Railway bridges replaced to take trams and trains

Many thanks, Ian for this.

The Dudley to Wolverhampton railway bridge, near Dudley Canal and Caverns (The Portal Building, Birmingham New Rd, Dudley DY1 4SB) over the Birmingham New Road was removed many years ago.  I think it was in the first decade of the 2000s.  Remember, over many decades, councillors, officers and LEPs have approved six Dudley railway lines to be destroyed or left unused, like the two that make up the Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway listed here.

 Dudley's Six Smashed railway lines

My understanding is that Network Rail told TfWM/WMCA that every bridge on their/our railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

must be replaced to carry heavy rail trains, even though light rail trams are to go over the bridges to begin with.

Since the 1990s, Network Rail has said that freight trains (no mention of passenger trains!) will not run on the Black Country Railway until the 2040s, at the earliest.  In addition, I believe, they have contributed no funds to help pay for the cost of strengthening Parkhead Viaduct or any of the bridges that one day they expect to use.  Yet, how can trains go on the Metro line when trams are expected to run every 15 minutes, unless the CA's insistence that "passive provision" is being built in for heavy rail is to allow freight trains to operate at night?  Once the trams go on this nationally important railway, they cannot be removed for the passenger and freight trains that were so successful for the first 100 years.  In letters and later emails to Centro/PTA (now TfWM), I have been pointing this out since the 1990s.  But no one has taken a blind bit of notice!

Very best wishes for Christmas and the new year to you and your family, Ian.

to Ian Ward re WBHE Phase 2

Thanks, Ian for the email.

I wrote to train driver of 44 years, Dave Parsons who wrote back this evening:

"I agree that the tram should stop at the new bus/ tram interchange in Dudley & the £60M should be spent on better things like the reinstatement of platform 4 at Snow hill station.

"Ongoing work along the proposed route of this line from Dudley to Brierley Hill should also cease immediately.

Just laying the groundwork for this route, ie, the road works in Brierley Hill is causing unnecessary chaos and delays, and causing frustration to people who are aware that it’s the proposed metro extension that’s costing a fortune, that nobody wants on their doorstep."

By Express and Star - Peter Madeley   Published: Jul 21, 2022:

"It means the Wednesbury to Dudley stretch will proceed as planned – at a projected cost of £385m – while the rest of the route to Brierley Hill is put on hold. ... It said splitting its construction into two phases would result in costs increasing further, with phase one from Wednesbury to Dudley now budgeted at £385m."

£385m divided by 5.3 Kms on an existing railway line "of national strategic significance" = £72.6m/Km.  Compare this with the mostly rebuilding of the Southern Uplands, Borders Railway when it opened in Sept 2015, at £7m/Km!!

Edinburgh Conservative Group opposed their two tram projects on grounds of cost, as I would have expected from traditional, wise spending Tories.

 Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...

Best wishes

to Ian Ward re OWW Railway Co and Parkhead

Very many thanks, Ian for letting me know.  You are very decent and highly capable and respected.

£60 m is nowhere near enough, I would have thought.  A pittance, especially when Phase 2 is the most costly and difficult half to achieve, I've always thought.

£60 m must be used for one of my three options to be delivered, please.  Preferably option One and the £60 m returned to HMG!  Or, you ask for it to be used for the world's first train-tram-train mainline railway between Great British Railways HQ at Derby, Walsall, Dudley, Stourbridge and on to Worcester, Bristol/Oxford ... London.

WBHE Phase 2 is still irresponsibly expensive and disastrous when it destroys the only public open space at Merry Hill with the 400 m viaduct and two oblique canal bridges, the desperately needed housing land at High Plateau, nature in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world (Attenborough) and, my magnificent vertical guerrilla garden I would love to show you, Ian.  Five councillors have had the decency to visit, with me - including your Opposition leader.  Don't miss a treat!!

It is scandalous that the Parkhead Viaduct work is being paid for out of the WBHE money for, officially, now £550 m (2020?), I understand.  Network Rail should have done the work in order to reinstate the commuter, regional and freight trains between Gt British Railway HQ in Derby and Worcester.

In 2013 or 2014, I can remember Toby Rackcliff, at 16 Summer Lane, telling me that Parkhead strengthening would be £10 m, he thought.  I believe, it is still nowhere near finished.  I shudder to think what the cost is, so far.  Network Rail palmed it off onto yourselves and you should never have allowed it, accepted it and, certainly not for trams.  You were sold, or given, a pup, I'm sad to conclude.

For about 100 years, Dudley Station (not tram stop!) Parkhead Viaduct and Stambermill Viaduct were all used very successfully for passenger and freight trains by the Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Company.  It is quite scandalous the destruction of seven Dudley railway lines and about 100 Kms in our region, I would guess.  100 Kms are still available for the reinstatement of trains.  But they must have top priority NOT trams, please my friend.

Very best wishes.  You are a busy man, I know.

Tim

On Wed, 22 Mar 2023 at 19:11, Councillor Ian Ward <Ian.Ward@birmingham.gov.uk> wrote:

Tim

 

The recent Devo deal has provided money or the promise of money for the Brierley Hill Metro extension.

 

Ian

 

From: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Sent: 22 March 2023 17:31
To: <Customer Services> <customerservices@tfwm.org.uk>; Councillor Ian Ward <Ian.Ward@birmingham.gov.uk>
Subject: 3 option suggestions to save money and greenhouse gas emissions

 

The Dudley Tram is so very expensive that WMCA transport lead, Cllr Ian Ward, has personally told me that there is still no money for the section from Dudley Transport Interchange to Cottage Street, Brierley Hill.  Therefore, the authorities can save £100 m by either:

1. Leave the tram to terminate in Dudley town centre when it opens next year.
2. Take the tram on down Flood Street to Cinder Bank roundabout where it is planned to rejoin the former mainline railway and, then keep it on the double tracks to Stourbridge Jct to connect with the national railway network.  Freight trains will have to operate at night - no great hardship.
3. Keep to the original plan but let it cross the Dudley No 1 Canal once only and, then, terminate it between the shopping centre and the Waterfront - at Level Street, halfway between them.  This saves about £100m from not having to build the 400 metre concrete and steel, double track viaduct and the second canal crossing.

Tim

You are head and shoulders above the other leaders

Dear Ian

I, and I'm sure others, sit up when you start speaking.  You speak up, you speak concisely, eloquently and you speak sense.  You challenge and question what you read and what officers tell you.  Brilliant!

Perhaps, money from the Commonwealth Games legacy, and £2m was mentioned, needs to go to help pay for the Aquatics Centre's energy bill.  Even more importantly, PV solar must go on the roof to provide free electricity.  And rooftop PV everywhere rather than solar farms needed to grow our food.  Sandwell may have the highest proportion of low income households in our region.  They need help first.

The WMCA Economic Growth Board really must hear from Sir Jonathon Porritt (email address, above as I've copied his office in) concerning positive, helpful, constructive green growth for the Combined Authority.

TRANSPORT essentials:

Stop destroying or, not fully using, urban railway lines.  It only adds to road traffic congestion and all our woes!

You must have the courage to say 'No' to yet more conversions of vital railway lines and roads to tramlines.

Be content with trams from Dudley town centre to Sandwell and Brum.

If you must do WBHE Phase 2, eventually, then keep the trams on the railway line to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  Existing freight trains at night.

DO NOT destroy nature (we are also part of nature!) by wiping out the Dudley Canal No 1, 400 metre canal embankment, vital but wasted for decades housing land and, my guerrilla garden at Merry Hill.

Get to grips with car commuters who don't need their treasured possession for their job.  They clog up the roads for essential business users.  They get rewarded for leaving their car at home with Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) that I've had for 15 years, I'm so old.

The Clean Air Zone and 60 mph on the urban M5 are both brilliant - for health reasons and to respond to climate breakdown.  Both have kept you in power.  Going further is essential, I think.  Getting commuter cars off the roads helps business and more sustainable green growth.  Publicity campaigns and FFPT are essential to make healthy car commuters as antisocial as smoking in public.

ESSENTIAL READING, from my pen!

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

 How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA

 Happy and glorious reigning by our VIPs (exclud...

Best wishes

WM Climate Coalition resisting Metro expansion has anything to do with them

Dear Cllr Ian - please 

Can you find out for me if, at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, the destruction of the 400-metre public open/green space is going ahead? It also destroys a large corner of the brownfield site designated for housing at Merry Hill.

Keep the Dudley tram on the railway. It is already on it!

Can I show you what I mean? Save my super-duper landscape enhancement scheme.  PLEASE!

Tim

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, 08:37 Bob Whitehead, <bob.w2@btinternet.com> wrote:

Good morning Tim,

I can help a little, but I don't see where the Merry Hill issue fits into the current agenda, nor the Dudley line.

Bob

Does my answer, below go any way to reassure you that my issue/question is indeed pertinent to climate?

If so, could I ask what others think at our next meeting?

Tim 

On Tue, 12 Jul 2022, 11:16 Tim Weller, <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Very many thanks,  Bob.

I see it as the wasteful and totally unnecessary expenditure of £100 m of GHG emissions to then double that ecocidal impact by destroying soil, grass and plants that are essential to sequester CO2.  They are doubling the folly and idiocy of deepening the climate emergency - twice over!

Don't spend £100m needed to help pay energy and food bills for those struggling. Especially, when the tram could stay on the railway line that it is already on!

TfWM are climate deniers who are obsessed with the 40 years of a failed 200 Km tram network of 10 lines that should have been completed by 2000!!

All they want are prestigious, over-ndulgent, wealth flaunting projects to impress the visitors and to make Brum a great world city to rival London, Paris and Milan. This is childish and only serves to accelerate the climate crisis and every other crisis!!!

Tim 

Disintegrated Transport and Foolish Transport

Dear Ian

You top people never consulted with the public.  You denied yourselves a vote in every one of the seven council chambers before

• destroying urban railway lines;
• converting some closed railway lines to tramways, as light rail;
• running homes, shops, offices down them instead of, so 19th century, railway trains;
• in Dudley, turning 2 Kms into a Very Light Rail test track on the UK's last but still existing principal, mainline railway;
• turning two more nibble sized sections on Derby, Dudley, Devon principal mainline into a light rail tramway;
• permanently closed a major vehicle and bus underpass for a tramway at Brum Five Ways;
• permanently closed Broad Street to buses and bikes - for trams, only;
• turned roads and railways into HR, LR, VLR and now, possibly, ULR (ultra-light rail) on part of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway!

This is Disintegrated Transport and Foolish Transport! 

On Sun, 19 Sept 2021 at 10:22, Ian Shires <shiresi2012@gmail.com> wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the concept of an integrated public transport system. The issue is how it's promoted and consulted upon and that is a product of the current Local Government system which has evolved out of the 2000 Act and left us with a top down process that.lacks true devolution and transparency leading to an ill informed general public.​  Very ill-informed councillors and MPs, in fact who don't seem to care. (Tim Weller).​

On Sat, 18 Sept 2021 at 09:04, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, David.  You are right!  This is is absurd, scandalous and immoral spending for "bus on rails" trams, First Class Sprint buses, Second Class Platinum buses all on Hagley Road, with cars, trucks, vans and lorries!  The authorities are escalating us to catastrophe with greenhouse gases led ecocide.

Never any consultation or the slightest whisper of even giving a nod towards following the correct democratic procedure for councillors to discuss, debate and vote on all this wasteful, stupid expenditure of taxpayers' money.

Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline railway continues to get destroyed with two further nibble sized sections being converted to "bus on rails" tramway!  Incompetent idiocy is no exaggeration.

Tim Weller

On Fri, 17 Sept 2021 at 21:25, David G wrote:

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/four-new-tram-routes-birmingham-21592574

Yet they are already planning a Sprint bus down hagley Road? Will they have both?

No consultation about any of these plans that I am aware of? Undemocratic!!

David