Metro/Sprint simply duplicate and replace buses/trains to accelerate climate tragedy!

 Hi David

Thanks for writing.

You are absolutely and completely right and correct with every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph you have written!

Sprint was originally diesel buses but now electric.  It is planned for Halesowen (my town) but not Stourbridge, so no 9 buses will still be needed for that route, so duplicating Sprint!

 Sprint Delivery Programme March 2021.pdf

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

I've been raising the scandalous cost for very many years (since the 1990s) with very many politicians and officers.  Not a single one of them has expressed a whisper of concern or a raised eyebrow.  Andy Street came the nearest to expressing some concern, at one of his 'Ask Andy' meetings in West Bromwich in 2018 or 19, when he let me speak and I told him, quoting £75 m/Km for the Metro Westside extension to Morrisons, Five Ways.  But it made not a scrap of difference, of course.  The officers are in charge and the politicians (the vegetables and rubber stamps) do as they are told!

REMEMBER: Spending = finite fossil fuels burnt = greenhouse gases emitted = deepening climate catastrophe = THE END, ECOCIDE FOR ETERNITY (called eternal life)!

In 3 lines, the UK's longest-running, most amusing scandal in world transport history!!

In 2020, part of the UK's very last half-used but ready-built, principal mainline railway, near us was transferred to the W Mids Combined Authority for a Very Light Rail test track and two short sections of Light Rail tram line - and, proposal for an extended cycle-walkway!

The Black Country Rail Line (BCRL) re-opening proposal

The fifty years, mothballed, Black Country Rail Line (BCRL) re-opening proposal:

1. It runs through three of the four Black Country boroughs and connects with the national rail network at either end - at Stourbridge Junction and Walsall (a major rail hub), via Castle Hill in Dudley.
2. It is shown on every map of Birmingham and the Black Country, including the Ordnance Survey, the A-Z and Google Maps.
3. The current proposal to put Metro trams on the middle section only has failed to materialise in 34 years of our councillors and officers trying so very, very hard.  Time, now, to try the simpler and cheaper solution of trains and stations returning, linked to buses to take passengers to and from the trains.
4. The BCRL will improve capacity on our national rail network more quickly, more cheaply and with less impact on human climate change and resource depletion than HS2.
5. It will reduce congestion at the UK's foremost rail congestion bottleneck, New Street Station by allowing inter-city and commuter trains to bypass New Street.
6. It will give choice to car commuters sitting in nose to tail traffic to leave their cars at home and get to work quicker and more responsibly by bus and, train on the BCRL.
7. We have had hundreds of millions of pounds spent building the Black Country Spine Road and the Black Country New Road and the more recent grade separated junction on the West Bromwich Expressway.  Now, its time for trains to reduce road and rail congestion - and air pollution and greenhouse gases.
8. I think, Cllr Will Duckworth supports trains and stations being put back on the line from what he told me at the November GP meeting.  He did not realise that it went on to Walsall.
9. In the last decade, hundreds of people supported my two Downing Street petitions for trains back on our existing 20 miles of double track rail lines that includes the six miles alongside commuter congested Alcester Road and Moseley Road (A435).
10. Spending £200 m on the 13.5 miles BCRL is more responsible and cost effective than more road building and HS2 to improve capacity.
11. At a time of supposed austerity, £600 m is being spent on a cosmetic revamp of New Street Station that does not improve rail congestion or, road congestion to the Drop and Go parking (actually, Stop and Crawl through the exhaust fumes polluted tunnel - in peak times).
12. The two leaders of Walsall and Sandwell councils are sympathetic to having trains returning to the whole length instead of trams on the middle section, only.  I have not yet asked the new Dudley leader, Peter Lowe what he wants.  Birmingham and their leader, Sir Albert Bore, wants more Metro trams, more HS2 and is not interested in the Black Country Rail Line (from his response when I spoke to him on the 5 December at his advice bureau in the Council House).

ALLOW THE BLACK COUNTRY TRAIN TO TAKE THE STRAIN!