"Let's build new tram lines with routes where people want to go" - 'Inside Croydon' (only, please!!)

PLEASE FORWARD to Anthony and Stephen.  Everyone else please read, think and inwardly digest - to produce some creative answers for me.  Thanks.

Dear Anthony Norris-Watson and Stephen Spark

 A SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM

Why is it that only electric "bus on rails" trams can "take thousands of cars off our roads every day" but never electric buses linked into reinstated trains and stations?

"Bus on rails" trams was the description that Andrew Broddick of UK Trams Ltd gave on the 'Today' programme to help explain 62 injuries and 7 deaths on Croydon Tramlink in November 2016.

Why can only trams "relieve overcrowded existing routes" and not by making use of existing but wasted railway lines, with commuter trains, that would have avoided the tragedy in 2016?

Why only trams to "serve corridors where there is a high or rising demand" but never electric buses, linked into trains returned to existing railway lines, that would reduce the need for multiple changes?

Why is it always trams to "stimulate development in areas that suffer deprivation" like the four Black Country boroughs when its neighbour, Birmingham Grand Central station, remains "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" - Peter Plisner,  BBC 'Midlands Today'.

Why is it always trams chosen to "duplicate existing public transport links"?

When "Funds will be tight in a post-Covid, post-Brexit environment", why only tram schemes when they are the second most expensive mode to construct after HS2 and have a higher accident rate than either bus or train?

When tram extensions are often ten times more expensive per Km to construct than putting diesel/electric trains back on even rebuilt railway lines (cf Borders Railway), why are they always chosen to duplicate, replace and make for even more multiple changes between bus, train and tram?

Why are "bus on rails" trams chosen over commuter, regional and intercity trains on two short sections of a half-finished, 120 Kms principal, mainline railway "of national strategic significance"?

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

There are proposals and, active plans now being implemented, for three different kinds of trams over four short sections of this nationally important, partly finished railway!!  Pre Metro shuttle tram, Very Light Rail tram and Light Rail tram.

Why complicate public transport travel in this way?

Why cannibalise unused railway lines for tram lines?  And, leave many miles of unused railway lines wasted for more decades or forever!

Has no one thought of trains for train lines that have not yet been used for the bizarre, eccentric activity of running homes, offices, shops and roads down them?

Complete amateurs have rebuilt entire railway lines.  Why can't the professionals put TRAINS BACK on existing, entire, already built railway lines?

THESE TWO MEN ARE HEROES

Dear Nick - Nick Wallis and Alan Bates are the two heroes

My wife and I have just watched your Panorama film and heard all ten programmes on Radio 4.  We think the top people in the Post Office who lied, covered up, were thoroughly dishonest and dishonourable should all be prosecuted.  When found guilty of abuse of power and incompetence and illegality, don't send them to prison but have them pay large amounts from their immoral earnings to each postmaster who was wrongly prosecuted, indeed persecuted by them.  An average of £20,000 each is not nearly enough for what they have been through.

Now, my national scandal rivals your truly Great Post Office Scandal!  But you do deserve a good long rest.  Anyway, see what you think.  If you can help me, too it would be superb, Nick.

THE GREAT 50-YEAR-OLD SCANDAL OF RAILWAY LOSSES, AS SEVEN TRAM SCHEMES HAVE GAINED FROM THE IDIOCY

1. This scandal lies in the number of casualties from tram accidents.  Croydon in November 2016:-  This morning, I discovered this when I studied the Ordnance Survey map online.  The north-south disused railway to the east of Sandilands tram stop was used for the tram.  The sharp curve  (called Sandilands Junction) was created to take trams on and off the railway line.  If the commuter trains had been put back, with the money saved used for electric buses linking to train arrivals and departures, seven people would still be alive today.  Some of that railway line is still wasted to this day.
2. Railway lines destroyed for buildings of every kind, for roads and garden/landscape schemes.
3. Railway lines taken over by trams and then the lines not used for the trams are then unused, wasted and lost forever.
4. This has resulted in worse road congestion and train overcrowding as railway passenger numbers have doubled over the last 25 years.
5. As a result, more finite fossil fuels burnt and greenhouse gases emitted.
6. That is the exact opposite direction that they must go in for us all to build a safer world that will sustain life on earth.
7. Business costs are adding up to many billions of pounds from added congestion that could have been relieved if this transport infrastructure had been used instead of lost, obliterated, permanently.
8. 40 years of tram networks being rebuilt has meant that those seven authorities that have gone for trams have given a much lower priority to reopening train lines for trains.
9. 60 years of railway lines being bulldozed or built on is a most serious scandal.
10. This is a nationwide problem of waste of good transport infrastructure, of injuries and death from accidents and, wrong priorities.
11. 24 railway schemes remain for finishing, improvement, modernising here.  Page 16 is my preoccupation:
    
     TPA Gt British Transport Competition p 16

The Shameful Seven:

Manchester Metrolink

Sheffield Supertram

Blackpool Trams

Nottingham Express Tram

West Midlands Tram

Croydon Tramlink

Edinburgh Trams

FROM THE CROYDON TRAMLINK TRAGEDY of Nov 2016:

WIKIPEDIA'S QUOTES:

"Of a total sixty-nine passengers, there were seven fatalities and sixty-two injured, nineteen of whom sustained serious injuries."

"Driver error was found to be the cause of the accident.^[3]"

^"Regulations applying to trams were similar to those applying to buses."

^"The investigation also found that trams were not as safe as the ORR previously thought, having a higher accident rate than other rail transport and also buses and coaches.^[43]"   Wikipedia

MORE ASTONISHING BEHAVIOUR FROM PEOPLE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER! - 

Throughout the post-war decades, both the railway trade unions and the railway lobbying groups have fully co-operated with the authorities and transport planners, nationwide in this:

Thinking that there was no further use of railway lines when the bosses and politicians, NOT Richard Beeching, decided to close and permanently finish with the lines Beeching only closed in the 1960s.

Best wishes