SUMMARY
Lord Beeching still lives on at Centro House, Integrated Transport Authority, Dept for Transport and Network Rail. You all fully co-operated with the idiocy of Beeching and went even further than him by not mothballing lines and - wait for it - building on them! You also put light rail (LR) and, now, very light rail (VLR) on heavy rail lines instead of simply re-opening them for existing passenger trains. Beeching lives on with the stupidity of 72 Km of freight only lines as we go into the next fifty years of increasing road and rail congestion in Birmingham and the Black Country! And, Metro extensions in Brum centre simply mean modal shift from bus to tram; cyclists being put off by tram lines that send us crashing to the floor (as Richard Hammond found); and, even more crowded roads with cars, trucks, vans, lorries, buses - and, now, trams to add to the mayhem. Perhaps, it might encourage us to walk more!
IN GREATER DETAIL
After about 100 years of successful train travel for our ancestors, your predecessors in Rail HQ had a brainstorm in closing and not even mothballing over 100 miles (160K) of rail lines (in Birmingham and the Black Country) of which there are still left the 45 miles (72K) that were safeguarded for freight only. I wanted you both to check the distance (on my map, above) to confirm that for 100 years they did have passenger trains and to reassure me that existing diesel passenger trains and stations could return to all of the remaining 45 miles. If necessary, freight at night and passengers in the daytime.
PTA/Centro put light rail trams (not trains back) on 11 miles of the 100 miles of closed rail lines. This was in 1999 after 18 or 19 years of work on Midland Metro Line One. Even then, as you told me yourself, Toby it was never extended to New Street Station, as PTA/Centro obviously should have done. More incompetence when the tram line (unlike its predecessor, the perfectly good train line) was not connected, even, to either rail station in Wolverhampton! Only now are you connecting the tram to the one and only rail station that is now left in Wolverhampton. But, what a lot of wasteful effort and money in closing the rail line fifty years ago and, only now, are you getting back to completing a rail link between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton station. A rail line that could have been left well alone in the 1960s in a growing and ever more populated and congested urban conurbation. Yet, all the transport authorities and even trade unions fully co-operated with Lord Beeching in closing and, sometimes selling off, the miles of urban rail lines he wanted closed.
PTA/Centro chose the further station (Snow Hill) from New Street rather than the nearer Moor Street Station to connect New Street with Metro trams. They did this when they knew that all trains stop at both Snow Hill and Moor Street stations. Therefore, it seemed more sensible to me, for the nearest station to New Street to be connected by a tram and not the one furthest away! Or, why was the Metro not brought to Moor Street Station, as well, before going on to Grand Central Shopping Centre and Station?
I remember you telling me, Toby, that the problem of New Street Station rail congestion is down to the tunnels on both approaches. Exactly! So why on earth did PTA/Centro and Network Rail lose the opportunity to build additional ones, first when B'ham Westside was being developed in the 80s and 90s and, secondly, when the Bull Ring was completely rebuilt in the 90s and noughties?
£700 million has just been wasted on a cosmetic tart up of New Street Station that remains more of a shopping centre and, underground station than the magnificent Victorian rail station it was for 100 years - until the demolition and destruction of the 1960s! Why did PTA/Centro and Network Rail not use that money towards the new tunnels that are desperately needed? £15 billion for Cross Rail and Thames Link but nothing meaningful for Birmingham to address the real problems of inadequate rail infrastructure at sub standard, subterranean, New Street Station. Or, why was £700 million not spent on rebuilding the grandeur of the old station and dispensing with yet more shops and stores?
An opportunity missed to address the problem of rail congestion at New Street Station. Nothing to address the chronic and dire problems of road congestion, either, around New Street Station at peak times. When I pick up my daughter on a Friday evening I have to park in the road called Holloway Head, on the far side of Holloway Circus from the station and, walk in to meet her. Otherwise, it is half an hour of nose to tail traffic into the Stop and Crawl tunnel. This tunnel is nicely perfumed with a cocktail of poisonous gases, just like the platforms of Brum's premier station. Nearly fifty years and rising of very unhealthy and dangerous particulates from all the diesel smoke. This is the main reason why I boycott New Street Station, if I possibly can.
In the 1980s, PTA/Centro failed to extend Don and Roy Richardson's Merry Hill monorail the remaining 400 metres to join up with the Black Country inter-city line at the Waterfront, that should have been re-opened then! How negligent and stupid is that?
In the next decade, I visited a Victorian signal box at Round Oak on the Black Country inter-city Line and found the door closed but unlocked. When I revisited a few weeks later, it was burnt almost to the ground. Network Rail was Negligent Rail.
I don't suppose one of you has questioned the scandal of spending £300 million of taxpayers' money on the 48 Km rail line to the middle of nowhere in southern Scotland. That money should have gone to the Black Country inter-city Line to relieve the chronic road and rail congestion at New Street Shopping Centre and Station.
I now read that Snow Hill Station is going to be rebuilt - for the second time - when the Victorian station should have been left well alone. What on earth is going on?
Rail electrification is still nowhere near being completed. Yet, the Swiss did all their electrification in the 1920s and 30s!
One further matter; and this was the final straw. Shortly after I met with Peter and you, I learnt from a newspaper - and this was without any public consultation of any kind - that, without giving up on light rail Metro on the Black Country inter-city Line, you were now working to put Very Light Rail (VLR) on that same line, too but, for only 2 Km. This, all of one mile between Dudley Castle Hill (that should, asap, be a stop for inter-city trains between London and Glasgow) and Dudley Port! The 21 Km Black Country inter-city Line, had passenger trains for one hundred years, then some years of freight and not even freight since the 1980s after Round Oak. I think it should be extended to Lichfield for existing diesel trains. Yet, you want to put in Very Light Rail in bite sized chunks, reminiscent of the failed bite sized chunks policy of PTA/Centro when it came to Metro trams but, we will now get even slower VLR trams. But, only when this university project has been developed, tried and tested and passed the rigorous H&S regulations - in I don't know when!
I have never before heard such nonsense, such absurdity in all my life. Especially, when the VLR project could be developed on the Pensnett branch line from the former Brierley Hill Steel Terminal site at Moor Street to the north side of Pensnett High Street. From Moor Street, eventually road running to the Waterfront and Merry Hill and another line to link with Stourbridge Town interchange.
Am I right in thinking that VLR is what we have with the PPM on the Stourbridge branch line for three quarters of a mile between Town and Junction stations? For years, off and on, I was writing to Centro and to every member of the PTA, wanting John Parry's tram on this line - as well as trains back on, what I thought then was 38 miles of freight lines. (It is actually 45 miles with the Walsall to Wolverhampton line that I had overlooked.) It took a very long time to achieve the successful PPM. Yet, the transport authorities are planning to put a refinement of John Parry's excellent tram, that is ideal for branch lines and road running, onto a major inter-city line! How ridiculous is that?
I really do think that all of you, from Cllr Roger Lawrence and Geoff Inskip down and, in Network Rail, the ITA and DfT, need an earthquake to well and truly explode you into the real world that the rest of us have to get about in - but, with increasing difficulty!
