Poor press release from W Mids FoE

Why is there no mention in your press release of the climate calamitous, irresponsible, wasteful and unnecessary FOUR new rail modes when the existing heavy rail is still being used only for freight AND, even destroyed!? And, part is being turned into two or even three rail modes in Dudley borough on the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby?

The world's first train-tram-train mainline to make for more changes and delays and a slower journey - all for a mad, multi-modal, mish mash, mix up!

A very serious omission, Chris.

FROM VAIN PROJECTS TO MUNDANE GREEN ONES!

Hi Chris - please reply

It was brilliant that four of you got to see four of them - last Wednesday, was it?  The problem is that I spoke to Ed Cox on Friday after the Board meeting and he told me that the four of you gave him the impression that you no longer wanted transport as the topic for the Green Forum on the 21 Nov.  Is that true?  What exactly was agreed last week?

Are you on my side that transport expenditure and the workload that Metro and Sprint are generating means that funds and staff are not available to work on retrofitting urgently or, on all the other measures that can help those at the bottom of the pile to survive more comfortably this winter?

Are you on my side that we all need to be united, if at all possible?  Are we, however agreed over these basics:

1. ​Like ​lowering the importance of getting international and national companies moving into state of the art, brand new, prestigious buildings in the centre of Brum?
2. Like, spending £15 billion (Feb 2020 figure) to 2040 on mainly 150 miles of underground and overground trams to replace buses and trains?
3. Like weaning them off vanity, over indulgent, extravagant projects like Metro and Sprint and into the mundane and vital work that you are doing so well ​with FoE ​to cut GHG emissions and to slow climate catastrophe?
4. Like reopening/finishing the 120 Kms Black Country Railway to ease the congestion and air pollution on the parallel in places or, nearby, M5/M6?  They were and, still are, using trams as the catalyst to get the freight and passenger trains back​ on that railway "of national strategic significance"​.
5. Like putting small, highly energy efficient, low cost apartments at High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill to relieve the housing/migrant crisis?  Over 10,000 sq metres are STILL lying wasted, unused because of Metro having priority at Merry Hill instead of housing for the badly housed.

Do you agree with me that although Metro and Sprint look green, they are not, in fact, because of the very heavy price in both finance and GHG emissions and, they are the wrong priority, anyway when first ​and foremost, ​buses and trains must be made as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe?

It would be great to hear from you, ​Chris.

Tim

PS bonus

FROM Phil Wears of St'bge FoE

YOU ASK:  "However do you think passenger numbers would be low with this big 'central place' missed out. So would the gain be more for freight?"  

MY ANSWER:  NO, for passengers.  A "big central place missed out" (the 1 m population of the Black Country) means lots of people and lots of potential passengers.  Do you agree, Phil?  Even more important for freight because of passenger services returning to the Kings Norton, Kings Heath, Moseley freight railway - one success, after decades of asking!

1. Our Black Country is not so small and insignificant that it is not allowed to have half a billion pounds of Metro trams!
2. Brum is very big but so is the Black Country.  Each has about 1 mill population.
3. Our Black Country is as congested and polluted as Brum
4. Dudley has already destroyed SIX of its railway lines!  The 120 Kms Black Country (Bypass Brum) Railway is the seventh and last!
5. OUR railway is already built and runs underneath congested M6 at Jct 9 Wednesbury.
6. Every bridge, tunnel, underpass and flyover is/are already built.
7. 'Grand Central Diesel Perfumed Underground Station Tucked Away In The Basement Of The Closed John Lewis Store' is so congested with train services that they need some train services to go through the four Black Country boroughs instead!
8. This had been known about for decades when railway passengers numbers were doubling over 25 years to 2020!
9. There are plenty of train services to the east of Brum but only one between the W coast of the UK and Brum!  That one is Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford line.
10. They want freight and passenger trains back but think trams must be put on first!
11. OUR railway is "of national strategic significance" 

to Stuart Croft of national FoE

Dear Stuart - and copied to Chris Crean and other VIP FoE members

Thanks very much for your reply.  Your:

​"Things we can do to reduce greenhouse gases​"​

is excellent.  From https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/policy-positions/reducing-greenhouse-gases-our-position

And, I am promoting it to my own council, Dudley MBC in the Open Forum agenda item for the public to have their say at some committee meetings.

I want to emphasise the importance of solar PV for energy independence that FoE really should be promoting, urgently, in the light of humanity's latest war on itself and the ongoing war on nature and finite resources.

I wrote this to a friend:-

"Thanks to solar PV, we are now able to get out of gas almost completely.  Like you, we have gone to electric space heating with Herschel infrared panels for warmth and, for me but not my wife, boiling up water for washing!  (Herschel gives us our "low carbon electric eco-heating"  - from your website, above.)

"Solar PV is so much more useful, it seems to me than going for heat pumps.  You then have to live within PV's capacity to deliver electricity, however.  But it does mean that every home, office, factory is turned into a mini power station to supply power to the people under the roof.  A lovely concept!"

I have just worked out that over the last 8 years of having PV, I've averaged electricity generation of 4.7 MWh/year.  Having very nearly stopped using gas, I'm now exporting much less for others to use, of course.  

Every roof must be a mini power station.

Best wishes and thanks again for writing, Stuart.

FoE Green Jobs Summit

 FOE GREEN JOBS SUMMIT

This was a well-attended Zoom meeting, yesterday evening, with nearly 40, at maximum.  However, we were all of one mind.  It is urgent that we engage with the decision-makers and those who hold the purse strings.  We have to tell them what they have to do, I think, by discussing and voting on resolutions to send to the VIP bigwigs at the seven district councils and at WMCA HQ, 16 Summer Lane.  Hence:

Both Stuart Richardson and I made two important interventions that the Chair should have picked up on as an opportunity to help the authorities to make the right decisions.  Stuart wanted more and urgent help for the least well-off and everyone to move out of gas heating and cooking.  I wanted regional Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) extended from my age group to the middle-aged and young to end that discrimination and as the carrot and antidote to the Clean Air Zone (CAZ) charges.

In a question, I pointed out the idiocy of spending £120 billion of yet more greenhouse gases to simply allow a small minority to have the choice of either flying through the air in a plane or, flying through the air on land on High Scam 2 between four Big English Cities (and two of their airports), ONLY!

Further, in Dudley borough alone, six railway lines have been destroyed and a seventh is on the way because of Metro trams and VLR trams.  This railway destruction and High Scam 2 railway construction must STOP!

FROM KEVIN ANDERSON (Professor of energy and climate change - interested in translating the science of climate change into carbon budgets, policy goals and mitigation options.):

Is there any agreement - from even one person - that the urgency of the situation and the bleak prospects before the end of the century demands more sensible and appropriate action, like the above - immediately?

Tim Weller

Round Oak signal box razed to the ground!

The tunnel had two tracks, as a mainline railway, on the three occasions I walked through it!  The first was in the 1990s, in a small FoE protest, to raise awareness of the neglect and to highlight its importance.  Railtrack (or its equivalence - BR?) saw the newspaper report of what we were planning to do and insisted that we must have a delegation of two of their men from Railtrack/BR!  We all trooped through the 800 metres and back again.  It did not make the slightest difference, of course!

The 90s was the decade that the Round Oak signal box was left unlocked and my young son and I went up the outside steps into the room with all the great levers.  Shortly afterwards, I returned and saw that it had been razed to the ground in a fire!  I complained/commented to a man from the railways at Centro House at the close of a meeting.  He knew and shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn't care.  No one does!

'Making transport fit for the Climate Emergency'

 Friends of the Earth: 'Making transport fit for the Climate Emergency'

SEE page 3, here:

http://www.transportforqualityoflife.com/u/files/201203_FoE_Activists_Briefing-Making_transport_fit_for_the_Climate_Emergency_FINAL1.pdf

Thanks, Ros.  This is excellent and the 27 actions local authorities can take to reduce car use should be urgently implemented by the WMCA, together with our own three actions to make it up to 30, viz:

1. Abandon over-indulgent, railway destroying, grossly extravagant Metro trams between Wednesbury and Brierley Hill, like HS2 - see photo:
    HS2 XR ticket.jpg
2. Instead, finish the 120 Kms Black Country Railway and upgrade the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway, competently, so we can use both.
3. Cycle-walkway on the grass verge alongside most of the Duncan Edwards Way.
   

Tim Weller

To Chris Crean re FoE's Metro Mayor Climate Action Plan

I have read every single word in the FoE Climate Action Plan.  It is extremely good.  Except for three things: for "mass transit", your support for trams and failure to support the vital Fare-Free Public Transport for all and not just for me and my ilk!  I suspect mass transit means Metro trams that are the second most expensive and, therefore destructive, mode to construct after HS2, as evidenced here:

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

In my opinion, there needs to be a mass staying at home and not mass movement of people!  We need to lockdown for Covid and lockdown for Climate for many years to come, to keep as much or our remaining finite fossil fuels in the ground, as we can.  Scrub mass transit, please!

I am very strongly against your "accommodating joint running with the Metro where required".  Joint running is very expensive and difficult, is spoiling and is a complete waste of a mainline railway that should be dedicated 100% to commuter, regional and freight trains, only.  Never trams!  The main work for WBHE does not begin until later this year.  They are still designing it, would you believe!  What has already been wasted on preparatory works, plus the less than £200 m to finish the 120 Kms mainline railway would still be a fraction of the £449.5 m, plus cost overruns of the foolish WBHE scheme that destroys the UK's very last mothballed and, virtually ready built, 120 Kms Black Country Railway.

You wrote, "taking measures to reduce the need to travel".  This needs to be made clearer by saying, "... reduce the need to travel by car."  Although, because of Covid, perhaps, never being completely eradicated and, definitely for ecological reasons anyway, we need to travel less even by bus, train, tram.  And, certainly never by HS2 or plane!

In the 2020 BBC film, 'Extinction: The Facts', Attenborough said,

"Scientists have even linked our destructive relationship with nature to the emergence of Covid-19."

For me, Covid is part of the Climate, Ecological, Nature emergency.  Covid is yet another sign of humans messing things up.  All the time we react and react far too late, rather than preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.  As happened with Covid, we are very complacently in denial until, finally, it comes and hits us in the face.  By then it's all too late, of course!

Anyway, I look forward to meeting with you and others over Zoom and being put on the spot.

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?

 

Rowdy scenes; largest town without a railway station; pros/cons of WBHE

Dear Gentlemen - a proposal or a suggestion follows for a one hour discussion.  Please read on.

I was in the public gallery for some of the time at the last full council meeting.  However, I left before the climate emergency motion.  I did not approve of the rowdy scenes and would never have interrupted proceedings if I had been there.  Because it lays you open to the charge of hypocrisy, I am not entirely happy with the declaration of a climate emergency when hundreds of millions of pounds of greenhouse gases are emitted in constructing tram lines to duplicate and replace buses and trains.  Buses and trains should have top priority and not trams, if we are going to be serious about reducing our fossil fuel use.  And that is what declaring a climate emergency should really be about.  I want you to quickly start acting on our FoE's 'Climate Action Plan'.  The declaration must be stitched up beforehand between Chris Barnett and Simon Phipps, in my opinion, so that at full council it is quickly passed with the minimum of fuss.

My wish to lessen or minimise greenhouse gas emissions, explains my strong opposition to our principal mainline railway that was so successful for 100 years in bringing passengers to and from London and the south east, being relegated to a piddling little shuttle tram line to take Dudley passengers to the mainline railway in Sandwell at Dudley Port - on our mainline railway!

Many call it a shuttle tram line to connect Dudley to the national railway network.  Many do not realise Dudley town is already on the national railway network, minus the trains.  I don't think they know that Dudley is the largest town, by population (79,300), without a railway station.

Trams mean no direct service to London or Scotland from Dudley town without going via Brum.  For 100 years, Dudley was a busy railway station at the foot of Castle Hill, served by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company line.  Plenty of passengers must have come directly from London to Dudley via Oxford by train.  It could be so again but NOT with the tramline!  All the 56 Kms of double tracks are still there but unused between Stourbridge and Burton on Trent, on the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby principal mainline.

Once the conversion from mainline railway "of national strategic significance" to tram line, no-one will want to come from London with a change from fast train to slow tram at either Stourbridge or Brierley Hill to get to Dudley.  It spoils a good railway!

 DUDLEY AND SANDWELL TRAMS MAKE THE 120 KMS PRI...

NOW MY SUGGESTION for a one hour discussion:

Would you four members of Dudley Council be prepared to meet with someone from TfWM and/or Midland Metro Alliance, to really examine the pros and cons of the WBHE and get some facts and figures; and with me presenting the other side of the case?  Out of the seven councils, not one has ever had a debate and vote, in 39 years, to approve Midland Metro tram extensions.  Edinburgh City Council certainly has before their tram schemes went ahead.

Cars went on as soon as M6 Toll was opened in Dec 2003.  The TRAINS are still waiting, because of Metro mania!

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The rusty down track.  The up track was stolen!

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

Best wishes