£400 m wishlist - I'm sorry, but this proves, Midlands Connect, you don't have a clue, in my opinion

 https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/midlands-transport-chiefs-submit-400m-19906244?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

"£27 million to reinstate platform four at Snow Hill to allow more local and long-distance services to terminate there."

Platform 4 has been out of use to commuter and regional trains for well over 20 years when this important railway line was converted to a wealth flaunting, unnecessary, show off, "bus on rails" tramline that led to the destruction of 3 or 4 Kms of perfectly good double-track railway line and, of Wolverhampton Low Level station being converted to a conference and events centre!  And, one or two jaywalkers have been killed by the tram, too.  Tragic blunder.

"£20 million for a regionwide smart ticketing system for bus, tram and rail journeys across the Midlands"

Simply extend the regional Fare-Free Public Transport for all, that old crocks like me have enjoyed for over 13 years!  Why should elders get priority over those who really do need to travel to and for work?  Use the £15 billion to 2040 for mainly tram extensions to replace some buses.  Trams only bring even more changes and delays to public transport journeys, after all.  Now, what do they call this failure?!

"The unparalleled challenges of a global pandemic, the UK's exit from the European Union and the ongoing blight of climate change mean that decisive action, demonstrable progress and strategic innovation are more important than ever.  This is especially true for our transport network."

 Your, "ongoing blight of climate change"  should mean retrenchment, not regeneration with £400 m going into dangerously enhancing the natural greenhouse effect and, hence the climate emergency.  Spend greenhouse gases in the short term to cut them in the medium to long term.  Act on the measures many of us have proposed over the years.

THE TRAGEDY OF EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK WRECKING OUR RAILWAY NETWORK!

THE TRAGEDY OF EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK WRECKING OUR RAILWAY NETWORK!

For 100 years, we had a passenger railway line from platform 4 at Snow Hill Sta to Wolverhampton Low Level Station.  Instead of returning commuter trains to this 20 Kms railway at a fraction of the price of trams, they chose the trams.  This resulted in one platform out of four that can no longer be used at Snow Hill, with the tram now bypassing Snow Hill Sta completely with the over £60,000 per metre extension to 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Station Tagged Along As An Afterthought In the Basement of the John Lewis Store' - a rather long winded but accurate new name for the old New Street Underground Principal Station!

In Wolverhampton, the magnificent, Victorian Low Level Station is now a conference and events centre. It can never again be a much-needed railway station, because 3 or 4 Kms of double track railway line either side of the station was used for roads and buildings when trams made the station useless.  Oh, we also have a pretty garden where trains ran for 100 years!  Only now, at more vast expense, is the tram being extended from St George's Square to the one remaining railway station in Wolverhampton.  And the buses are pushed out to make way for the trams, too.  All of this expense and inconvenience and, extra greenhouse gases to help turn planet earth into planet venus, could have been avoided if our awesome politicians and officers in charge had simply put the trains and stations back on the line from Snow Hill to Low Level Station that they should never have closed in the first place!  And, we would now have additional train services from Snow Hill to Shrewsbury via Wolverhampton Low Level.  The absolute worst follows:

These same irrepressible (BLANK) are STILL intent on repeating that blunder with trams on an even more important railway line.  This one is the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway, between Worcester and Derby, "of national strategic significance" (Network Rail on 8 March 2018 letter).  Just 6.7 Kms of trams will wreck any chance of the UK's last, easily reinstated, half used, mainline railway from ever being finished.  And, they are planning a suite of buildings on the only feasible site for Dudley Castle Hill railway station.  TRAGEDY!  Yet, the line is still desperately needed to reduce the road and railway congestion and poisonous air in Birmingham.  Even needed to ensure the Camp Hill line reopening works.  Freight and even some passenger trains on this line might well need to be diverted onto the Black Country Railway.  Impossible once trams, at six to ten every hour, are on a total of 6.7 Kms between 0600 and 2300 hours every day.

From 1981, our councillors, MPs, MEPs have had as their top priority the return of the trams they dismantled in the 50s. Since Beeching, some even had the cheek to blame him when they gave planning permission for roads and buildings on over 100 Kms of urban railway lines in the Black Country and Brum. Homes, offices, shops, gardens, beautiful landscaping, cycle-walkways, buses, roads all on railway lines.  In addition, they kept commuter, regional and intercity trains OFF 106 Kms of freight only or mothballed lines.  Whatever is the matter with them?

REPLY to: timweller1@gmail.com  25 January 2019

Background to the monorail and Metro at Merry Hill

Please try opening the attachment, below of the magnificent white trees.  Where they stand, between Dudley Canal and the road called Embankment, has been on the published path of the trams since the 1980s.  I can assure you that the project is that old.  The route of the tram still, to this day, runs next to the towpath between Level Street and the flat land, where I would like to see housing for the least wealthy.  At that point, where I have my over 20 year old landscape enhancement scheme, the tram line turns sharply to cross the canal to terminate in Cottage Street.

Since the 1980s, the brothers, Don and Roy Richardson who built the shopping centre on Merry Hill Farm land and on the site of the steel works, also built the monorail.  I think it is very likely that because of the councillors' plans to build the tram line, their excellent monorail was never given permission to connect with the principal mainline railway at Round Oak steel terminal that should have reopened for passenger trains then, of course.  Centro and the PTA - Passenger Transport Authority - (the councillors supposedly in charge), since 1981 have been determined to rebuild the tram network that they had mistakenly closed and dismantled only twenty years earlier in the 1950s.

Centro must have known of the monorail scheme by the private sector Richardsons but must have stopped the monorail going all the way to the mainline railway because of their superior plans for a network of trams on railways and roads.  Is this correct?  What does Roy Richardson say?  He has never responded to my approaches via Ninder Johal.  He might do to yours, Brad.  The monorail terminated next to the road that was next to the canal that was next to the railway line and Round Oak steel terminal freight station.

I see the 40 year old Metro tram project as empire building by Centro and the councillors of the PTA because they thought that only flash, swanky, electric trams could attract car drivers out of their cars onto public transport.  Trams always had priority over trains for the authorities.  Even the railway industry itself - including the railway unions that have never been bothered with their railway infrastructure being lost and the decline of their own industry.

The trams took over the first mainline railway from Snow Hill station to nearly as far as Wolverhampton's second principal mainline station called Low Level, next to the present one.  Except, it fell short by 2 Kms and was not even connected to the bus station, let alone Wolverhampton High Level station that now remains in use as the city's only station.  25% of Snow Hill station remains wasted because platform 4 was used by the trams until 2016 when the tram line was extended and opened to bypass Snow Hill station and connect, instead with Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Underground Station (in the basement of the John Lewis store).

Centro (now TfWM/WMCA/MMA) and the councillors' next tram line remains to take over our second mainline railway that is even more important than the first that was spoilt by trams when they started running in 1999.  This second is the half-used, half-finished, Worcester, Black Country, Derby "railway of national strategic significance".  DfT letter, here:

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

However, clearly, it is not of sufficient "national strategic significance" for it to be finished with passenger or even freight trains.  Only, as a shuttle tram line of 6.7 Kms in two nibble sized sections of the nationally important railway, a 2 Kms test track, a trail of trees and, as a cycle-walkway, of all things.  As a result, we have to have £106 BILLION of greenhouse gas emissions (more deadly than the virus) to give more capacity after frequent stopping "bus on rails" trams have taken over railway lines!

With best wishes