TEXT to Tom B: My official and stamped MMA stylus-biro soon fell apart. Could you please send me a replacement? THANKS! 28 Hunnington Cres HALESOWEN B63 3DJ (The biro section fell out, literally)
It was really good to speak to all three of you yesterday on my way to Scotland for more summits - otherwise I would have been on the bike (food fueled, only)!
Since you are liaising between the public and MMA/TfWM/WMCA, I was anxious to meet with you so that you could get something of a different perspective on Metro. The only one, as you told me - out of a million who all want more Metro.
The trams are wonderful and I take every opportunity to travel on them instead of the bus. However, your predecessors did destroy our first network in the 1950s, then about one third of the railway network in the 60s onwards and, in the 80s your colleagues set to work to busily rebuild the tram network but, on the closed railway network not yet completely turned into roads or buildings. And this is what you are doing with WBHE, of course, a railway "of national strategic significance"!!
I would like both of you and Gil/Jill (was it?) to simply take on board the knowledge of this old man who, since 1968, has lived, studied and worked and now retired in the Black Country and Brum.
Using existing transport infrastructure, rather than wasting or destroying it is basic climate change prevention or mitigation and, of course, environmental gain/improvement.
Would you concede or, allow me one tiny satisfaction in knowing that, at least, my guerrilla gardening exploits at Merry Hill since the 1990s are safe? See my email, below.
The Metro tram rejoins the former principal mainline railway at the Cinder Bank roundabout on the Dudley Southern Bypass. Where the trams come off the railway after Canal Street tram stop, Hart's Hill, I am suggesting it still goes into the Waterfront and almost all the way to Merry Hill Shopping Centre but, it should terminate at a new Level Street tram stop. This slightly shortened route is to
- save £100 m by not needing to build the 400 metre, steel and concrete, double track, standard gauge, tram viaduct on the 400 m long and high canal embankment, plus a second canal bridge;
- save my 'magnificent' guerrilla garden from being wiped out;
- save the only public open space at Merry Hill;
- everything (and more) in this photo between the road and the canal gets bulldozed for the massive viaduct;
- save nature - of which we are part and depend on for our very existence;
- save the view of five lovely hills from the canal towpath and from the boats on the high canal embankment; and
- save all the 10,000 sq metres of land designated for housing - after some decades, is still available for very low cost energy apartments for the poor and, "the stranger in our midst", as here:
Other maps and full details are found here:
What do you think? Any chance?
Best wishes
Tim
