To Wyre Forest Green Alliance

Thanks for organising yesterday's excellent workshop.  It has prompted these thoughts.  Could this be forwarded to the others who attended, please so I get their comments?

I think we must fight doughnutty, weird and wonderful priorities:

1. The authorities (Midlands Connect/WMCA and the Black Country Chamber of Commerce) want the 87 Kms Western Orbital Motorway instead of the Kiddi, Dudley, Walsall, Derby mainline railway finished with passenger and freight trains and Railfuture's nine stations.  They are destroying the railway with their "bite-sized chunks" of trams, Very Light Rail (VLR) test track and the National VLR Innovation Centre yet, saying all the time, that they actually want the trains and stations back!
2. WFDC and WCC are non-constituent members of the WMCA, if I remember correctly.  Therefore, they are supporting the disastrous, greenhouse gas-emitting, showpiece, grossly extravagant, Metro "bus on rails" trams, instead of electric buses on roads and trains back on existing, mothballed railway lines.
3. Regenerating Kiddi and Dudley town centres are not giving small to medium-sized, Passivhaus standard housing as their top priority.  They should be, I think if they are responding to their self-declared climate emergencies.
4. Keith helpfully told us that housing is being put outside the doughnut (Kiddi town), instead of in the centre of it where the empty retail units are.  Can Keith write who highlighted this, perhaps?
5. Failing to put cycle-walkways alongside main roads, eg Dudley Southern Bypass.  What can be done in Kidderminster?
6. My suggestions, here are green growth to counter economic growth that spurs greenhouse gas emissions.
7. Can Worcs CC and Shropshire CC, with our writing in support, appeal to walkers (like me who has promised £1,000 towards the proposed R Rea footbridge near Marlbrook, nr Mamble) to sponsor a stile/gate, footbridge, favourite path?  The authorities have very little money for their maintenance, so we are very slowly losing the right to roam on our rights of way.

Are there any comments, feedback, agreement, even support that others would like to give me, please?

LIGHT RAIL IS DONE TO GET HEAVY RAIL!

The reason VLR test track is heavy rail, I had thought, was because the VLR rolling stock is meant to go on existing heavy rail lines to allow the present rolling stock to be phased out for something lighter and, therefore, with lower impact on depleting finite fossil fuels and lower greenhouse gas emissions.  Is that right, Nick?

Since the announcement of the VLR Innovation Centre on the site of Dudley Castle Hill railway station (at the end of 2013, I think), I have been pointing out that there is the 3 Kms, safeguarded/mothballed, Pensnett branch line from Moor Street, Brierley Hill, north to the A4101 that would be more suitable and allow the railway station at Castle Hill to be rebuilt, as is their stated intention:-

"In a letter dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro:

'light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time.'

To tell me that light rail Metro was needed to be put on the Black Country Line in order to be able to restore heavy rail services at a later date on that line is complete nonsense.  That idiocy is now repeated with the insistence that Very Light Rail must go on that inter-city line but that it will not stop express and local trains returning at a later date (conversation with David Golding, Principal Strategic Planner, Network Rail at ITA meeting on 16.7.2015)  No wonder, I am thinking that there is something very corrupt, very wrong at the heart of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Network Rail, ITA, Centro - and, for decades, too.  They all want express and local trains returning but want Light Rail and/or Very Light Rail, first to help get the everyday trains back!"

from:

 Magrath quote, MM history and costs

Best wishes