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:
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
