Development of the region’s rail network FOR TRAMS and a mudway, of all things.

Dear Adrian, Laura, Andy and Helen who are responsible for not just good governance but the very best governance you can all manage.

You replied with the barest and the most minimum information that has been out in the public domain for many years, anyway.  I learnt nothing new!  What were my other requests that were perfectly reasonable for me to ask?  It is vital to allow members of the public to work with you to avoid the decades of blunders in destroying perfectly good urban railway lines and stations for trading estates, offices, homes, factories, roads and trams.

When you reply to a question, could you please include the email that I have written, with your 'answer/information'?

You wrote, "We are exploring options for further new stations, including in the north Wolverhampton area."  One station you have most bizarrely called Tettenhall station, a long way from the railway line!  Tettenhall station is now a cafe on the way below standard, the Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway.  The Mudway is the UK's most important but wasted, unfit for use over too much of its length, 22 Kms urban-rural-urban cycle-walkway.  Did you not know that and that it is a disgrace?  It is made up of two old railway lines - seven that can no longer be used for commuter, regional and intercity trains - and in Dudley borough alone!

 Dudley's Seven Smashed railway lines

 THE GREAT 50-YEAR-OLD SCANDAL OF RAILWAY LOSSES...

Did you mean Pendeford or Palmers Cross or Oxley station for the name of yet another new station that will take many years to build?  Do you accept that not one station has been opened since 1998?

"Passenger services were restored to the line and most of the stations reopened between 1989 and 1998, as part of a joint initiative between the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) and Staffordshire County Council."  Wikipedia

You have all been preoccupied, indeed obsessed with tram development on the remains of the railway network you have not yet destroyed.  Truly absurd!  In the process, worsening the climate emergency to the detriment of all of us.  University station should have had a much lower priority when it does not serve a single home or business.  Why was University station given such a very high priority for funding?  Why so large?  Why is it still not open?

Best wishes for much higher standards of work in future years.  Please correct me where I am wrong.

Mighty Awful with Mighty Potential to be Mighty Outstanding!

Is there anything you can do to advance the transformation of the UK's only major urban-rural-urban cycle-walk mudway, please?  22 Kms through three council areas, 3 nature reserves, two station stops as cafes and one Woodland Trust property.  The mighty awful, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway with Mighty Potential to boost cycle commuting that I've been up to since the mid 90s.

The Trust working to play down the climate emergency rather than worsening it

Dear Helen

I am very concerned that the most obvious and easiest way to ease the climate emergency is still not being done.  I am referring to the UK's only major, urban-rural-urban, cycle-walkway of 22 Kms between Brierley Hill and NW Wolverhampton.  I call it the disgraceful, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway which is exactly what it is in the vicinity of your Russells Hall Hospital.  The hospital trust might like to call it the 'Russells Hall Hospital Cycle-Walk Mudway' because it is right next to your grounds that are next to one of the three nature reserves that the mudway goes through.

Since my suggestion at the last Trust meeting in January, have there been any talks, at all between yourselves and Cllr Patrick Harley, with Mayor Andy Street over the urgency of getting the decades late upgrade to make it possible for staff, patients (like me) and visitors (like me) to get to the hospital by fossil fuel free transport.  It is also called active travel or food fueled, self-powered travel that I was using nearly every day to get to work between the early 1990s and 2013 when I retired from social work at 65.  And I still use my totally self-powered bike for local trips and even some regional journeys.  And I'm ancient, too!

Please reply over what actions you now, finally, intend to take to make your contribution to cut, urgently greenhouse gas emissions in this painless way that also boosts the health of walkers and cyclists to reduce hospital admissions and, improves the somewhat bleak prospects for poor, heaving humanity on our one and only planet.

With best wishes

Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny on 30.3.22

Can there be an explanation for the extraordinary bungled closure of Five Ways underpass to every single bus from now to eternity, with the two most colossal crash barriers I have ever seen?  This is no way to address climate or congestion or vehicle pollution or resource depletion!

With the closure and built destruction of the Dudley to Brum Railway (and the 7th is well on its way!), can Dudley buses be given priority to use Broad Street, if only some routes can use it from now on?

Concrete and brick was used for Dudley No 2 Canal restoration but made the embankment at risk of collapse!  Why was such a clanger dropped?  What will the authorities do to put right their own incompetence?

Concrete is used for the double-track tram viaduct to smother the whole of the Dudley No 1 Canal embankment, the only public open space at Merry Hill.  What are the alternatives?

Concrete is highly greenhouse gas intensive.  Please do NOT use it to fill the waterlogging, or the great puddles on the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway!

'WARMING TO CYCLING' in our ever hotter greenhouse!

Dear Keir - my response in blue to yours in black.

This sounds like a really great opportunity, and it’s good to hear that Dudley Council are supportive.

This is such an important and major 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway that THREE councils are responsible for the state of the route.  Dudley's section is worse but all three councils and the West Midlands Combined Authority need to work together to raise their standards and, to get their priorities sorted.  This scandal has gone on for quite long enough.

However, unfortunately as an organisation we’re not generally in a position to lobby combined authority leaders on what specific schemes they should invest in – we think this is better left to local campaigners who are connected to the area, and have the expertise to know what investments would be most worthwhile.

There is no interest and no support from local campaigners, apart from David Cox who has told me, earlier this year that he will join me in cycling the route.  David told me that the first step is to get an NCR number for the 22 Kms.  Not even that has been done by the cycling/walking organisations or by the authorities!  Ridhi Kalaria, at Sustrans, knows all about the 22 Kms mudway since she interviewed me when I stood as a declared candidate in the election of the W Mids Combined Authority, earlier this year.  But there is no action from her, either!

David and Ridhi are meant to be promoting cycling in the UK to help us all get out of the deadly hot greenhouse we are turning planet earth into.  BUT, EVEN A SIMPLE ACT OF NEGLIGENCE, LASTING DECADES, CANNOT BE PUT RIGHT with an all-weather, wide surface on this business, commuter and leisure route alternative to the infernal car!

Adam Tranter is the Cycling Czsar for Coventry.  But no reply, interest or support from him, either!  He does have the ear of the WMCA but total silence, apathy, nothing.  Absolutely no-one is at all bothered!  So we all sink in the mud and mire of our own making as the planet goes to pot.  And only Greta Thunberg has the guts to say anything.  And Insulate Britain and XR, to act.

While the scheme you mention sounds great, Cycling UK couldn’t lobby for investment in this without also identifying all the alternative schemes potentially needing funding, and assessing these against each other, and unfortunately we just don’t have the resources to do that on a local level across the UK.

This 22 Kms existing route is of national importance.  It must have your national organisation vigorously promoting it to insist that the WMCA and the three councils finally ACT.

Stourbridge Cycling Club has not replied to even a paper copy to their clubhouse address, appealing for their interest and help for a shockingly poor facility they do know all about.  Yet, once again, nothing!  Our only national organisation, CYCLING UK, really should be taking an interest in this national disgrace that is the 22 Kms Mudway through three councils and one Combined Authority area in the heart of Britain.

I would suggest the best thing to do, if you haven’t already, is to try to get in touch with David Cox from Bike West Midlands (david.cox.1@cyclinguk.goassemble.com) or alternatively Push Bikes via their contact form to try and get their support, so that the push for this investment can come from locally, as opposed to from a national organisation with limited on-the-ground understanding of the area and routes in question.

Sorry that I can’t be of more assistance.  But you CAN make all the difference, Keir - along with Duncan Dollimore who rang me a couple of years ago about our major, nationally important mudway.  Promote it and CYCLING UK get all the credit, glory and praise for succeeding.

Best wishes

Tim      (Weller)

The green movement supports tram extensions

Dear Ros

Thanks so much for your email.

I was anxious that you only did the very minimum re my bike ride that I am inviting anyone else on, because I was not wanting to make more work for you or, for it to be made into a big thing.  The 22 Kms Mudway is VERY BIG, however!!  Doing the "minimum" was simply to copy exactly what I had written to go on our Facebook page, please.  Last time it was Roy Sadler of Transition and I who did the bike ride.  This time it will be a neighbour of mine accompanying me.  But anyone else is still welcome as an informal, friends, unofficial, bike ride.  I don't think even my son will join me but we'll see!

I started the campaign for our Mudway transformed to official, smart, swish Cycle-Walkway in April 2018 with an email to Stuart Everton, Black Country Director of Transport.  It is the Dudley cycle improvement of the very top importance.  The second is for a cycle-walkway along the south side of Duncan Edwards Way, opposite the tramline.  Having a video made would be a first-ever for me in a lifetime of "He asked and pleaded for the bleeding obvious and was a successful failure every time" (my epitaph!).  A video of the mudway would be an entirely out-of-reach, Olympic-style, Gold medal to achieve!!

Your  "improvements to public transport to encourage people out of their cars" is what I have always heard from FoE, Green Party, every other green/transport organisation and member of the wider green movement since I started fighting Metro in the 1990s.  Apart from Bill Mellens of Walsall FoE the other day, not one other person has ever written to me or said to me (in Zoom, in person or in writing) that they agree with me over Metro.  Because it is public transport the very people who I thought would be helping me fight it have never done so, as far as I am aware!  Fighting road schemes like the KBH and WOM, yes - definitely.  But never Metro "bus on rails" trams because it is public transport!!

Please do try and get another meeting with Patrick H.  And if you can ask him about my concerns (and blame me) that would be wonderful but don't worry if not.  I can always try to nobble him, once more, myself!!  He does know me, quite well.

You, Marie and Chris were brilliant in putting the finishing of the ready-built, 120 Kms Black Country Railway in our Dudley FoE Climate Action Plan.  Still needed on 47 Kms where they don't put trams.  THANKS SO MUCH!

All the best.  Please ring, anytime Ros for a chat on 0791 380 4363 or 0121 550 9446.  It would be lovely to talk.

e-mail to Ros on 28.7.21 re mudway, Harley

Dear Ros - and please could this go to all on your list/database?  Thanks!

Will anyone join me for a cycle ride in August on the major business, commuter and leisure, off-road route on the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway? SUNDAY AFT, 8 AUGUST. Meet 3 pm at Fens Pool Avenue/Stourbridge Road (A461), Brierley Hill. Some mud is to be expected, so no flash racing bikes, please! We turn back when we want to. MORE INFO: timweller1@gmail.com and 0791 380 4363

When you next meet with Patrick Harley, could you raise the wasted mainline railway with him, please, Ros?  Or, could you invite me to explain about this very last of the seven wasted railways in Dudley?

When you next meet with Patrick, please could you ask him to act on the major business, commuter and leisure route, known as the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhampton.  Or, get me along to explain!  I would love to take people to the winter mudway and the railway.  Is there anyone up for a cycle ride on part of the 22 Kms before the winter rains come?!  SEE ABOVE

Thanks for all your hard work, Ros on our behalf and, have a great time if you are going away.