FREE UP ROAD SPACE FOR ESSENTIAL BUSINESS USERS

Road pricing for all who commute by car but don't need their vehicle for their job; but, Fare-Free Public Transport, with quicker bus priority measures on all two-lane bus sections of road, as their reward for leaving it at home.  2 year trial on Hagley Road between Halesowen and Birmingham's ring road at Five Ways.

The two essential measures, above.  Abandon high greenhouse gas emitting construction, especially on High Scam 2, Metro LR trams, as well as VLR trams.  Keep it simple and stick to bus and train from now on.  Mini-buses for rural and less popular routes.

Get the funds to put a cycle-walkway alongside both sides of the Dudley Southern Bypass, aka Duncan Edwards Way.  Urgently upgrade the UK's major non-fossil fuel, active travel, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway so that it no longer has that description. It runs from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill's DY5 Enterprise Zone to NW Wolverhampton and beyond.

Move away from giving top priority to trams replacing buses and trains with commuter/regional trains on our surviving railway lines.

For active travel, give top priority to giving us a free draining, puddle-free, hard surface on all Black Country and Coventry towpaths, as you did in Brum last decade.

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!

IMMORAL PRIORITIES

Dear Laura

It is grossly immoral, with a cost of living crisis, the energy crisis and a housing crisis, quite apart from quickly rising inflation, to be spending on WBHE well over half a billion pounds by 2024 or 2025, when you finally complete the 10.7 Kms WBHE.

It means many hundreds of millions of pounds spent to destroy Dudley's very last and seventh wrecked railway when the seventh is already built with every bridge, viaduct and tunnel in place between Worcester and Derby - over 120 Kms.

What a slap in the face for many tens of thousands of our people who want help with paying their fuel bills to heat their homes and, especially, simply to eat.  Yet, you deprive them of that money.

You are doing the poor down to destroy, with a massive concrete railway viaduct, the only public open space at Merry Hill that is already short of nature.  400 metres of trees and shrubs get felled and even carbon-absorbing grass and soil gets smothered in concrete, brick and tarmac to worsen the climate emergency.

There is still time to stop Metro beyond Dudley, finish the railway with trains and reinstate the monorail to Merry Hill but, this time, connect it to the railway line.

You and your colleagues are behaving immorally with your foolish obsession with the most expensive transport mode to construct after HS2, simply to impress the foreign visitor with a swish, smart, grossly extravagant, prestigious, "bus on rails" tram to destroy the eleven fast bus routes into Brum city centre via Five Ways underpass and Broad Street.  And, with WBHE, to destroy Brum's bypass mainline railway - the 120 Kms Black Country Railway.

Each of your unnecessary, vain, 'look how rich we are', electric trams cost over £5 m.  Compare that with half a million pounds for a new electric bus directly on the road surface without needing the steel (climate worsening) railway tracks.

Please buck your ideas up, Laura.

Tim 6 April 2022

0791 380 4363

CONCRETE MANIA MUCKS UP PUBLIC TRANSPORT!

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 two or three 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 fill the waterlogging, or the great puddles on the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway!

BAD NEWS STORY AT BROAD ST, BRUM

BAD NEWS STORY!

In big bad Brum, £15 BILLION of greenhouse gases are being spent, since 2020, to replace some bus routes and railway services with tramways.  This will worsen the climate crisis and make us even more dependent on Russian oil and gas.

Buses that remain are banned from the direct route into Brum city centre and are pushed out into narrow side roads with parked cars on either side, in some places.  This slow journey by bus can be avoided by taking the tram but, then it means waiting for the tram to arrive.  It is a change in mode that was never required before the "bus on rails" trams were given priority on the direct route into the city centre.  It puts car commuters/shoppers off from switching to public transport.

In addition, the UK's last mainline railway between Derby, Dudley and Devon is broken up to use some of the £15 billion of finite fossil fuels, to convert that railway "of national strategic significance" into three different kinds of tramways!  All this to get a multi-modal mix up of more changes and delays and to worsen shortages of oil and gas.

Five Ways underpass is no longer used by buses or bikes but only trams.  Two massive concrete crash barriers in the tunnel are meant to stop the trams from crashing into each other.  SEE PHOTO,  below.  This also makes public transport and the climate, ecological, resource, energy, cost of living crises worse.

Five Ways/Broad Street multi-modal mix up

Thanks Ingrid for all your work on our behalf.  And, to the rest of you, this:-

Is there anyone else out there really browned off by our continuingly dreadful bus service into Brum city centre on the last, slow section from Edgbaston?

• Still a diversion on narrow roads packed with parked cars.
• No buses are using the Five Ways underpass that is blocked by the two most colossal crash barriers I have ever seen.
• Broad Street is still not available for our buses.
• Not even trams are in use.  Or are they now?
• If we change for the tram, we then have a maximum wait of 15 mins for the tram to take us on the direct route into the city centre.
• So a toss up between staying on the bus or waiting for the tram - impossible to know which is quickest!

If you are unimpressed or, just love the modal mix up mish mash, please tell them what you think at:

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk

They love praise and compliments, remember.  So tell them you just love it, please!

LEVELLING DOWN OUR ASPIRATIONS TO LEVEL UP INTELLIGENTLY AND RESPONSIBLY

Dear Ellie and Waseem - and yet again I'm encouraging and supporting you, Waseem!

LEVELLING DOWN OUR ASPIRATIONS TO LEVEL UP INTELLIGENTLY AND RESPONSIBLY

Thank you for organising Wednesday's Zoom meeting and for encouraging views from the general public, like me.  I would like to underline these points:

1. Ever-rising economic gain or wealth on a finite and natural planet can only come at the expense of that planet and its ecosystems or life support systems.  Future generations lose out.
2. Therefore, we have to move to a more sustainable and socially fair/just way of conducting our behaviour/lifestyles on this planet.  This must be done by:
3. Generating electricity for buildings by putting PV solar on the buildings' roofs.  Excess electricity should be stored in a mixture of batteries and exported to the grid for others to use when there is insufficient light to power the panels.  I have exported 32 MW in eight years and am now using a battery to use more of the electricity myself to cut down on gas use.
4. Conservation of our fast disappearing finite fossil fuels can be done by scrapping immorally expensive "bus on rails" Metro trams by, instead, rolling out electric buses directly on roads (without the steel rails) and putting them on the nearside lane for their exclusive use.
5. Let that lane be also used for all two wheel transport, too.
6. The outside lane is confined to all essential business users in cars, vans, trucks and lorries.  Commuter who don't need their cars for work must use the electric bus on the dedicated nearside lane.
7. The stick is having only the overtaking lane to drive in and the carrot is financial inducement, as here:
8. Money saved from not having to dig up the road for steel railway tracks is used to check, monitor and enforce the bus only lane all the way from Halesowen bus station to Five Ways roundabout.
9. Money saved from not having LR, VLR or ULR trams is used to reward car drivers who leave their cars at home and use the electric bus on its dedicated bus lane.  Everyone gets FFPT, not just old crocks like me.
10. Boston is now on board.  https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/wu-to-make-major-transit-announcement-wednesday/2638850/
11. Perhaps, workers should even get paid for the first 12 months of using the commuter bus on its dedicated bus lane, as an extra reward/inducement/bribe?
12. Profit or surplus from the CAZ must go towards rewarding thoughtful, responsible citizens who use the bus instead of the car.
13. Certainly, this is a better, more sensible use of the £15 BILLION to 2040 now being spent to convert buses and trains into three different kinds of trams - LR, VLR. ULR.
    
14. Two year experiment on Hagley Road from Halesowen to Five Ways.

I would like you meet with you, Waseem and Eleanor, to get your feedback, please.  Or, feedback, comments, rebuttal by email.  But, please don't wriggle out of a response, my friends!

Thanks again for a very worthwhile Zoom meeting.  Please do it again and keep to Zoom/Teams, to cut down on travelling (for me, by self powered bike!)

Tim

Talking of Trams - decades of disasters catalogued

Talking of trams. The 1950s saw their total removal from the streets for polluting diesel buses;

the 60s and 70s saw the destruction of about 100 Kms of our regional railway lines;

the 80s saw the start of the big push to rebuild the tram network on the railway network they had only just destroyed;

the 90s saw the rebuilding of much of Brum city centre but no provision for the much-needed tunnels to deal with railway congestion in New St Station;

the 00s saw the first Metro tram line on a former mainline railway out to Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury;

the 10s saw the cancellation of trams on another mainline railway between Brum and Bristol - the Camp Hill line. However, the start of the destruction of the UK's last mothballed mainline railway "of national strategic significance" with Metro trams going on two nibble sized sections of the Derby, Dudley, Devon railway, aka the Black Country Bypass Brum Mainline;

the 20s saw the exclusion of buses and bikes from Five Ways Underpass and Broad Street as Metro trams took over.

Buses and trams will squeeze along together in the tunnel and narrowed Broad Street

PHOTO EVIDENCE, BELOW (taken in April 2021 but crash barriers still there on Sun 14 Nov '21)

This is yet more failed and incompetent government on a grand and greedy scale with greenhouse gas (GHG) spewing machines having built the concrete barriers and now more GHG spewing machines to remove them, to allow the buses back!  What hypocrisy to declare a climate emergency and then do this!!

This is on top of another cock up with our Derby to Devon principal mainline railway, in Dudley and Sandwell, being used for Light Rail trams and a Very Light Rail test track, with the possibility of Ultra Light Rail on another section!  What a joke.

On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 17:41, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Have just seen this in my inbox.  The majority of buses will return to Broad St and the underpass.  I'm completely wrong, I'm glad to say.  But we'll see how it all works in the new year!

 

BACKGROUND (yesterday morning I wrote this):

Mischievous misinformation that TfWM/WMCA are putting it about that some buses will return to Broad Street even though the tram stop platforms are built out into the middle of the road to meet the railway tracks.  And we have the most colossal concrete crash barriers I have ever seen, in all my life, in the Five Ways underpass.  Now to be turned into dust by yet more greenhouse gas spewing machines to allow some buses back!

I made an official complaint, as a member of Halesowen Pensioners, whose Secretary was told that buses would return.  This is a very serious matter of misleading information to members of the public.  Quite apart, from the corrupt expenditure of £75 m per Km for 2 Kms of immoral, wealth flaunting, Metro.  It hat has now given a further reason for car commuters NOT to transfer to bus/train/tram commuting.  This makes it even more urgent that TfWM/WMCA introduce Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) to bribe car commuters to leave their cars at home, if they really cannot work from home.

The new north-south railway in Scotland was £7 m/Km to rebuild when it opened six years ago.  The tram is ten times per Km more expensive to construct than rebuilding a railway!!

I AM WELLER AND TRULY WRONG - I'm very glad to say!

Dear Mr Weller

I write regarding your email to Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) received on 5 November 2021, concerning bus services to Five Ways and Broad Street. 

I would like to reassure you that the majority of buses which currently run via Sheepcote Street will return to Broad Street and use the Five Ways underpass, which is being prepared for use by public transport only, to access or come from Hagley Road.

It is intended that buses and Metro trams services will complement each other along Broad Street and with short dwell times at trams stops located in the roadway, buses will see minimal impact in awaiting a tram having to load and unload its passengers. 

I hope my response provides some clarity and I thank you for contacting TfWM.

Yours sincerely

Adrian Hawkins SMICS

Customer Relations Executive 

Twitter challenging Ashvir and Sophie

Please let me know what you think with the seven-fold increase in transport expenditure since Andy Street became the powerless, the figurehead, the PR representative of the Combined Authority.  And my wife and I have voted for him twice, now!

Sophie Zumbe

@SophieZumbe

·

15h

32% turnout for the mayoral elections in the West Mids. Depressingly clear indication of how disengaged most people are with local politics.

Replying to @SophieZumbe

"All politicians and the people are not questioning the scam, the fraud, the lie of trams destroying the 120 Kms Black Country Railway and, now in Broad St and at Five Ways making public transport worse for the 11 bus routes that used that quick route for decades. Will you, Sophie engage?"

MORE:

Andy says "seven-fold over the four years compared with what was previously spent." He said this, as though he is so proud of what he has done. But it was nothing to do with him. More to do with the devolution deals in the last decade to give the W Mids the most scandalously expensive transport mode to construct after the ruinous HS2 construction. And more to do with the light rail, "bus on rails" tram national promotion group that shares its HQ with Andy's office, Transport for the W Mids and the Combined Authority - another scam/corruption/improper influence!

Best wishes

Tim

to CANWM

Dear Julian and Bob

You are two prominent members of CANWM.  Hence you get this!

This week on TV and social media, Andy Street is boasting that he has spent seven times more on transport than the same authorities did before his election four years ago.  By the end of his new term, if elected, it will be 15 times more, he claims!  This is because of the £15 BILLION going into 150 miles and 8 lines of Metro "bus on rails" trams to 2040 to replace buses and more trains.

The scandal is that for those of us who live in Dudley and parts of Sandwell and Brum, public transport is WORSE!  Eleven, Hagley Road bus routes are re-routed on a longer, slower diversion through narrow, traffic-choked streets in the rush hours and, constantly lined with parked cars.  Not even one of the eleven bus routes will ever again be able to use the fast, direct underpass beneath Five Ways but will be caught up in the traffic queues.  With four trams an hour in Broad Street, it may be impossible for any bus to now use that direct route as they all did, previously, before Metro madness.

Do the three of you accept this simple equation? :-

Spending = finite fossil fuels exhausted = greenhouse gases emitted = accelerates the runaway greenhouse effect = THE END

If you do, (obviously, with more renewable electricity being used, this will slow the exhaustion of our fossil fuel reserves but will have less of an impact if the runaway greenhouse effect has now taken off), do you feel able to join me in writing, phoning, messaging to all and sundry about this self-inflicted ecocide?

Metro madness has also led to the destruction of the UK's last, principal, mainline railway from Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill (aka Derby to Devon via Dudley).  In 1999, Metro One led to the destruction of the railway and one and quarter railway stations on the now lost line from Snow Hill to Shrewsbury via Wolverhampton Low-Level station.  That former, principal railway station is now a conference and events centre!

The well-meaning fools in charge have now destroyed over 100 Kms of perfectly good railway lines in the W Midlands.  No wonder they are so desperate for HS2.  However, that will still mean the existing intercity trains being needed for the passengers to get off at the stations that HS2 goes too fast to be able to stop at!

All the best

Tim

PS  My Metro Mayor deposit now goes to DEC, UNICEF, MSF - instead of HMG.

Metro blunder at Five Ways and Broad Street

The Green Party 2017 Metro Mayor election manifesto also supported the grossly extravagant, greenhouse gas-emitting in abundance, Metro tram extensions to either replace buses and trains or, to add to the mix of multi-modal public transport to make for more changes and delays as you go from one to the other over three instead of two transport modes.  

The best example is what we now see for our 9 buses that cannot use the Five Ways underpass anymore and, along with the other ten bus routes, has a slow diversion on narrow roads, jammed with parked cars via the Arena, instead of the former direct route through the underpass and along Broad Street.  (Some bus routes MAY be able to return to Broad St but, priority will always be given to the tram, of course.)

Or, if you get off the bus before Five Ways, you might then have to wait up to 15 mins for the tram to enable you to continue your journey into the city centre.  This is not progress.  It does not encourage motorists to leave their cars at home and use public transport.  Or, does it?  Why are you, personally so much in favour of the £15 billion to 2040 for mainly 150 miles, 380 tram stops and 8 lines of underground and overground tram extensions, please?

To Cllr Kath Hartley, Ladywood, Brum

I would like to ask you about pretty basic matters, regardless of getting a healthier planet - see below.  Questions over the straight competence of your officers that advise you; let alone green competence!  I believe, basic competence is a serious issue at 16 Summer Lane, quite regardless of climate change and resource depletion.

Do you realise that, because of Metro trams still being given top priority over, even, reinstating trains on railway lines, you have delivered a slower, longer and worse public transport journey?  And, this, for eleven bus routes that for many years sped us on our way into the city centre via the Five Ways underpass and Broad Street?  Now, all those buses are pushed out to queue on the Five Ways roundabout, on a diversion via the Arena on narrow roads with many parked cars to add to the mayhem!

Or, shortly, we could instead, get off the bus opposite 54 Hagley Road, cross the road and wait up to 15 minutes for the tram to take us through the underpass and along Broad Street.  This change and delay makes thing worse, discourages car drivers from using buses and, is totally unacceptable, in my opinion.

I do think some issues are so obviously unhelpful (pointless, grossly extravagant, climate-wrecking HS2, Metro, Sprint) and should not be pursued, while others are very advisable.  I would suggest, spending only on projects immediately, that will do the most to cut deadly greenhouse gas emissions; and not duplicating or replacing buses and trains with greedy, wealth flaunting, vanity projects to impress visitors but that take and burn the most finite fossil fuels to worsen our prospects.  Unfortunately, these glitz and glam projects are the very ones that excite us most and that all of us, politicians and people, simply adore!  I love trams and brand new, flash, everything!  But, we have to show some restraint in the light of the Climate, Ecological, Nature emergency.  Hence:

ACTION - my suggestions to reduce catastrophe in transport (not just climate catastrophe):

Minimise finite fossil fuel use as much as possible.

To get competence, let alone low climate impact from transport - stop destroying railway lines.  For urban railways, can their commuter trains be returned; can the railway lines no longer be built on; or, if not for trains, can they be used as cycle-walkways?

Stop converting railway lines and bus routes into tramways for "bus on rails" trams.

Use electric buses going directly on roads, without the railway tracks.

Use the money saved from abandoning tram extensions into Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) for all and not just old people like me that I have enjoyed for 13 years!

Move from multi-modal transport that is multi-mixed up transport with more changes and delays, into sticking with making buses more sought after.  That means FFPT and electric buses on bus priority roads.

FFPT is essential to compensate for a slightly higher risk from Covid transmission when using public transport.

FFPT is essential to cut greenhouse gases, congestion and polluted air in cities.

FFPT is a reward for leaving the car at home.

Upgrade the major, strategic, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway so it can be used by everyone who goes human-powered and not fossil fuel-powered, including horse riders.

Oppose HS2 extensions and scrap Metro and Sprint to concentrate on the basics - the buses, our local 106 Kms of mothballed or freight-only railway lines and, cycle-walkways for commuting, business and leisure use that are not waterlogged and muddy.

Five Ways tunnel blocked to buses - to the end of time!

 Good evening, John

I hope you are well and, in particular, keeping free of Covid

Trevor doesn't want to answer my question because he knows, you know, we all know that when you have two of the heftiest concrete crash barriers I have ever seen in the middle of a tunnel, it is completely out of the question for "bus on rails" trams and buses to even follow one after the other through it.  But they might try it!!

Trevor and the others, including the Green Party that has supported this throughout, are wanting between four and six trams every hour of every day running through the tunnel.  How on earth can buses go back?  It is huge fun telling them the bleeding obvious even though, they will go on with more of this madness - despite Covid, Climate and shortages of finite fossil fuels as we complacently, roll drunkenly on our addiction, through this century.

Every one of us should be livid at this further incompetence by fully trained professional officers and, the people like Trevor who are meant to check up on them.  And Trevor is a fully trained, professional accountant, too!  He, by his oversight, has cost us all £149 m of greenhouse gases, plus cost overruns for 2 Kms of a show-off, an over-indulgent, vanity project that puts people off from getting out of their cars and using public transport to get into the city centre.  What a joke!

They are performing the same fun and games on the ready-built, half-finished and, the UK's very last, mainline railway!

This is one reason why I don't believe in God, by the way.  Why would a good God, all-knowing, have created us humans when we will, almost certainly, be far more short-lived than that of the dinosaurs?!  But I can still use the best bits from the Bible and other sacred writings from the other faiths until I succumb.

Best wishes and keep well.  I do do much else, too, by the by!

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