Letter: 'Trains and trams together' July 2019 Railnews

Michael Denholm is not comparing like with like.  The Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro tram extension will have 17 tram stops at every 630 metres on average, with six to ten trams an hour on only 6.7 Kms out of the 56 Kms that are available for passenger trains from Stourbridge to Burton on Trent.  The empty 56 Kms is the desperately needed middle section on the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance", says Network Rail and DfT. Trams are costing £449 million for the full 10.7 Kms of road and railway running trams.  Yet, Network Rail is parting with it knowing that Birmingham stations urgently need a mainline railway to bypass them to relieve "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" (BBC 'Midlands Today' reporter Peter Plisner)

The Taxpayers' Alliance, now on my side, says reinstating trains would cost £120 m, with three new stations between Stourbridge and Lichfield because every crossing for two motorways and every main road is already built for commuter, regional and intercity trains.  Why spend nearly half a billion pounds to stop the 56 Kms from being finished with fast trains on the full 120 Kms between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby?

Our wasted, empty 56 Kms has new settlements in south Staffordshire and runs through the densely populated and traffic choked Black Country boroughs with their 1 m population and about 100 Kms of railway lines destroyed for roads and buildings over the last 50 years.  The Metro tram has resulted in only three out of four platforms at Snow Hill now being used; is responsible for converting the impressive Wolverhampton Low Level principal station into an events and conference centre; and, for obliterating three or four Kms of double track railway line on either side of this former principal and busy station.

The UK tram promotion group has its HQ in the same building as Transport for West Midlands and the W Mids Combined Authority.  Hence, for nearly four decades, the money has gone into trams instead of stopping the destruction of our railway network and in returning the fast trains to the UK's only, easily reinstated, mothballed, mainline railway "of national strategic significance".

From this damning evidence, every layman must agree that West Midlands Metro, since 1981 is responsible for the biggest and longest running scandal in UK finance/transport history.  Yet, the slow "bus on rails" trams have the full and active support of every section of the railway industry, including the unions, Railfuture and every railway periodical, including 'Railnews'!

This Land is Made of Money

3 October 2018

Should this be called stealing from the nation's taxpayers?  And an abuse of trust?

In a time of continued austerity, hundreds of millions of pounds (£1,380 million to 2026) are being spent on converting some lengths of main line railway AND bus routes into tram lines.  Other bus routes are being turned into super special Sprint diesel bus routes with limited stops that mean today’s, less flamboyant buses will still have to be provided for the stops that the Sprint misses out.  Both Metro trams and Sprint, "Metro's little sister", are phenomenally expensive to buy and install. At over £60 m/Km for replacing buses, electric trams are the second most expensive transport mode after HS2 (apart from two Japanese maglev lines).  See my ‘Transport costs per kilometre’.

In addition, buildings are still planned for the tracks and the ONLY feasible site for the re-opening of Dudley Castle Hill main line station.  This idiocy, mind you, on a principal line that Network Rail and the Department for Transport maintain is "a railway of national strategic significance" (letter to self, dated 8 March 2018, from Network Rail and Dept of Transport).

Today, the Shropshire Star has highlighted how West Midlands Railway has caused travel chaos with too few trains and one that broke down.  Would there be more trains to and from Shropshire if the line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level had not been turned into a tram line, with the attendant loss of platform 4 at Snow Hill, Low Level station closed, plus 4 or 5 Kms of track?

I call it stunning ineptitude, corporate stupidity and financial illiteracy to disregard the costs of trams for taxpayers when the 120 Kms Black Country Railway desperately needs the return of its commuter and regional trains and stations - NOT  “bus on rails”, trams. It is criminal theft by the governing elite. If they cannot be more honest, they should be locked up. The stolen money should go to extend free bus travel for all (not just the young, the disabled and elderly, like me) and to give electric buses for all.  NO MORE ELECTRIC TRAMS!

Tim Weller (full contact details at the very foot)

timweller1@gmail.com 0791 380 4363       6 October 2018