MULTI-MODAL MIX UP with Metro and Sprint to the detriment of trains and buses

Trams make public transport worse eg. 11 different bus routes no longer using Five Ways underpass; WBHE destroying 6.7 Kms of the Derby to Devon via Dudley railway line; taken out of use one mainline railway and station at Wolverhampton, with 4 or 5 Kms of railway line and, platform 4 at Snow Hill. What a catalogue of errors! LR and VLR has taken over one of only two north-south principal, mainline railway lines between the centre of Brum and the Welsh coast. WHOOPS!

Sprint is duplicating existing bus services when every bus must be electric, have bus priority traffic lights and on bus lanes on nearside lanes to allow cars only in the overtaking lane. And free for the young, too.

Already well to do with everything already Solihull gets HS2, Metro, Sprint plus the regular bus and railway services!

Commonwealth Games, HS2, Metro and Sprint all add to expenditure, economic growth, the exhaustion of resources and accelerate the runaway greenhouse effect. Nearly 50 C in parts of Canada and the USA this week.

THESE WARNINGS CAN HARDLY BE CLEARER OR MORE URGENT

Birmingham Airport

With my councillor hat on - this is a tricky one, I think. On the one hand, I don't like the idea of a Green-led council (which Solihull will be, soon!) holding a stake in an airport; it feels incongruent. On the other hand, investment buys influence; the problem with not holding a position is that you don't then have a seat at the table, and the risk with the airport being entirely privately-owned is that it would be possible for BAHL to sideline the councils completely and agree expansion plans directly with the national Government. Solihull (for example) having a stake would allow us to make the Green counter-argument in the boardroom, and not just in the car park. Those aren't the rules I want to play by, but they're the rules we have and ignoring that because we don't like them is naive. So I'm not sold on complete divestment, at least not in the current context.

Steve Caudwell

To Cllr Steve Caudwell

Dear Steve

Thanks very much for replying, although I fear it was only because you are our GP candidate for W Mids Mayor on the 6 May.  However, I suppose I should be grateful for that fact.

You wrote,

"I'm replying from this account as I keep my Councillor account strictly for Council-related matters; so if you need to get in touch in future I'd be grateful if you could do so here."

My first email, as is this, solely about "Council-related matters".  It is councillors like your good self who are responsible for the four biggest and longest-running scandals in UK finance/transport history!  Here they are:

SIXTY YEARS OF TRANSPORT SCANDALS:

1. Your colleagues completely destroyed our electric tram network in the 1950s.
2. From the 1960s onwards, our well-meaning councillors destroyed about 100 Kms of our railway network in the W Midlands region.  Used the railways for homes, offices, shops and roads.  BEAT THAT! So,
3. In 2021, you are all in your fourth decade of having built and maintained and partially mothballed a 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance", converting it into two short sections of tramway totalling 6.7 Kms; a test track in between; and, an extended cycle-walkway to make it run all the way from Walsall to Lichfield (proposed).
4. Making public transport worse by adding to congestion with trams mixed up with buses, cars, vans, taxis and lorries and, pushing out the buses to make eleven different bus routes take a longer and slower journey!  This, by giving priority to trams and excluding buses from the Five Ways underpass and Broad Street that are now dedicated to trams.

Your colleagues have given me so much fun, over the decades, pointing out the bleeding obvious!!

Are you proud of letting your colleagues do all of this, Steve?

Or, have you said something - ever?

Even when you may not have been a councillor?

Or, will you now, please, ask one or two pertinent questions about the eccentric and bizarre behaviour of your colleagues, Steve?

I do hope so.  It is still not too late to stop the mainline conversion to tramline.  Maps, here:​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

​You wrote,

​"I am interested in the arguments for and against trams - I acknowledge the cost but I see there are concomitant benefits too, so a nuanced discussion is welcome."​

Here are both sides of the case:​

 BOTH SIDES OF THE CASE, here

​

​And good ol', well blessed Solihull gets blessed with even more - HS2, Metro trams, swish Sprint hydrogen buses and all the other transport modes.​  Extravagance for the rich and austerity for the poor!

​With best wishes and thanks again for writing, Steve.

Reasons for replacing buses with "bus on rails" trams

TO ENCOURAGE TRAVEL AT A TIME OF COVID-19

AND TO BE LIKE EUROPE AT A TIME OF BREXIT!

TO ADD TO THE MULTI-MODAL MIX UP THAT IS PUBLIC TRANSPORT.

The headline benefits of this route are...

• Modal shift to Metro, resulting in journey time savings and reduced congestion along with the associated environmental benefits, such as improved air quality and reduction in noise
• Regeneration benefits including the interface with Enterprise zone, and the major developments in East Birmingham, North Solihull and the UK Central Hub
• Improving access to jobs, education and services along the East Birmingham, North Solihull corridor
• Improving connectivity to other public transport modes as part of an integrated transport network

The route is the transport element of a regeneration plan for the area. An important driver being the linking of the two HS2 termini with the Black Country by West Midlands Metro (as well as everywhere in between) and encouraging more of the general public to choose green transport options for their day-to-day travel.

When the route is open, it will increase employment opportunities across the region allowing people in this area to easily travel throughout the West Midlands. Similarly, the construction of the route would provide a number of job opportunities with the Midland Metro Alliance as we are dedicated to building the tramway with local resources and labour, ensuring the region truly benefits from the growth of the Metro network.

IN OTHER WORDS, WHATEVER THE BUS DOES THE SUPER-PRESTIGIOUS, FLASH METRO TRAM DOES, TOO.  The tram looks green and modern; the buses do not.

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK, to slow planet earth becoming like planet venus

Partly, from what Cllr Stewart Stacey, Brum’s Cabinet member for Transport and Highways, told me.  Partly my own conclusion and guess as to what the experts are thinking and saying:

• There is no demand for travel, no commercial interest, on the UK’s most important, unused but easily reinstated 65 Km main line railway in the Black Country and south Staffordshire.
• Everyone, travelling between London and Scotland and the North, wants to go via Birmingham railway stations and M6.
• The tocs have shown no interest in reopening their railway lines or, in growing their business and making bigger profits.
• Birmingham is the business and commercial centre of the West Midlands, not the Black Country.
• Network Rail, and Birmingham’s transport bosses, over many decades, has always wanted Brum’s total of 39 Kms railway lines to be reserved for freight trains only or as a bypass for passenger trains when it comes to the 9 Km Kings Norton to Moor Street line.  Homebase must remain on Kings Heath station.
• The fully trained experts and professionals at Network Rail and 16 Summer Lane must be right.  Mr Weller does not know what he is talking about and can easily be discounted.
• I was not sure that, since the 2015 Strategic Transport Plan, that Stewart was aware that all 39 Kms of freight only lines were down for reopening for stations and passenger trains (is that right?). But goodness knows when.
• This does not apply to the 65 Kms in the Black Country and Staffordshire that must have “bus on rails” slow trams on 7 Kms out of the 65 Kms.
• West Midlands' transport and tram HQ at 16 Summer Lane Birmingham must remain with the emphasis on electric trams, at £67 million per Km, to replace diesel buses like the Platinum and hybrids.
• The coming of HS2 means that the emphasis must remain with more bus-like trams linking in to HS2.  To Curzon Street, in the first instance and then onto Brum’s 5th railway station on the HS2 line in Solihull.
• Train drivers get double the salary of tram drivers.  Therefore, to keep down costs, the emphasis must remain on trams for roads and railway lines and not commuter and regional trains on railway lines where they traditionally ran. At least one VIP transport officer has mentioned this to me to explain their refusal to reopen existing railway lines.