to Laura Shoaf

Dear Laura

You spoke very well on Monday morning but, I would expect that from a Chief Executive of your standing.

Both you and Dan spoke about a partnership with the public and of an intention to engage with the public.  Therefore, what exactly do you intend to do to foster and improve public participation other than by the Citizens' Panel and the usual brochures, leaflets and press releases?

Would a new partnership with the public extend to allowing, officially, climate activists like Chris Crean and me to each have one three minutes comment slot in meetings where the public are allowed to attend?  Such a concession is extremely tame, anything said is easily ignored and is precious little in the light of rising temperatures, floods and out of control wildfires around the planet.

Four years on from your declaration of a climate emergency but I still see that your HQ gets only an 'E' rating for energy efficiency.  It should be at least a 'C'.  This behaviour invites a charge of hypocrisy and of fiddling while Rome burns - record temperatures for them over the next ten days I have just heard on national news.  And, a charge of not just no leadership but of wrong leadership from your continuing destruction of the region's very last mainline railway for a tramline, of all things, to worsen the climate crisis.

I would urge you to listen to Chris Packham and Lord Deben speaking for seven minutes on the 'Today' programme on Saturday 8 July at 1:39:00.  Here:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001np1h  Available for 24 days

Lord Deben said, to each of us:

"Are you doing what is necessary to fight climate change? ... The Climate Change Committee has shown how you reach net zero."

When will you do what Lord Deben is urging and take Chris Packham seriously?

Best wishes for some urgency in this worsening climate crisis and in shortages of vital resources - even water with wrong action and apathy/negligence, over decades, from the water companies.

Public transport is an embarrassing 70 years saga of confusion, multi-modal mix up and incompetence

The very VIPs who boasted in the 1980s of 200 Kms of tramline by the year 2000, have their predecessors promising us 150 miles and 380 tram stops for £15 billion by 2040!

These were the Top Professionals who obliterated the first tram network in the 1950s, then set about the urban railway network from the 1960s onwards. What was left of our urban railway lines, from the 1980s was begun to be converted to - you've guessed it - to the solution looking for a problem, the TRAM. Not the train on train lines. Oh no! That was all too obvious. 

It was to be the answer to all our traffic-choked urban roads!

The silver bullet to bring us fast, convenient, irresistible connectivity - the planners and politicians favourite word.

Instead, we still sit in traffic jams literally alongside or near to the forgotten railway "of national strategic significance". Ready built, too except for the 7 stations recommended by Railfuture, way back in 2003.

But this is the railway that must have:- "Light rail provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" - top officer in a letter to me in September 2000. Last decade this was underlined by Top VIP, Laura Shoaf as "passive provision" for trains to return between the 56 Kms of Stourbridge and Burton on Trent on the middle section of the 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby. 

What a long-winded and frankly stupid way of 'Restoring Your Railway' from the DfT, that is another victory my side has won. The first victory we won was last decade when they finally decided not to convert the Kings Norton to Grand Central Station into a tramline as part of the 200 Kms of trams we were meant to have by 2000 AD!!

WHAT A PANTOMIME 

WOT A JOKE

WHAT ASTONISHING INCOMPETENCE!

WMCA Overview & Scrutiny Committee

Hi Cathy - and copied to Laura Shoaf to correct any inadvertent misrepresentation, here.

I hope to attend and observe tomorrow's Scrutiny Committee meeting.

I wonder if tomorrow you might feel able to make any reference to the matters that are of great concern to me, in the earlier email, below that I sent you in November.

Laura's "passive provision" phrase was reaffirmed when being interviewed by Transport Correspondent, Peter Plisner.  It was recorded and televised by the BBC in one of their 'Midlands Today' programmes in the second half of the last decade.  Passsive provision for heavy rail to return has been a very long standing ambition of both Centro and Dudley MBC since the 1990s.  It magically enables track sharing between trams (both light rail and very light rail), freight, and commuter/regional trains all on the same, one set of double tracks, 24 hours a day!!

I do fear that your ambition is being quietly sidelined in the face of the multiple crises now confronting the region and nation.  Or, is passive provision impractical, anyway and was only ever introduced as a sop to those of us who have wanted the middle section of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway to be competently finished with the trains that had been so successful for about 100 years?  This was when the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company ran trains from Oxford and Worcester over the last two centuries.  The first GWR company ran the service from Dudley to Derby, I believe and the line has been safeguarded/mothballed ever since with every motorway, road, canal crossing in place but all unused despite road/motorway congestion and poor air quality leading to 60 mph speed limits!

In addition, senior officers at 16 Summer Lane, including Laura, have all consistently maintained that trams are the catalyst for freight trains only, to return "in the 2040s at the earliest", as Network Rail has proclaimed for decades and technically safeguarded by Order, I understand.

What passive provision, exactly, is being made?  Only standard gauge track?  And how practical is it?  Am I correct in what I have written here?

Best wishes

Re: 26 October CA/CANWM meeting

Dear Laura, Andy and Ed - and who was the fourth at last Wednesday's meeting, please?

REDEPLOY STAFF AND TRANSFER THE LARGESS BILLIONS FOR 150 MILES OF METRO AND UNKNOWN MILES FOR SPRINT TO HELP THOSE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PILE

The millions of pounds and the staff at TfWM/WMCA and MMA are there to help those who are suffering, NOW!

Scrapping Metro/Sprint is the first and most basic action to get more and warmer homes, heating, food, help, ambulances, to those who, shamefully, are at the bottom of our society, including migrants who must be put to work and also be properly housed.

Therefore, you cannot avoid talking transport at the Green Forum on 21 Nov that is not on transport anymore!  Do you agree?  Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) would help the poor and that is transport.  You are all moving in that direction and that is excellent.  The multiple crises are all linked as one.  The transport money must go for FFPT and for insulation/retrofitting and getting low cost, highly energy efficient apartments at High Plateau, Daniels Land and other overlooked sites - all for the disgracefully badly housed.

Best wishes

Tim Weller

GRIM ECONOMIC/ECOLOGICAL TIMES THREATENED

Dear Laura, Linda and Deborah - and, copied to Anne Shaw (who leads from the front I have noticed and gets a big tick from me) and bcc'd to other key players who might share my concerns.

I would like a response, please from Laura on behalf of you very top women who might be able to do better than the men.  Apart from Johnson and Jack, below!

On Wednesday 7 Sept at 0710 hrs on the Radio 4 'Today' programme, I heard Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, say:

"The reason gas prices are so high is because there is less gas around.  If the world doesn't use less gas over the next year, we are going to run out."

"The entire economy is at risk here", said the BBC Business Editor, Simon Jack, later the same day on the 'Jeremy Vine Show'.

I believe what follows is basic ecology/economics.  For me, HS2, Metro, Sprint are symptomatic and the reality of the fact that we are living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet.  Living unsustainably.  Somewhat dangerous and foolish!  All three transport projects are self-indulgent and greedy at a time when the nation is even more awash in debt.  We need to tighten our belts and not splash out on wasteful, extravagant and totally unnecessary projects.  We insist on business as usual, with not even a nod in the direction of the multiple crises - climate, energy, inflation, cost of living and, funding of the Ukraine War amongst others - confronting the nation and regions.

I have tried to make this accurate but light-hearted, in the spirit of British pompous pricking and satire:

 16 (not so?) SNAPPY SENTENCES

A REQUEST

With Metro WBHE Phase 2, you are putting the "bus on rails" trams on the UK's very last, ready built but unused railway "of national strategic significance".

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

You have now done so at the Wednesbury end.  As you are keeping the sedate trams on the Phase 2 section of another 2 Kms of this nationally important railway, perhaps now keep it on the same railway to allow it to connect to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  In this way, at Merry Hill, you:

1. save my magnificent guerrilla garden from being wiped out;
2. save the only public open space at Merry Hill;
3. save nature - of which we are part and depend on for our very existence;
4. save the view of five lovely hills from the canal towpath and from the boats on the high canal embankment; and 
5. save all the 10,000 sq metres of land designated for housing - after some decades still available for very low cost energy apartments for the poor.
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

With best wishes for a reply from Laura, please

Tim    (Weller, 0791 380 4363)

Immoral, no probity and, incompetence by WMCA

 6 April 2022

Dear Ms Laura Shoaf - Chief Executive, W Mids Combined Authority

It is grossly immoral, with a climate crisis, cost of living crisis, the energy crisis and a housing crisis, quite apart from quickly rising inflation, to be spending on the Wednesbury Brierley Hill tram Extension (WBHE or, Dudley Tram) well over half a billion pounds by 2024 or 2025, when you finally complete the 10.7 Kms WBHE.

It means many hundreds of millions of pounds are spent to destroy Dudley's very last and seventh railway when the seventh is already built with every bridge, viaduct and tunnel in place between Worcester and Derby - over 120 Kms.

What a slap in the face for many tens of thousands of our people who want help with paying their fuel bills to heat their homes and, especially, simply to eat.  Yet, you deprive them of that money.

You are doing the poor down to destroy, with a massive,  double-track, concrete railway viaduct, the only public open space at Merry Hill that is already short of nature.  400 metres of trees and shrubs get felled and even carbon-absorbing grass and soil gets smothered in concrete, brick and tarmac to worsen the climate emergency.

There is still time to stop Metro beyond Dudley, finish the railway with trains and reinstate the monorail to Merry Hill but, this time, connect it to the railway line.  Or, simply use electric buses instead of the monorail and run Metro “bus on rails” trams all the way on the current freight line to Stourbridge.

You and your colleagues are behaving immorally with your foolish obsession with the most expensive transport mode to construct after HS2, simply to impress the foreign visitor with a swish, smart, grossly extravagant, prestigious, "bus on rails" tram to badly slow the eleven fast bus routes into Brum city centre via Five Ways underpass and Broad Street.  And, with WBHE, to destroy Brum's bypass mainline railway - the 120 Kms Black Country Railway.

Each of your unnecessary, vain, 'look how rich we are', electric “bus on rails” trams cost over £5 m.  Compare that with half a million pounds for a new electric bus directly on the road surface without needing the steel (climate worsening) railway tracks.

Please buck your ideas up, Laura.

Tim Weller

IMMORAL PRIORITIES

Dear Laura

It is grossly immoral, with a cost of living crisis, the energy crisis and a housing crisis, quite apart from quickly rising inflation, to be spending on WBHE well over half a billion pounds by 2024 or 2025, when you finally complete the 10.7 Kms WBHE.

It means many hundreds of millions of pounds spent to destroy Dudley's very last and seventh wrecked railway when the seventh is already built with every bridge, viaduct and tunnel in place between Worcester and Derby - over 120 Kms.

What a slap in the face for many tens of thousands of our people who want help with paying their fuel bills to heat their homes and, especially, simply to eat.  Yet, you deprive them of that money.

You are doing the poor down to destroy, with a massive concrete railway viaduct, the only public open space at Merry Hill that is already short of nature.  400 metres of trees and shrubs get felled and even carbon-absorbing grass and soil gets smothered in concrete, brick and tarmac to worsen the climate emergency.

There is still time to stop Metro beyond Dudley, finish the railway with trains and reinstate the monorail to Merry Hill but, this time, connect it to the railway line.

You and your colleagues are behaving immorally with your foolish obsession with the most expensive transport mode to construct after HS2, simply to impress the foreign visitor with a swish, smart, grossly extravagant, prestigious, "bus on rails" tram to destroy the eleven fast bus routes into Brum city centre via Five Ways underpass and Broad Street.  And, with WBHE, to destroy Brum's bypass mainline railway - the 120 Kms Black Country Railway.

Each of your unnecessary, vain, 'look how rich we are', electric trams cost over £5 m.  Compare that with half a million pounds for a new electric bus directly on the road surface without needing the steel (climate worsening) railway tracks.

Please buck your ideas up, Laura.

Tim 6 April 2022

0791 380 4363