Extravagance for the authorities; austerity for the rest of us - my definition of corruption!

Extravagance for the authorities; austerity for the rest of us - my definition of corruption!

£750 million for the grand Grand Central Shopping Centre, atrium and concourse with the mainline station put in the basement - tagged along as an afterthought.  Still, on the platforms and in the ‘Stop and Crawl’ car tunnel, poisonous diesel fumes for us all to harm our health.

£190 million magnificent New Library of Brum opened as smaller libraries closed or were given restricted opening hours.  Just like the new library in its second year of opening!

£86.6 million for Midland Metro trams to Centenary Square from Snow Hill Station (less than one mile).

£62 million to promote cycling in Birmingham and to give away 5,000 free bikes to Brummies.

£10 million per mile for Beeching rural line re-opening in depopulated southern Scotland in September.  In this age of austerity, a strong business case was made.  Yet, nothing for the Black Country ICE (inter city express) Line that remains closed.

£100 million per mile for smooth, sleek electric trams to return to Brum city centre to replace hybrid buses.  In this age of austerity, a robust business case made the funding vital.  Yet, nothing for the Black Country ICE Line that remains closed.

£130 million for 1.5 Km (just under one mile) that includes some new trams for the Eastside extension.  In this age of austerity, an unassailable business case was made for the project to go ahead. This is 13 times more expensive than reinstating passenger trains and stations on nearly 50 miles of freight only lines, like the unused Black Country ICE (inter city express) Line.

£1,000 million per mile for HS2 to come to Curzon Street Station in 2026.  In this age of austerity, the business case made this project impossible to deny.  It is absolutely vital for the transport and economic health of the nation.  Isn't it funny, that there is still nothing for the Black Country ICE Line that remains closed to passengers?

One horrible history of truly terrible transport!

SUMMARY

Lord Beeching still lives on at Centro House, Integrated Transport Authority, Dept for Transport and Network Rail.   You all fully co-operated with the idiocy of Beeching and went even further than him by not mothballing lines and - wait for it - building on them!  You also put light rail (LR) and, now, very light rail (VLR) on heavy rail lines instead of simply re-opening them for existing passenger trains.  Beeching lives on with the stupidity of 72 Km of freight only lines as we go into the next fifty years of increasing road and rail congestion in Birmingham and the Black Country!  And, Metro extensions in Brum centre simply mean modal shift from bus to tram; cyclists being put off by tram lines that send us crashing to the floor (as Richard Hammond found); and, even more crowded roads with cars, trucks, vans, lorries, buses - and, now, trams to add to the mayhem.  Perhaps, it might encourage us to walk more!

IN GREATER DETAIL

After about 100 years of successful train travel for our ancestors, your predecessors in Rail HQ had a brainstorm in closing and not even mothballing over 100 miles (160K) of rail lines (in Birmingham and the Black Country) of which there are still left the 45 miles (72K) that were safeguarded for freight only.  I wanted you both to check the distance (on my map, above) to confirm that for 100 years they did have passenger trains and to reassure me that existing diesel passenger trains and stations could return to all of the remaining 45 miles.  If necessary, freight at night and passengers in the daytime.

PTA/Centro put light rail trams (not trains back) on 11 miles of the 100 miles of closed rail lines.  This was in 1999 after 18 or 19 years of work on Midland Metro Line One.  Even then, as you told me yourself, Toby it was never extended to New Street Station, as PTA/Centro obviously should have done.  More incompetence when the tram line (unlike its predecessor, the perfectly good train line) was not connected, even, to either rail station in Wolverhampton!  Only now are you connecting the tram to the one and only rail station that is now left in Wolverhampton.  But, what a lot of wasteful effort and money in closing the rail line fifty years ago and, only now, are you getting back to completing a rail link between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton station.  A rail line that could have been left well alone in the 1960s in a growing and ever more populated and congested urban conurbation.  Yet, all the transport authorities and even trade unions fully co-operated with Lord Beeching in closing and, sometimes selling off, the miles of urban rail lines he wanted closed.

PTA/Centro chose the further station (Snow Hill) from New Street rather than the nearer Moor Street Station to connect New Street with Metro trams.  They did this when they knew that all trains stop at both Snow Hill and Moor Street stations.  Therefore, it seemed more sensible to me, for the nearest station to New Street to be connected by a tram and not the one furthest away!  Or, why was the Metro not brought to Moor Street Station, as well, before going on to Grand Central Shopping Centre and Station?

I remember you telling me, Toby, that the problem of New Street Station rail congestion is down to the tunnels on both approaches.  Exactly!  So why on earth did PTA/Centro and Network Rail lose the opportunity to build additional ones, first when B'ham Westside was being developed in the 80s and 90s and, secondly, when the Bull Ring was completely rebuilt in the 90s and noughties?

£700 million has just been wasted on a cosmetic tart up of New Street Station that remains more of a shopping centre and, underground station than the magnificent Victorian rail station it was for 100 years - until the demolition and destruction of the 1960s!  Why did PTA/Centro and Network Rail not use that money towards the new tunnels that are desperately needed?  £15 billion for Cross Rail and Thames Link but nothing meaningful for Birmingham to address the real problems of inadequate rail infrastructure at sub standard, subterranean, New Street Station.  Or, why was £700 million not spent on rebuilding the grandeur of the old station and dispensing with yet more shops and stores?

An opportunity missed to address the problem of rail congestion at New Street Station.  Nothing to address the chronic and dire problems of road congestion, either, around New Street Station at peak times.  When I pick up my daughter on a Friday evening I have to park in the road called Holloway Head, on the far side of Holloway Circus from the station and, walk in to meet her.  Otherwise, it is half an hour of nose to tail traffic into the Stop and Crawl tunnel.  This tunnel is nicely perfumed with a cocktail of poisonous gases, just like the platforms of Brum's premier station.  Nearly fifty years and rising of very unhealthy and dangerous particulates from all the diesel smoke.  This is the main reason why I boycott New Street Station, if I possibly can.

In the 1980s, PTA/Centro failed to extend Don and Roy Richardson's Merry Hill monorail the remaining 400 metres to join up with the Black Country inter-city line at the Waterfront, that should have been re-opened then!  How negligent and stupid is that?

In the next decade, I visited a Victorian signal box at Round Oak on the Black Country inter-city Line and found the door closed but unlocked.  When I revisited a few weeks later, it was burnt almost to the ground.  Network Rail was Negligent Rail.

I don't suppose one of you has questioned the scandal of spending £300 million of taxpayers' money on the 48 Km rail line to the middle of nowhere in southern Scotland.  That money should have gone to the Black Country inter-city Line to relieve the chronic road and rail congestion at New Street Shopping Centre and Station.

I now read that Snow Hill Station is going to be rebuilt - for the second time - when the Victorian station should have been left well alone.  What on earth is going on?

Rail electrification is still nowhere near being completed.  Yet, the Swiss did all their electrification in the 1920s and 30s!

One further matter; and this was the final straw.  Shortly after I met with Peter and you, I learnt from a newspaper - and this was without any public consultation of any kind - that, without giving up on light rail Metro on the Black Country inter-city Line, you were now working to put Very Light Rail (VLR) on that same line, too but, for only 2 Km.  This, all of one mile between Dudley Castle Hill (that should, asap, be a stop for inter-city trains between London and Glasgow) and Dudley Port!  The 21 Km Black Country inter-city Line, had passenger trains for one hundred years, then some years of freight and not even freight since the 1980s after Round Oak.  I think it should be extended to Lichfield for existing diesel trains.  Yet, you want to put in Very Light Rail in bite sized chunks, reminiscent of the failed bite sized chunks policy of PTA/Centro when it came to Metro trams but, we will now get even slower VLR trams.  But, only when this university project has been developed, tried and tested and passed the rigorous H&S regulations - in I don't know when!

I have never before heard such nonsense, such absurdity in all my life.  Especially, when the VLR project could be developed on the Pensnett branch line from the former Brierley Hill Steel Terminal site at Moor Street to the north side of Pensnett High Street.  From Moor Street, eventually road running to the Waterfront and Merry Hill and another line to link with Stourbridge Town interchange.

Am I right in thinking that VLR is what we have with the PPM on the Stourbridge branch line for three quarters of a mile between Town and Junction stations?  For years, off and on, I was writing to Centro and to every member of the PTA, wanting John Parry's tram on this line - as well as trains back on, what I thought then was 38 miles of freight lines.  (It is actually 45 miles with the Walsall to Wolverhampton line that I had overlooked.)  It took a very long time to achieve the successful PPM.  Yet, the transport authorities are planning to put a refinement of John Parry's excellent tram, that is ideal for branch lines and road running, onto a major inter-city line!  How ridiculous is that?

I really do think that all of you, from Cllr Roger Lawrence and Geoff Inskip down and, in Network Rail, the ITA and DfT, need an earthquake to well and truly explode you into the real world that the rest of us have to get about in - but, with increasing difficulty!

What Sir Bob Kerslake's report on Birmingham City Council missed out!

ABOLISH THE CITY COUNCIL AND RUN BRUM FROM LONDON TOWN

My list of dismal mistakes (solely, on transport):

It started with two out of the three city centre Birmingham rail stations being demolished; only to be rebuilt to make for fewer lines and platforms, certainly at Snow Hill.  The third, Moor Street, was closed.

In the 60s and 70s we had the wholesale closure of urban rail lines and more stations demolished and sites used for other purposes, as we foolishly put all our eggs in the one basket of fine new ring roads and road transport.

Since the 1980s, some of the rail lines have been left unused or underused for Midland Metro trams to further fragment the once unified rail network that once saw only trains.  Trams are now unnecessarily replacing not only trains but buses!  No evidence of even one car commuter switching to trams who could not have switched to the train, if trains had been left on that urban rail line now used by trams.  (The line was closed, presumably, under Beeching and, after some years, eventually re-opened for trams.  Utter incompetence and idiocy!)

In 34 years of fruitless endeavour, only one out of a whole network of a dozen tram lines has been opened!  More failure, more negligence and more incompetence.  And, that one line went on a perfectly good rail line, apart from a short section on road but, it was never connected to Wolverhampton's last rail station.  The trains went from Snow HIll to Wolverhampton Low Level Station that was demolished when the trains stopped.  The tram will finally get to the last remaining rail station in Wolverhampton sometime this decade!  What a lot of wasteful idiocy expended when they could have just left the rail line well alone in the first place.  Or, once closed, re-opened the line for trains, once more. 

Now, Snow Hill Station is planned to be demolished - for the second time!  The more adequate, Victorian station was demolished in the 1970s.

Trams instead of trains on 11 miles of our crowded rail network, desperate for more capacity (but not even trams on 45 miles of empty, double track rail line in Brum and the adjoining Black Country - I exaggerate not!).

Your city council and PTA/Centro have plumped for Snow Hill Sta to link with New St Sta using trams instead of the nearer Moor St Sta.  This is a piece of idiocy, when all the trains that stop at Snow Hill also stop at the much nearer Moor St!  You could have spent a tiny fraction of the money now being spent linking Snow Hill and New Street stations with trams, on a simple travelator (or moving pavement) to help bridge the distance for passengers travelling between Moor Street and New Street Stations.

Safer movement for all road users, including cyclists - and freeing up the road network - by making:

all the existing bridleways, towpaths and cycle/walkways fit for purpose ie - free of mud, puddles and overgrowing vegetation;

completing white lines on pavements for cyclists by dropping the kerbs;

dropping all the kerbs on access/egress points on the Harborne Line Cycle/Walkway; STILL NOT BEEN DONE!

completing the Bourn cycle/walkway by doing the excellent job that was done there by doing exactly the same with the two rights of way in Woodgate Valley CP - one side of the stream for walkers and horses with a soft surface and the other side for walkers and cyclists with a hard, free draining surface (preferably, a convex rough tarmac surface);

promote walker friendly, super-courteous and responsible cycling on shared routes;

re-open the 45 miles of existing double track, unused or under-used rail lines in Brum and the Black Country to make for more people being able to use the much safer rail network instead of the car or bike - many miles are alongside commuter congested roads, too.  For many decades, this has been totally stupid transport policy by the city council and PTA/Centro who should know better.

fund the Canals and Rivers Trust to help them make all their urban towpaths available for buggies, wheelchairs, cyclists and walkers so that the towpath network is seen as the alternative to the road network for these users that it should be.

All of this really should not need spelling out - yet again!

Sir Bob Kerslake wrote in a key report on Birmingham City Council, "Get the basics right."  How very right, too.

"Revealed: £4bn plan to get city moving" Post 13 Nov

In nearly fifty years of living and working in Wider Birmingham I have seen umpteen of these magnificent transport plans that promise so much and deliver so little, if anything.

I came to Brum in the 1960s when the Victorian New Street Station had just been demolished and rebuilt to be a virtual underground station filled with poisonous diesel fumes.  In the 1970s, the Victorian Snow Hill Station went the same way - bulldozed.  Realising their error, it was quickly rebuilt but, to only half its former grand size.

In the 1980s and 90s, Midland Metro trams were all the rage but, by 2000, instead of nearly half a dozen new tram lines to replace trains and buses, we had a measly ONE and that was almost entirely built on a rail line that should never have had its trains removed!  Even then, it was never extended to New St Station.  Extraordinary!

In this year of our Lord and Master, Cllr Albert Bore - 2014, we STILL have the six miles double track rail line through Kings Norton, Kings Heath and Moseley without stations or trains.  Nose to tail rush hour congestion alongside an empty double track rail line.  Scandalous!

In addition, we have the 13 miles of the Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall double track rail line also devoid of trains and stations.  It goes within half a mile of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, almost next to Dudley Zoo and Castle, very near to the Black Country Living Museum, links with the West Coast Main Line and our precious, one and only tram line at Wednesbury.  Empty of trains; not even any ghost trains.  Fifty years of unparalleled negligence and, after the stupidity of the line being closed in the first place!

The one triumph was the re-opening of the cross rail line from Longbridge to Four Oaks.  Amazing!  How was it done?  Nothing like it has ever been seen since by our pie in the sky transport experts.  But, today things have changed for ever by these same visionary transport officials.  We can now rest happy in our beds knowing that things are looking up - at long last!