to Ed Conduit

Metro failure over 42 years continues!

Thanks for the text.  I'm lobbying TfWM/WMCA and before that Centro from the 1990s.  I've successfully fought off trams going on one important freight and passenger line in Brum (Camp Hill line) and kept trams off the 120 Kms Black Country Railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​​since my protests started in the 1990s.  However, 5.5 Kms of trams are due to open in 2024 on the second mainline railway converted to tramway (the Dudley Tram from Wednesbury to Flood St Dudley).  However 49 Kms remain wasted, unused between mainly Wednesbury and Burton on Trent of the Black Country Railway aka S Staffs Railway.  SEE MAP, below.

SUMMARY with map from Railfuture

Metro failure over 42 years continues!​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​Metro trams, another vanity project, have meant the destruction of two UK mainline railways that would have been of far more use if freight and passenger trains had returned instead of the trams at eight to ten times the expense per Km.  Metro top priority since 1981 has meant that 18 Kms of mainline were used for Metro One, many more regional railway lines have been left unused or, for freight only or given over to roads, buildings and to the 18 Kms for trams.  100 Kms remain wasted but available for use.  6.7 Kms run on and therefore destroy the Black Country Railway 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

that is the UK's only principal mainline still awaiting its freight/passenger trains in the middle 56 Kms between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent on the Black Country Railway.

NOTES:

Metro expansion is second only in expense to HS2.  Last UK rebuilt railway opened in 2015 was £7m/Km.

150 miles = 241.4 Kms for £15 billion (Jan 2020 figure) makes it at £62m/Km, nearly four years ago.

In 42 years for the most enormous expense, only a miserly 25 Kms of tramway has ever been built.

And all grossly over-promised.  200 Kms were promised by the year 2000!

Fraudulent Claims for High Scam 2

 Thanks, Tony.  On the fraudulent claims for High Scam 2:

1. N edge of London to Manchester with some trains only diverting off into Curzon St and Crewe.
2. Otherwise, stops at Brum and Manchester airports, only.  No other stations, so all the intercity trains will have to remain!
3. Capacity, therefore is improved but mainly for plane passengers giving them more choice between flying through the air on a plane or on a train.  Why can't they stick to the plane?
4. What a colossal cost in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions to give high speed to climate disaster and shortages of all resources!
5. Nature gets yet more of a battering.  Not a good idea.

Tim

On Thu, 28 Sept 2023 at 09:02, Anthony Whitehouse <whitehousea970@gmail.com> wrote:

I have two points about your latest tirade.

1 Haven't you heard that we live in a democracy and not a police state or autocracy. 

2 I notice that you never have a go at the biggest culprits and they are the school runners.Usually two people in a car for a journey of usually approx half a mile.If you really want space created on our congested roads then they are the ones you should be tackling.

Plus I also notice that you never make a comment on the power used to drive trams.Is it because it is clean power I.e. electricity and not dirty power I,e petrol or diesel?

The trams are a viable form of public transport and their expansion is here to stay.So get over it.

Why don't you have a go at HS2 instead? Then you would get my support. 

On Thu, 28 Sep 2023, 08:36 Tim Weller, <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote: 

WILL PENSIONERS BACK THIS - from one old crock?

For your feedback/criticism, please - something from me, Tim Weller with thanks, here:

 STOP Metro expansion to 2040 for 150 miles of tramways for 8 lines and 380 tram stops.  Instead:

Use the £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure) for Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) for all and all day and to finish the electrification of existing buses and trains.

Bus/business lanes to reward car commuters who will be enthused and not enraged to free up road space for essential vehicle users.

MORE DETAIL:

• I'm suggesting a virtuous circle by more reward than penalty to educate and appeal to car commuters that they must free up the limited road space for essential business vehicle users, like buses, HGV drivers, district nurses, midwives etc who have to use their vehicles.

• These drivers must register to have the right to drive in daytime, Mon to Fri, because of their work.

• The car commuters who do not register are then picked up by CCTV and pay a charge.

• The money goes to Fare-Free Public Transport for all and the phasing out of diesel buses for electric.

• Essential vehicles use the nearside and overtaking lane with traffic light priority for them.

• Car commuters who pay the penalty every day are only allowed to use the overtaking lane.

• This encourages more people to leave their cars at home and jump on a free bus, train, tram throughout the region.  

• Thus healthier, safer communities that are doing more to slow the climate crisis/breakdown and resource depletion.

Protect our future and improve our prospects by …

• No more duplication and replacement of buses and trains with trams

• This saves finite reserves of oil and gas and slows climate breakdown

• Saves 1,000 trees, shrubs and front gardens on the south side of Hagley Road, Edgbaston if tram expansion was stopped and bus use boosted instead.

Tim Weller

Time to debate/vote over Metro expansion

Dear friends

This email from Mark calling on FoE members to attend the committee meeting on Thursday at 6 pm is brilliant.  Please attend and have your say, as I hope I will be allowed to.

However, I am very concerned that all of you who fully understand the dangers we are all in from climate breakdown, resource shortages and pursuing lifestyles in defiance of respecting and living in harmony with nature and her life support systems, are failing to oppose the idiocy of expanding multi-modal public transport.  Coming up, below are my reasons for opposing light rail trams (LR), very light rail trams (VLR) but fully supporting ultra light rail trams (ULR or Stourbridge Shuttle) on the world's shortest (1.8 Kms) branch line - that I helped to get, incidentally, with my letter writing, followed by emails, in the 1980/90s - and by supporting John Parry.

• In my opinion, there is not a shadow of a doubt that both main mayoral candidates (one of whom will win) are far too weak to stop the roll out of eight more tram lines over 150 miles with 380 tram stops over the next twenty years and costing £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure when it was announced by Andy Street's team).
• Since 1981, when it all started, hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been squandered on replacing perfectly good buses and trains with trams.  A paltry 23 Kms in 42 years of effort!
• Those buses and trains should have been electrified but, instead this mad, mad world we live in went for rebuilding the tram network (obliterated only 20 years previously) on what was left of the destroyed railway network, to also destroy even more of that!
• Hence, the UK's very last mothballed but virtually ready built, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
   has gone for ever because nearly everyone wanted the 11 Kms Dudley Tram to rush Sandwell and Dudley residents on the former mainline railway to Merry Hill to shop.
• All they had to do was to give us electric buses between Dudley town centre and Merry Heaven.  From its opening, there has always been diesel buses between the two bus stations.  All they had to do was to make them electric and not to bother with the highly expensive, in climate/resources and price, railway tracks for the flash "bus on rails" to run on!
• Just because something is public transport - like constructing then going on High Scam 2 and flying - does not make it sensible or right in the light of our totally unsustainable lifestyles.  How we all adore speed instead of sense, choosing style over substance and vanity of vanities!
• Under the Victorians, tramways were turned into railways.  In our so,so sophisticated, modern, highly intelligent age, we turn our railways into tramways.  We're just too clever by half!

Such is the seriousness of our plight and the accelerated worsening of our predicament from tram expansion, for the first time ever in any of the seven councils since 1981, there should be a discussion, debate, vote amongst the full elected members of the Climate Change Select Committee over this suggestion.  Edinburgh City Council did so, twice (opposed by the Conservative Group because "the money could be better spent") before building their two tramways.

As was wanted by one train operating company (toc) when all the contracts were up for grabs last decade, Jewellery line trains from the two Brum stations must reverse out of Stourbridge Junction station to use the Black Country freight line to meet the trams at Cinder Bank roundabout where the tramway must end.  An electric bus can take passengers from Brierley Hill transport interchange on the railway into Merry Hill.  For 100 years the Victorians and Edwardians ran passengers and goods trains on the same lines.

MAP to help you see what I mean:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

I will send this suggestion to the committee members and to the two Cabinet members who attend as observers.  But do any of you have any doubts over this idea, please?  Or, does anyone like it?  And these nine action points from the W Mids Climate Coalition that was none of my doing but I so like.  What do you think?:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

See you on Thursday

to Gerald re High Scam 2 and foolish, immoral Metro

It was brilliant to hear from you, Gerald.  Thanks so much for your support and for saying so.  A great encouragement.

Please "identify the critical (M25) paragraph in the SACTRA report for you and also detail the 3 examples provided by Gössling".  I would very much like to read it.

We seem to be understanding that we cannot forever go on building motorways to get out of road traffic congestion, so now we have hard shoulder running and High Scam 2 that goes so fast it can only stop at three terminal stations, two airports and some trains will divert to stop in Brum and Crewe.  Therefore, it is totally pointless and a scandalous waste of public money in giving the few the choice of either flying through the air in a plane or on land in a train that only a tiny minority of the population will ever use.  All the intercity trains must remain.  The capacity argument is a lie because the High Scam train cannot possibly give the rest of us more trains and more services on the regular railway network.

Similarly, spending many hundreds of millions of pounds in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions to replace and duplicate buses and trains that need upgrading for highly expensive to construct trams is worsening all our problems and accelerating climate/resource catastrophe.  All the highly glitz and glamorous, prestigious projects like Metro, the Commonwealth Games, three times reconstruction of Centenary Sq and Victoria Sq are all indicative of wrong spending that has now helped to make Brum broke.

Desperation by WMCA as they dig an ever deeper hole for themselves - and us lot!

Thanks for what you have written.  Very good, too.  But can you send me the link, please?  But I must try and get it for myself from the WMCA website.  My comment:

How absurd but so accurate: "Commuters could be asked to walk, cycle or bus the last leg of the Wednesbury-Brierley Hill Metro line after bosses admitted they don't have the cash to finish it."

The public open space may still destroyed by a massive earth embankment or concrete and steel viaduct for the section into Merry Hill, plus many trees and shrubs and the rest of Nature needed to slow climate ecocide from all our burning up of finite fossil fuels for unnecessary projects like this.

All they need to do is to keep the trams on the former, principal mainline railway so they connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  The freight trains will have to run at night.

I still maintain that the Star should be running a major campaign to keep the trams on the railway to Jct station.  In the 1990/00s the Brum Post led the campaign for the £750m Grand Central Station.  What about your editor doing similar?  Please ask him/her.  I have been a successful failure over Metro misery since I started writing about it in the 1990s!!

Not just a solution looking for a problem but a solution that worsens all our problems, particularly climate and resource depletion.  The Metro tram project money and all the staff must be diverted to mitigate and adapt to a worsening climate horror, by insulating and solar powering every building.

MODAL MUSICAL CHAIRS!

5 March 2004 21:41

To: John Maund

DUDLEY AND SANDWELL METRO

MODAL MUSICAL CHAIRS!
In the 1960s, our transport experts closed the rail line now used for Metro One to mean that train passengers transferred mainly to cars.  To now claim that 20% of passengers are likely to be car owners who have chosen Metro One trams - as David Bull, Head of Transport Strategy said at a public meeting on 5 February 2004 - completely overlooks the fact that the car drivers were the ones who had to transfer to their cars from trains.  They have now simply transferred back - but to trams instead of the original trains!

Put another way, after a gap of 20-30 years, the 20% of car owners who
chose the tram, simply undid the enforced modal shift of a similar percentage when the train passengers had to resort to their cars when the current Metro line closed to trains in the 1960s.  In other words, it is not a genuine modal shift from cars to trams.  It is actually, a 20% modal shift from TRAIN to tram!  Returning the trains would have been more cost effective and sensible - and, quicker and easier to achieve, too!  It would also have helped with the modernisation of the West Coast Mainline.

From my research, 77% of the first three Metro lines are to go on rail
lines; the remaining 23% on roads.  Therefore, since Metro development
(lines 1,2,3) is seeing 77% of its trams replacing trains and the further
23% replacing buses, is the colossal expense a prudent and sensible use of taxpayers' money?  Of course it is not.  It simply plays musical chairs
with now three Cinderella and failing public transport modes while car use continues to rise inexorably and completely untouched by all our huffing and puffing to get trams to replace - actually - buses and trains.

Rob Donald, Richard Worrall and David Pywell, our Big Three transport
chiefs, are suffering from self-delusion - that the trams are taking over
from cars!  Incidentally, not one of them turned up for last week's major
Transport Summit at the Burlington Hotel, New Street - except Rob - for the free lunch, only!

Use public money for really effective solutions to congestion, pollution and climate

Dear friends

During our excellent talk on scams from the police at Halesowen Pensioners' meeting yesterday, I woke up to how High Scam 2, and ongoing extensions of Metro and Sprint are all scams.  Let me explain:

High Scam 2 between London and Manchester goes so fast that it can only drop off and pick up passengers at two airports, with only some trains stopping at Brum and Crewe.  We have been sold the lie that it will increase capacity on the railway network and, therefore, more trains and services will be seen on the existing railway lines.  Over a hundred billions pounds in price and in weight of dangerous greenhouse gas emissions are being spent to give us a choice of either flying through the air on a plane or, on land in an HS2 train.  Why all that damage and destruction to benefit only the wealthy and plane flyers having the choice of train or plane?

As regards Metro trams costing at least £15 billion (2020 figure) for 150 miles and eight lines by 2040 this gives us:

1. flash, smart, smooth trams, certainly but, even the nationwide tram promotion group insist it is a "bus on rails".
2. The trams simply replace or duplicate buses that all need to be electric and which are already being phased in, anyway.
3. Why yet more expense, yet more climate breakdown to put buses on rails on roads when tyres on roads are perfectly adequate?
4. The idea is that you walk to the bus to take you to the train station.  You get off at your destination station for the bus to take you to your final destination.
5. On Hagley Road, Brum we will be seeing 1,000 trees and shrubs felled on the south, westbound side for the Metro extension to Bearwood.  Nature is desperately needed to slow deteriorating life support systems from the escalating climate emergency.

Sprint buses are the super duper buses that think they are trams, we are told.  BUT,

• Less than ten years ago, we were informed that, for £12 m, Sprint diesel buses were to be put down Hagley Road to Quinton on the border with Dudley borough.
• Therefore, you will still need the Platinum buses to take you on to Halesowen and Stourbridge.
• This means a change of transport mode and a delay in your  journey.
• Plus, Metro trams, along with Sprint and the regular buses all on the two lanes of Hagley Road.

INSTEAD

Use the money to give all non pensioners the free public transport that we have enjoyed for decades.

Plus, the bus priority measures on dual carriageways to speed the bus and inconvenience the selfish, thoughtless car commuters who clog up the roads for bus, lorry and other essential business users who must use their vehicles.

How can there be greater economic justice for the poor, who include pensioners, when hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions is being spent on these three major transport construction projects from the WMCA?

Our transport planners at 16 Summer Lane do so love their big, flash, fancy engineering projects to keep them in work.  But, they can all be redeployed into our

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

Tim Weller - and could each of you please respond, this time?  THANKS!

STAND AGAINST CLEAR WRONG DOING - AND, FOR THE RIGHT!

Please could this go to everyone on our mailing list?

In my opinion, we each have a responsibility to stand up against what is clearly wrong and to stand up for how our money should be spent.

The WMCA, and all of their constituent authorities, are spending, literally BILLIONS of money and tonnes of GHG emitted on destroying railway lines and burying Nature under concrete, brick and tarmac.

The Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

is still being destroyed with the WMCA intent on also destroying a brownfield housing site in part, trees/shrubs and my guerrilla garden on the 400 m long public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  A £100 m, GHG intensive, 400 m concrete and steel Metro tram viaduct is planned for the steep canal embankment that carries Dudley No 1 Canal with great views to the Clent Hills, Egghill/Frankley Beeches and Netherton Hill.  The tram must, now be kept to the mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Up to 1,000 trees/shrubs must be felled for the Westside Metro extension to Bearwood on the westbound side of Hagley Road.

This is all part of the 2020 WMCA/TfWM plan to build 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops to extend Metro tram extensions for £15 BILLION to 2040.

The money must be diverted and the staff redeployed, after training, to work on ending fuel poverty by insulating and solar powering the homes of the poorest.  Called retrofitting that is our FIRST Action Point, as here:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

PLEASE WRITE OR, FORWARD THIS EMAIL.   THANKS!   Tim Weller

Dudley's emails and customer services

Dudley's address is dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk and their leaders' addresses: Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk   Kevin.OKeefe@dudley.gov.uk     Cllr.Qadar.Zada@dudleymbc.org.uk (leader of the Opposition)

 

And the three Customer Services, here:

customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com;

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk; 

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

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

Scathing verdict on WMCA misspending

Dear Ed   (Ed Cox is Director of Inclusive Growth and Public Service Reform at WMCA)

Greener Together Forum on Transport

I remain very concerned that after 41 years of your seven councils, regional and national governments attempting to rebuild the tram network, that was only obliterated twenty years earlier between 1950 and 1960, you have still not come anywhere near to achieving this forty year old ambition.  This, even though you were rebuilding the tram network on the railway network for both Snow Hill to Wolverhampton and from Wednesbury to Brierley Hill.  Astonishing!

This does raise the question if local, regional and national governments are competent.  Why this self-inflicted idiocy?  All you had to do was to stop destroying our railway network for roads and buildings and, then, not to put Metro trams on what survived the onslaught, the obliteration but, simply, to put back the commuter and regional trains that had been so successful for 100 years!

This incompetent idiocy has gone on for decades and, now we are in a state of multiple crises - climate, a proxy war, energy, cost of living, inflation and, last week a stupidly, self-inflicted, national financial crisis to add to all our self-inflicted problems.  Yet, you blithely carry on regardless with Metro instead of (non Sprint) buses and trains!  In fact, you are reinforcing all our problems by continuing to give top priority to Metro, and without even a nod in the direction of democracy with a proper process of discussions, debates and then votes.  Never any democracy involving the public with all the facts and figures given!  Even when Andy was re-elected last year, a Mayor with, supposedly, no dictatorial power, none of us were informed about his £15 billion, February 2020 tram plan.  He is meant to be working with the seven council leaders and representing their democratically voted on manifestos.  He has no authority to push through his own wishes, especially when there has never been any discussion, debate and vote over the wisdom of pursuing Metro expansion.

Yesterday, I wrote this to you:

Might there be a full explanation for Andy Street's planned 150 miles, 380 tram stops and 8 lines of Metro network of underground and overground "bus on rails" trams by 2040?  Only a drop in the ocean at £15 billion was the Feb 2020 figure.  However, all this at a time of national financial crisis - and every other kind of crisis!  Better still - even a pro and con debate by your transport experts over this latest extensive tram network, perhaps?  Edinburgh City Council had two lots of discussion, debates and votes before going ahead with their two tram projects.  See

 Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...

 Edinburgh's £1billion tram line

 Edinburgh tram costs

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

As they did things properly, could we not at least have a full, for and against, debate in our Greener Together Forum, please?  A lot of taxpayers' money is involved and we need to be very well informed, I think.

Best wishes for a revolution in turning from wrong priorities to all the right ones.

GREENER TOGETHER FORUM ON TRANSPORT

HS2, Metro and Sprint are three very expensive and quick ways to use up finite fossil fuels and to accelerate climate catastrophe or ecocide from the burning of fossil fuels.  Is this a correct view to take?

Does the introduction of multi-modal public transport make for more changes between the different modes and, therefore, a slower journey?

Do HS2, Metro and Sprint all duplicate existing services?

Could the existing services be upgraded to make them as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe?

Or, could road pricing deter car commuters and open up road space for essential business users, be better value for money and be more effective in cutting GHG emissions?

How do you decide when to replace a Platinum bus with Metro "bus on rails" trams and when to use, instead a Sprint bus, "the bus that thinks it's a tram"?

HAVE I GOT THIS RIGHT?  The tortuous journey from Derby to Worcester!

• You can take a passenger train from Derby to Burton on Trent.
• Freight only past the National Memorial Arboretum to Lichfield.  Therefore:
• Passengers are forced to take two sides of a triangle, via Nuneaton to get to Lichfield.
• The line from Lichfield to Walsall is built but unused and the full length may be turned into a cycle-walkway.  Therefore, hire a bike in Lichfield to get to Walsall.
• Walsall to Wednesbury section of the railway is also unused.  Therefore, catch a bus to Wednesbury tram stop to catch the Metro to Dudley bus station.
• A bus is again needed to bypass the existing but unused double track railway from Dudley Castle Hill tram stop to Stourbridge Junction railway station.
• TRAIN - AT LAST - to take you to Worcester!

Tim Weller

METRO - the answer to all our prayers!

1.  Is multi-modal public transport, as we now have and with many more extensions planned, able to tackle the climate emergency better than having only bus and train?
2. If so, in what way and where is the independent research that brings the cast iron evidence that 'the more Metro the merrier'?
3. Is there proof that the three main modes of public transport (bus, tram, train) are the silver bullet to end road traffic congestion and pollution?
4. Does the second most expensive mode to construct after HS2, even so, lessens congestion and air pollution on our streets more effectively and with better value for money than electric buses directly on roads without the railway tracks having to be laid first, as is the case for trams?
5. Is there evidence that in the Walsall, Brum, Solihull corridor with three different kinds of buses and heavy rail, that a higher proportion of car commuters have permanently switched to trains and the three different kinds of buses?
6. Is there proof that spending the most money possible on grandiose transport projects like Metro and HS2 really do cut greenhouse gases in the short, medium and long term?
7. Can one safely say that more spending = more greenhouse gas emissions = fewer finite fossil fuels left in the ground = an uncomfortable future for our descendants?

Scandalous misspending

 £7m/Km for rebuilding the Borders Railway in 2015; £21m/Km for M6 Toll in 2003; £75m/Km for Westside Metro; £133m/Km for Eastside Metro; over £200m/Km for HS2. All this scandal as so many are in even more dire poverty and cannot pay their bills.

Law breaking booze ups in Downing Street; undemocratic imposition in Brum

The centre of the universe is not Brierley Hill but the London HQ of our national government, that is the principal partying, brewery booze-up, law-breaking capital of London, viz 10 Downing Street.

When it comes to our regional government, 16 Summer Lane is the HQ of the national tram lobbying organisation and the regional Transport HQ to make the joint Combined Authority that acts strangely by imposing, without any debate and vote in a single council chamber, a billion-pound expenditure every year to 2040 for 150  miles, 8 tram lines and 380 tram stops for Metro expansion.

Well, the Combined Authority does have to combine trams with trains and combine trams with buses and cars to add to the traffic snarl-ups.

1986 plan for Merry Hill monorail linking with Metro at Round Oak

"There were to be five stations, with the system extending over the canal and terminating close to the site of the former Round Oak railway station where an interchange with a West Midlands Metro extension was proposed. However, only the first four stations were completed; Waterfront East, Central Station, Times Square and Boulevard; with Waterfront West planned as a future development.^[18"

West Midlands Metro Line Two[edit]

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) will open a new line of the West Midlands Metro from Wednesbury to Brierley Hill, with a new stop at Merry Hill, planned to open in 2023. The line was first planned in 1986 and was expected to be built during the 1990s, but funding and planning difficulties resulted in a 30-year delay to this project becoming a reality.^[29]

FROM:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Hill_Shopping_Centre

to Tom Freeland of the Canal and River Trust

Dear Tom

I am much looking forward to the meeting.

I wonder if you might be so good as to show the photograph (below ) at some point in the meeting, and let me simply read out my proposal (under the photo) for your consideration, please?  It would be very quick, therefore but may be of interest and even get some agreement from some attending.

SAVE WHAT LITTLE NATURE THERE IS AT MERRY HILL:

The tram tracks on a high viaduct, because of the slope, is planned to be built exactly where the trees are: 

  6 glorious white trees.jpg

I am asking for the immorally expensive, planned Metro "bus on rails" tram at Merry Hill to be moved from being next to the canal on a steep grass embankment, for it to go ABOVE the canal on steel stilts, instead.  It would save the public open space - and our taxes, too because of the cheaper cost!  There is still time for the proposed destruction of the public open space by concrete viaduct to be withdrawn and the tram tracks to be built above the canal, instead.

Earlier this month, I did write to the CRT to ask for your thoughts on the matter but no acknowledgement or reply has been received.

Best wishes

GOOD NEWS STORY AT MERRY HILL

GOOD NEWS STORY!​

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​

Metro trams will destroy this canal embankment at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the Black Country, West Midlands (see photo) with a massive concrete viaduct to take the tram on stilts NEXT to the canal.

Instead, it can go on steel stilts directly ABOVE the water of the canal, at a cheaper cost and, still allow the popular boats and towpath to be used!  This is seen in Germany and France.

There will, then, be more room for small to medium-sized, eco-homes on the High Plateau above my landscape enhancement scheme that is against the rusty, metal sheet piling.

Only preparatory work has been done over the last two or three years, as can be seen with the drilling and excavations on the steep embankment.

PLEASE WRITE TO customerservices@wmca.org.uk, above asking for Metro tram construction to go on top of the canal on stilts to save Nature and the trees - a more positive, constructive and helpful alternative, if they really must destroy the UK's very last wasted, mothballed, principal mainline railway between Derby, Dudley and Devon.    THANK YOU!

Crucial indicator for being a climate activist!

My apologies for missing the meeting.  Now home after granddaughter's birthday party.

I want to emphasise, for I fear I am in a minority, that opposition to HS2 extensions, Metro "bus on rails" tram extensions and even Sprint extensions, is absolutely essential as an indicator that people are genuinely convinced that anthropogenic climate change is a reality and is made worse by these totally unnecessary, over-indulgent, luxury projects.

They are highly energy-intensive in their construction.  That means highly greenhouse gas emitting.  That means an acceleration of what we are now, quite possibly seeing, as the runaway greenhouse effect.

They also divert attention away from getting trains back on our region's half-used or mothballed railway lines.

And, all fail to address the bus priority measures that are essential for modal shift from car commuting to bus, train and tram.

Please tell me if you think I am wrong and why!  THANKS!

From Kidderminster, go to all destinations north, by TRAIN, missing out on Birminghams' stations.  Please ask your MP and councillors to get behind the regional push to finish the Kiddi to Derby railway line for freight and, commuter/regional TRAINS!  NOT Metro trams and Very Light trams and cycle hire on a principal mainline railway.  SEE MAP, HERE:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf