to Ian Ward, Liz Clements

This is a great plan but like many that I have seen over the 55 years I have studied, worked and retired in our city.  In that time, the inner ring road was built, only to be destroyed in two sections to bring yet more traffic lights and one way streets to cause unnecessary congestion and air pollution.  This, when the ring road was free flowing and, I thought, worked really well - like Coventry's ring road.

The middle ring road is slow going with all the traffic lights.  I'm thinking of my route from Hagley Road via Monument Road to Aston Expressway at Dartmouth Circus.  It cannot take the extra traffic by closing/greening the Queensway Tunnel on the A38.  I don't think the ring road does at all "constrain growth and disconnects our communities", as you said.  This was the planners' argument last century that ended in its part destruction.

My own suggestion is that you bring in a bus/business lane experiment on Hagley Road where it is dual carriageway, to act as an incentive for car commuters to leave their cars at home in order to free up road space for buses and essential business users.  They must register to avoid being charged as thoughtless car commuters must be for adding to the climate emergency.  Unregistered cars can, in addition, only use the overtaking lane and will be held up more to give bus and essential vehicles traffic lights priority on the nearside lane.  Bus, tram and train must be free for all passengers, at least, in the rush hours as their reward and bribe for using public transport.

Grandiose, greedy Brum is bankrupting Britain - and it's not funny.

Perhaps, as my contribution on 13 March, it might be best to read out this, please Ed:

Grandiose, greedy Brum is bankrupting Britain - and it's not funny

You are all stupidly bankrupting Britain with the world's two most expensive transport projects, High Scam 2 and Metro trams.

The first is so fast it can't pick up or drop off a single passenger between London and Brum, apart from at Brum airport.  What use is that?

The second is so slow as it trundles so smoothly through the city centre that it is quicker to walk between the two city centre stations of Grand Central and Snow Hill.  Connecting them was the sole reason for doing it, would you believe!  Yet, you can't get off at Snow Hill because there is no tram stop there and the nearest, in Bull St is a 300 m walk to the Snow Hill platform - selfish, unnecessary, immoral Metro expenditure!

The next extravagant, greedy Metro extension is to connect Curzon St High Scam 2 station to Brum Airport when there is already a perfectly good and fast railway connection between Grandiose Central station and the airport already.  The tram is the greedy and slow connection.  Sheer stupidity!

At the most colossal expense, the tram connects Grandiose Central station with grandiose Centenary Square and Broad Street when an ordinary electric bus, without the rails, could have done the job at a fraction of the price and continued on the no 9 bus route to replace the diesel bus.

The future tram extension up Hagley Road nicely fells 1,000 trees and shrubs when millions more are needed to capture carbon dioxide to slow our ecocidal climate emergency you all so piously declared years ago - and then never acted on.  Hopeless!

SCRAP extensions to both High Scam 2 and greedy, immoral Metro.

Tim Weller

7 S's for a less sick, selfish, unsustainable society!

For our discussion tomorrow evening, please.  I want feedback - criticism or support - not apathy/acquiescence/boring!  Tim

1. SOLAR powered, highly energy efficient apartments at Smallbrook Queensway and 23,000 sq m High Plateau at Merry Hill.
2. SUPPORT John Christophers' proposal for the 1960s concrete arc of shops,offices and homes.
3. SCRAP wasteful multi-modal public transport of heavy rail, light rail and very light rail (HR, LR, VLR).
   
4. STICK to TRAINS returning to the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway, Kings Heath/Moseley Railway, Sutton Park Railway.
   
5. STOP extensions to HS2, Metro and Sprint.
6. START the 2 year experiment on Hagley Road of nearside bus lane, Fare-Free Public Transport, green lights for every approaching bus and ROAD PRICING penalty for thoughtless car commuters.
7. STRENGTHEN CAZ to take in more thoughtless car commuters who must use bus/train/tram to commute.

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please

How on earth can we address the multiple crises facing the nation, let alone climate catastrophe, if we can't even stop replacing or duplicating perfectly good buses and trains with trams and, with buses that think they are trams?

Hundreds of millions of pounds in price and in weight of GHG emissions are still being spent on Metro extensions and on Sprint, "the bus that thinks it's a tram".

Up to as many as 1,000 trees/shrubs are planned to be felled along the south side of Hagley Road, Birmingham to duplicate the many buses with super expensive, flash, over indulgent, wealth flaunting Metro trams and, perhaps, Sprint too (a 2010s, £12m scheme for Hagley Road is still not cancelled).  Metro, definitely, has the second most expensive construction costs, of all transport modes, after the well over £200 m/Km for High Scam 2 that is the very greediest, yet totally unnecessary.

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please.  REPLY to condemn or support!

Metro likely to be extended further along Hagley Road

"There remains some public realm work to complete following the opening as well as some work to prepare for future public transport infrastructure along Hagley Road."

WMCA press release, 15 July 2022

Scandalous, corrupt expenditure hardly exits ecocide!

Metro is coming to slow the public transport journey from Stourbridge into Brum city centre.  Either stay on the bus for a longer, slower route all round the Wrekin, with more exhaust emissions or, change for the tram at Edgbaston Village tram stop and wait up to 15 mins for a tram to take you the rest of the way.

On top of that, with these hefty crash barriers, not a single bus can continue to use the underpass and all eleven bus routes must join the rest of the queuing traffic to go round the roundabout:-

 Five Ways underpass.jpg

Pathetic public transport worsened at £75 m/Km for the deception perpetrated, all style over substance, Hagley Road tram.

£7 m/Km for the 50 Kms rebuilt Borders Railway in 2015 in the Southern Uplands of Scotland.

£21 m/Km for the 43 Kms M6 Toll greenfield motorway in Dec 2003.

£133 m/Km for the 1.7 Kms Eastside Metro tram extension now being built.

MY CONDITIONS FOR WITHDRAWING TO FAVOUR ANDY

And copied into the Mayor's Office for their information and action to get me on board, out of the running and well out of the way - please!  MAYOR'S OFFICE, please confirm receipt and action, quickly.

My conditions for withdrawing to help Andy in 2020

I also think Andy was an excellent choice and hope he gets in, again next year.  I do like him and support him whenever I can.  I really don't want to take votes off him, if I do go ahead with standing as an Independent.  But, he must be outspoken against tram extensions; but, for putting the commuter/regional trains and stations back, starting with the completion of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway - extremely urgently and before the Camp Hill line; and, introducing a sea change in our commuting habits.  That is, twelve month, A456 Hagley Road experiment of:

• never taking the car into Brum city centre unless it is essential for your major business livelihood or, there are at least two adult passengers in the car.  Strict enforcement by random roadside checks when traffic is stationary; and CCTV.  Hefty financial penalties for transgressing.  Once you are down to one passenger or solo, you must go into the slower, outside lane immediately.
• This is done by 100% bus lanes on every nearside lane of the no 9 bus route and traffic light priority for buses and other vehicles permitted in the bus lane.
• Cancellation of elite, very expensive Sprint to allow for every bus to be similarly favoured.  The roll out of Platinum buses makes Sprint unnecessary at this time.
• Electric buses, asap, must be the mass transit for commuters and not anymore tram extensions.

MASS TRANSIT FOR ALL AND NOT THE LUCKY FEW on a tram line.

Survey - do you want VLR shuttle trams, LR trams, heavy rail passenger trains on Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield line?

Charles Loft is author of 'Last Trains: Dr Beeching and the Death of Rural England'.  He said on the BBC World Service on 28 March 2015, "The future of rail investment is in high speed inter urban lines and light rail commuter services and trams."

1. Do you know if, in the 19th and/or 20th centuries, we have ever had express trains on the existing but, part, still unused Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Co line (part is now the empty Black Country Line)?
2. If so, did we also have a local train service on this same line?
3. In the 21st century, is it feasible to put both express and local trains back on the Black Country Line from Stourbridge Jct, through Dudley, Walsall and on to Lichfield?  Is it possible to have regional and national passenger trains in the daytime and freight trains at night?
4. Or, should we be putting Very Light Rail, instead of Light Rail Metro on that line because "light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" - letter to Tim Weller from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director of Centro, dated 18.9.2000.
5. As we are now seeing Beeching rural rail lines being reopened (48Km in depopulated southern Scotland at £10 million per mile), do you agree that it is even more essential that we have the Beeching urban rail lines reinstated with trains and stations?  There remain nearly 80 Km still not concreted, bricked or tarmaced over in Birmingham and the Black Country and still no stations have been rebuilt at Winson Green and Handsworth (areas of chronic deprivation, including being deprived of their stations) after 50 years.
6. Do you want the Beeching urban rail lines reopened for trains or, do you want them, instead, for Metro LR trams at about, on average, £100 million per mile in Brum city centre - at about ten times the cost of reinstating what we had for about 100 years?
7. Why is Birmingham City Council jumping the queue and getting further Metro extensions ahead of all the policies, plans and strategies that certainly, at one time, stated that Metro Line 3 (on the Black Country Line) was to be next after the tram line to Hagley Road, Edgbaston?
8. In an age of a continuing huge deficit, supposed austerity and, severer public spending cuts now due, how do you justify the spending that is so extravagant but still misses out on making full use of our rail assets or even misses out on building the much needed rail tunnels at Grand Central?  And the Black Country still misses out completely -  apart from getting the £25 million for one mile of VLR and, the short extension of £54 million to, finally, bring Metro One to the one remaining rail station in Wolverhampton!
9. How come the electric trams of old ran on roads (instead of buses) but most of the new ones in Brum and the Black Country run on many more miles of rail lines than roads (replacing more trains than buses)?
10. What is your individual list of rail spending, in order of priority, please?  If increasing rail capacity and reducing rail/road congestion is the number one priority for you, how does this work out in your spending wish list, in order of priority?
11. Or, do you feel, we can only ever have everything that is on offer from the rail authorities, regardless of any order of priority, their competence or, of more decades of the Black Country missing out?
12. A second rail service used to run from Stourbridge Jct.  It CAN be re-opened.  What do you want on it - VLR, LR, heavy rail freight, heavy rail passenger services?  If you agree with Charles Loft, at the head, what should go on our Black Country Line?  He said, "The future of rail investment is in high speed inter urban lines and light rail commuter services and trams."  For 100 years, the BCL was inter-urban, it seems, running between Oxford and Wolverhampton.  Dudley to Wolverhampton and Dudley to Birmingham are both now built on - yet another example of failure/idiocy by our leaders and chief officers who should have advised the members better.