ONE HORRIBLE HISTORY OF TRULY, TERRIBLE, TRAGIC TRANSPORT:

17 November 2021

Dear Carol - and copied to my constituency office for them to start putting right my criticism, here.

I was the man in your breakout group yesterday evening who used his self-powered bike for commuting and for social work visits for the last, nearly 20 years of his career in Brum.  The car was occasionally used when it was icy or snowy in the mornings.

Five workers (includes the MP) in my constituency office have never shown any interest in any of this scandal, below!  All have looked the other way.  I would like Unison and the SWP to do very much better, please.

 Regional Transport in TfWM's much loved bite-sized chunks!

This is a much shortened version of my 'ONE HORRIBLE HISTORY OF TRULY, TERRIBLE, TRAGIC TRANSPORT', written last decade:

BUSES

Basic and should be the first choice if you cannot walk, cycle or, must rely on mobility transport.

Every bus stop must have step-free access for mobility transport from pavement to bus.  Done for trams.  Must now be done for buses.  NO EXCUSE.

Five Ways underpass and Broad St are now blocked, from 2022, to most if not all buses.  The buses remain pushed out into narrow, crowded back streets crammed with parked cars.  So no incentive for them to switch to buses.

FFPT = Fare-Free Public Transport.  The carrot to bribe active motorists to leave their infernal cars at home.  AIM: to empty the roads for real essential car users who cannot possibly walk or cycle.  Wealthy people like me have had it, unjustly, for 13 years.  But no money to give it to those who really need it - the workers.

FFPT is the carrot for the stick that is CAZ that must remain.

Use regional FFPT for all to end the discrimination against the young and middle-aged who don't get it.

HS2 = High Scandal 2 for the most expensive to construct high-speed line in the world, say high-speed train experts.

THEIR AIM: To give better railway connections - this is off the government website - to 25 stations and 30 m Brits.  Yet, it goes so fast (224 mph) it only stops at 3 stations and 2 airports plus the station you jet off from.  So how do they work out that HS2 gets you to 25 stations for nearly half the population?  A LIE.

TRAMS = Metro.  Metro One turned a mainline railway between Brum and Shrewsbury into a tramway, in 1999 between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton.

Metro Two destroys the UK's very last principal mainline railway over only 10 Kms between Derby and Devon via Dudley.

Metro Three was to go on the Grand Central, Kings Heath, Bristol mainline.  Now stopped.

For 40 years the emphasis has been on rebuilding the tram network on the railway network.  One-eyed, all your eggs in one basket, lopsided, transport provision.  Always CARS, a few trams, NEVER TRAINS; so about 100 Kms of railway lines were lost but 106 Kms remain wasted or used only for freight.

TRAINS = One principal, mainline station remains but can never be used again - in Wolverhampton city centre.  This is because of trams and roads going on the Snow Hill to Low Level mainline.

In the 1970s, Snow Hill station with 8 platforms was demolished and rebuilt with 4 platforms.

The trams, running from 1999 meant still, to this day, only 3 platforms are in use.

100 Kms of Black Country and Brum railway lines used to run homes, offices, shops and road vehicles down them - truly bizarre.  Using them for their intended purpose - TRAINS - is still unheard of!

Still no stations for Kings Heath, Moseley and Balsall Heath because Metro trams get priority.

CEMENT

Makes concrete but making cement is very high in greenhouse gas emissions.

Concrete is essential for replacing buses and trains with tramways.  What is the point, then?

Concrete is intensively used in HS2 construction.

Steel manufacture, for the rails, is also very high in greenhouse gas emissions.

EVERY £1 spent (on almost everything) = greenhouse gas emissions = climate breakdown = runaway greenhouse effect = earth becoming like uninhabitable venus = THE END

CYCLING

Mobility scooters must have top priority on dedicated cycle-walkways. More active travellers on bikes must give way to them and to walkers.

It is essential they turn the nation's most unedifying but major 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-walk Mudway, between Dudley, Wombourne and Wolverhampton, into a facility that can be used throughout its length for business, commuter and leisure use.  ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT DO ACTIVE TRAVEL and rely on an all-weather, smooth surface that is free draining - for their transport.

E-SCOOTERS

Mobility scooters must have top priority.

Essential to get around on if you can't do active travel under your own steam - fossil fuel free.

WALKING

Walk if you can, to allow those who cannot walk to use their cars and other mobility vehicles.

TOWPATHS

Brum's are now fine.  The rest of them now need doing in the other 6 council areas to enable mobility scooters and buggies to use them.  With walkers and cyclists giving way to them.

COST

Scrap the £15 billion of greenhouse gases to 2040 to convert some buses and trains into underground and overground trams.

Scrap High Scam 2 construction beyond, north, of Brum.

Spend on low greenhouse gas emitting activities - as above.

Spend for a healthier, more sustainable and very minimum finite fossil fuel use future.

Best wishes

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK, to slow planet earth becoming like planet venus

Partly, from what Cllr Stewart Stacey, Brum’s Cabinet member for Transport and Highways, told me.  Partly my own conclusion and guess as to what the experts are thinking and saying:

• There is no demand for travel, no commercial interest, on the UK’s most important, unused but easily reinstated 65 Km main line railway in the Black Country and south Staffordshire.
• Everyone, travelling between London and Scotland and the North, wants to go via Birmingham railway stations and M6.
• The tocs have shown no interest in reopening their railway lines or, in growing their business and making bigger profits.
• Birmingham is the business and commercial centre of the West Midlands, not the Black Country.
• Network Rail, and Birmingham’s transport bosses, over many decades, has always wanted Brum’s total of 39 Kms railway lines to be reserved for freight trains only or as a bypass for passenger trains when it comes to the 9 Km Kings Norton to Moor Street line.  Homebase must remain on Kings Heath station.
• The fully trained experts and professionals at Network Rail and 16 Summer Lane must be right.  Mr Weller does not know what he is talking about and can easily be discounted.
• I was not sure that, since the 2015 Strategic Transport Plan, that Stewart was aware that all 39 Kms of freight only lines were down for reopening for stations and passenger trains (is that right?). But goodness knows when.
• This does not apply to the 65 Kms in the Black Country and Staffordshire that must have “bus on rails” slow trams on 7 Kms out of the 65 Kms.
• West Midlands' transport and tram HQ at 16 Summer Lane Birmingham must remain with the emphasis on electric trams, at £67 million per Km, to replace diesel buses like the Platinum and hybrids.
• The coming of HS2 means that the emphasis must remain with more bus-like trams linking in to HS2.  To Curzon Street, in the first instance and then onto Brum’s 5th railway station on the HS2 line in Solihull.
• Train drivers get double the salary of tram drivers.  Therefore, to keep down costs, the emphasis must remain on trams for roads and railway lines and not commuter and regional trains on railway lines where they traditionally ran. At least one VIP transport officer has mentioned this to me to explain their refusal to reopen existing railway lines.