The Gospel of Public Transport According to St Tim the Sinner!

Hi Lee and Cllr Waseem

I am really sorry to hear, Lee about your dreadful experiences and of what things are like on public transport.  Absolutely terrible!

The ultimate indignity, for skinny people like me who are more skeleton than fat and muscle, are the disgraceful hard plastic seats on Metro.  This, when the appearance is of a cushion to sink into, is a shock to my posterior.  £4 m for each "bus on rails" tram, too.  Compared with £350,000 for an electric bus!

In compensation, it should be entirely free for everyone and not just my age group.  No money is a lie when £106 billion is going into HS2 to only travel quicker between the Four Big Cities and two of their airports.  And, £15 billion into replacing some trains and buses with trams by 2040 is a scandal.

We have to stop destroying railway lines by turning them into tramways, housing/trading estates and roads - and, at the most enormous expense, too!

We have to stop turning roads into tramways at the most enormous expense.

We have to abandon yet more tram extensions, immediately.

Put passenger trains on the 106 Kms of mothballed or freight-only railway lines in the W Midlands that includes the wasted, partly unused Worcester to Derby railway.

We have to encourage working from home to free up transport corridors for essential office-based and other workers who must use roads and public transport.

We must have every encouragement for short-distance commuting.

You must work in an office as near as possible to your home, if you really cannot work from home.

Able-bodied, healthy workers need to use their bikes, as I did for the last 15 to 20 years of my social work career - for both commuting and on official council business.  I got 20p per mile by the time I retired at 65 in 2013 (but not for commuting by bike.  But why not, as your reward for using your own energy instead of deepening the climate emergency?)  I kept off busy main roads and took quieter, residential roads and cycle-walkways.  And I kept fitter.

I now have 6 miles out of 8 miles on traffic-free cycle-walkways and towpaths into Brum city centre from Halesowen.  The other two miles are on residential roads.

IN SUMMARY

If you use the car you pay CAZ or ULEZ charge.

If you use bus, train, tram you pay nothing.

If you use e-bike or self-powered bike for work commuting you get paid and, paid more if the bike is 100% self powered, fossil free.

What do you think, Lee?!   AND WASEEM - please Sir?!

Levelling up or socialism or basic Gospel teaching!

 Dear Peter and Geo

Thank you for organising the excellent and helpful Zoom meeting yesterday.  It has prompted these thoughts.  Could this be forwarded to the others who attended, please so I get their comments?

I would like to emphasise the importance of insulation and minimising the spaces that need heating in the first place, viz:

1. Insulating or lagging ourselves with layers of clothing when we sit in a smaller rather than larger room.
2. That room at a maximum of 20 C with other parts of the house not even heated at all, ideally.
3. We know heat rises.  Therefore, consider sleeping on the ground floor and living on the first floor.
4. Press for small to medium-sized homes for new housing estates with PV on every W, E, S facing slope for the building beneath..
5. Encourage small to medium-sized families.
6. Press for laws where the wealth of the nation is more evenly distributed, to discourage the rich from walking off with more than their fair share of resources and most responsibility for the climate/ecological emergency.  Called levelling up or socialism or basic Gospel teaching!
7. Accept that even medium income households are taking more than their fair share of resources and that we all need to tread more lightly on the planet by making do with less, instead of ever more stuff.
8. My own home, a 3-storey townhouse, is ideal where my wife and I live on the first floor with one L-shaped dining/living room that means minimum heating is required.  Our total energy bills are not much more than £1 a day.
9. It is mid-terrace, with a small area of land at the front and back.  PV means it is a mini power station, with about 75% exported to the Grid.  Giving instead of taking!
10. This kind of more simple living is essential if we are to postpone or, ideally reverse the sixth mass extinction episode that we humans are causing to ourselves.

I would like to ask that these Zoom meetings are excellent and should continue.  However, breakout rooms do mean that people will talk about their own ideas, that one person can then feedback for the final few minutes.  One hour is too short, I think but an extra 30 minutes for breakout and final conclusions and summary is ideal.

Best wishes

Tim