to Stuart Richardson

COPIED TO Customer Services for any factual error to be put right, please when you reply

Thanks, Stuart.  Yes, indeed.  You are quite right about the reporting back.  Simon emphasised joining a campaigning group.  I was wanting more of our individual responsibility to act, in all good conscience.

It is over 100 towns and cities, worldwide that have FFPT, I believe.  Dunkirk and Luxembourg in western Europe are our nearest.  It's a carrot, not a stick like CAZ and, would end the woeful discrimination against the young and middle-aged.

MY SUMMARY for campaigning against Metro:

1. Metro is a wealth flaunting, self-aggrandisement, vanity, 'solution looking for a problem' project.  NOW BEING INDEPENDENTLY REVIEWED by the light rail industry after so much has gone so very wrong -  for years!
2. Construction is ten times more expensive per Km than the rebuilding of Scotland's Borders Railway in 2015.  This alone should be Metro's death knell.  Scandalous.
3. Metro has destroyed two mainline railways, nearly a third; caused deaths from accidents and turned a Wolverhampton principal railway station into a conference and events centre.
4. 11 different bus routes are now inconvenienced by being pushed out into narrow back streets on a diversion because priority is given to trams.
5. Five Ways underpass is blocked by the two most colossal concrete crash barriers I have ever seen.  Only the tram can use it.
6. Every bus has to join the traffic jam and traffic lights on the Five Ways roundabout.
7. Public transport is made worse. Simply for prestige and a cosmetic, all style over substance sham.
8. It is unreliable and every tram has been out of service since 13 November for at least four weeks.
9. Diverts attention and money from addressing the climate crisis by doing these things:
    MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

MY SUMMARY for being against Sprint -

• the bus that thinks its a tram on its own dedicated bus lane without the railway tracks;
• fewer stops than Platinum buses but they must be retained for all the stops that Sprint speeds past;
• grass, trees and front gardens get taken, so yet more concreting of Nature;
• prestigious, flash, new and absolutely irresistible to the car commuter who will gladly flock to the new, smart-looking Sprint bus, of course;
• yet more splashing out on unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions to speed us to merry extinction!

Tim

Edgbaston tram but its BUSES that need the tender loving care and attention!

Dear John - and copied to Fare-Free Public Transport pioneer and UK expert witness on the issue, Bob Whitehead who lives in Brum.  Copied, too to the Chair of the Transport Delivery Committee of Transport for W Midlands.  KATH - please could you comment?

Thanks for writing.

So our question was read out, then, was it?!  That's great news.  Can you confirm for me, please, whether or not Andy read out what I had written, John?  Did he mention my name?

You mention "a statement of the social-economic case in non-technical language. No doubt this has been done but I don't have the material to hand." 

Here is something that Bob Whitehead wrote about FFPT - clearly written, authoritative and all sources are referenced. Are you able to open them?

 The Case for FFPT in Birmingham.pdf

 BIRMINGHAM – A FFPT PIONEER?

Should the least well off without cars, and everyone, not just the elderly, be rewarded with, and compensated for the slightly higher risk of getting Covid when travelling on bus, train and tram, by being given Fare-Free Public Transport?  About 100 towns and cities around the world have it, including Dunkirk, Luxembourg and Tallinn, Estonia.

I feel that the £15 billion to 2040, going into mainly underground and overground Metro trams to replace some buses and trains, should be used to pay for it all.  And, thus, raise the status and attractiveness of bus travel that is, far and away, the most well used mode.

Andy is very keen on trams because it adds to the public transport pool of different ways of getting about on public transport.  He calls it multi-modal public transport.  Unfortunately, it ends up being multi-mixed up; and, with yet more changes and slower journeys between the different modes.  It is much better just to stick to bus and train.  Simpler, quicker and fewer changes.

AN EXAMPLE for those who come in to the city centre on Hagley Road:

Those who come in by bus down Hagley Road now get diverted on a longer and slower journey into Colmore Row via the Arena.  And, the bus no longer uses the underpass at Five Ways which is given over to the tram.  If we change for the tram at 54 Hagley Road, we then have to cross the busy main road and wait for the tram (opens next year).  Again, a slower and less helpful journey to hardly encourage people to give up the car and use the bus!  And those without cars are penalised, once again.  So give them FFPT as a reward, on bus priority roads!

Why don’t you oppose Metro trams mucking up our public transport with more changes and slower journeys?

Why don’t you oppose Andy Street's/TfWM/WMCA Metro tram extensions mucking up our public transport with more changes between modes and slower journeys?

£15 billion to 2040 for mainly underground and overground trams to replace and duplicate bus routes and to break up the UK’s only mothballed 120 Kms mainline railway that needs finishing with TRAINS!  But their plan is for multi-modal, multi-mixed up trains, trams, test track for VLR and an extended cycle-walkway on the 120 Kms mainline, Black Country Railway!

Over-indulgent, flash to impress, “bus on rails” trams to entice motorists out of their cars.  But it has not worked!  However, this does work: rewards and compensation for bus users with Fare-Free Public Transport as seen in Luxembourg, Dunkirk and Tallinn and many E European towns and cities. 100 around the world, including about 50 in the USA, apparently.

More pleadings for the decision makers to act sensibly and responsibly

 Dear decision-makers, one and all - pictures to make you smile if you get down that far!

The hundred of millions for diesel Sprint and £15 BILLION for mainly trams to 2040, means yet more rising greenhouse gas emissions that are threatening all life on earth with runaway climate change, this century.  The more we spend, the quicker finite fossil fuels become exhausted and, the quicker we give ourselves a runaway greenhouse effect like our twin or sister planet, venus.

Far better to avoid making earth as uninhabitable as venus by using the money to give everyone (not just my age group) Fare-Free Public Transport in the W Midlands, like Luxembourg, Dunkirk and Tallinn in Estonia.

Fare-Free Public Transport is also compensation for there being a higher risk of getting Covid when using bus, train, tram.

Far better to redeploy Sprint staff into reversing the continuing waste of the Black Country Railway by using the wasted 56 Kms in the Black Country and south Staffordshire for commuter and regional trains.

Use Sprint staff to put passenger trains on freight-only lines.

It is unfair for Solihull to get both Metro trams and Sprint diesel buses.  For the west of Brum, we get a slower and longer journey by bus into the city centre, changing either to the tram for the final section or, staying on the diverted and slower bus route that no longer uses the Five Ways underpass!

STOP ADDING TO THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT!

STOP COMPLICATING LIFE BY MAKING YET MORE CHANGES BETWEEN DIFFERENT PUBLIC TRANSPORT MODES!

START ACTING RESPONSIBLY.

Nearly £2 BILLION (to 2026) to replace diesel buses with diesel Sprint buses and using electric trams to destroy the UK's only mothballed mainline railway!

TO THE STAR

24 May 2019

Nearly £2 BILLION (to 2026) to replace diesel buses with diesel Sprint buses and using electric trams to destroy the UK's only mothballed mainline railway!

In the 1990s, I was told in all seriousness by the Leader of Dudley MBC, Cllr Fred Hunt, that the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) would be open by 2000.  It was not. In March of last year, I was told by the Black Country Director of Transport, Stuart Everton, that work was due to begin in the summer. It did not. The official start date for the main works is now the third quarter of this year.  Therefore, there is still time for cooler heads to prevail.  You three journalists are distant and independent from the fray.  If you think I am on to something here, please write a little more so that the blunder is further delayed to enable a review of the scheme.  If I am wrong, please tell me!

Metro One was opened in 1999.  That meant the permanent closure of Low Level principal station and a loss of passenger services, I believe, to Shrewsbury and possibly Crewe (I would like that confirmed or corrected, if you are able, please).  WBHE is even more devastating on heavy railway services for growing freight and passenger services, that are at full capacity now, in the Black Country and Brum. Platform 4 at Snow Hill station is still unused and wasted!

£55.7 billion is being spent on HS2 to increase capacity.  The politicians’ £449 million for WBHE is soon to be spent to reduce capacity!

All political parties are still wanting the 1981 decision to have a network of electric trams to replace some diesel buses and diesel trains.  This, when electric buses and electric trains would have been more sensible, financially responsible and with lower greenhouse gas emissions. Not one public statement condemning the scandalous destruction of urban railway lines that continues to this day.  No public statement on the sheer stupidity of converting the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway into a piddling little shuttle tram line over 6.7 Kms. No public statement on the matter of this important railway "of national strategic significance", having a Very Light Rail Innovation Centre, a trail of trees and, in south Staffordshire, a new extended cycle-walkway.  All on a nationally important, mainline railway!!

From the powers that govern us, there has been:

       NO discussion or debate in any of the seven council chambers on spending nearly £2 billion.

       NO vote, of course.  There was, however, in Edinburgh, in March, over their tram extension.  And in went ahead: 36 to 26 councillors voted in favour.

       NO democracy - in the land that goes on (wrongly) about being the Great Mother of all Parliaments and the best democracy in the world!

       YES to improper but powerful influence at Transport HQ by the national tram promotion group that wants trams everywhere, regardless of the cost.  That lobby group also has its HQ in Transport HQ.

       YES to collusion + complicity = corruption at 16 Summer Lane.

       YES to continuing to squander nearly £2 billion over the next seven years.  This, at a time of continuing austerity causing suffering for the NHS/social care and, the £2 billion resulting in a worsening climate catastrophe of £2 billion of totally unnecessary greenhouse gases to hasten planet earth turning into our 'twin' planet, venus.

I think the green transport policy is free bus travel for all and not just the disabled and elderly, like me.  Dunkirk and Luxembourg are going down this route with total free public transport. Many eastern European towns and cities are already doing it.  £2 billion would pay for this and the no 9 bus route experiment, I have proposed elsewhere.

With best wishes