position, you can ask for commuter and regional trains on the double tracks that don't get Metro or the VLR test track - nearly 50 Kms for passenger/freight trains to relieve chronic congestion on M5/M6 and main roads.

On page 30, here, W Midlands Rail Executive in Oct 2018, were wanting passenger trains and two stations between Stourbridge Junction and the Canal Street tram stop on the tram line/railway line.​  Look for the green line on the map with two stations marked.  You'll need to enlarge it.

 Stourbridge-Brierley Hill Railway plan.pdf

​​In that case, they might just as well put the trains all the way through to Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield and Derby!.  Plus nine stations all for less than £200 million on 56 Kms, instead of half a billion for trams on 10.7 Kms!

Please remember that in the most outstanding democracy in the world, a world-beating democracy in fact, there has not been a single debate, let alone a vote in any of the seven council chambers in the West Midlands about spending Metro millions and, it taking over perfectly good railway lines to give us a multi-modal, multi-mixed up mainline railway.  Hopeless!  Not one debate or vote since Metro started in 1981.  This is no better than China - in the news this evening.

I would like you to join me in asking about the complete absence of following the most basic democratic requirement of a properly conducted debate and vote before going ahead with spending £15 BILLION to 2040, to replace some bus routes and railway lines with mainly Metro trams.  Edinburgh City Council debated and voted first, I think in 2018 and, certainly, in 2019 before going ahead with their new tram extension to Leith and Newhaven.  The vote went 36 to 26, if I remember correctly.  The Edinburgh Council Conservative Group were opposed and voted against on the grounds of cost and because the inquiry into the shenanigans and failures over the first tram line was not complete.

Scotland seems to have higher standards and does things correctly as regards elected members being properly informed over the full implications of big decisions.  Our councillors, in all seven authorities, need to be fully informed of both the pros and cons of reinstating a £15 BILLION tram network.  A network, the first of which they saw fit to completely obliterate in the 1950s and, since the 1980s, are reinstating on the railway network and roads!  Instead of restoring our railways, first.