More public control of buses won't make any difference, will it?

TfWM is the transport team within West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). TfWM works in partnership with operators of public transport within the West Midlands. TfWM provides bus stops, timetable information, park & ride facilities, as well as delivering smart travel passes across the public transport network via Swift.

More about what TfWM does can be found here: www.tfwm.org.uk/who-we-are/. 

I'm suggesting a virtuous circle

• • I'm suggesting a virtuous circle by more reward than penalty to educate and appeal to car commuters that they must free up the limited road space for essential business vehicle users, like buses, HGV drivers, district nurses, midwives etc who have to use their vehicles.

  • These drivers must register to have the right to drive in daytime, Mon to Fri, because of their work.

  • The car commuters who do not register are then picked up by CCTV and fined.

  • The money goes to regional Fare-Free Public Transport for all and the phasing out of diesel buses for electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses.

  • Essential vehicles use the nearside and overtaking lane with traffic light priority for them.

  • Car commuters who pay the penalty every day are only allowed to use the overtaking lane.

  • This encourages more people to leave their cars at home and jump on a free bus, train, tram throughout the region.  

  • Thus healthier, safer communities that are doing more to slow the climate crisis/breakdown and resource depletion.

  • A little levelling up for lower incomes who have never had or used a car - they get a faster, free bus, trams, trains service paid for by the wealthier car owners.

  • Social justice in action!

Tim Weller   29 March  2023

My virtuous circle

 Thanks, John.

• I'm suggesting a virtuous circle by more reward than penalty to educate and appeal to car commuters that they must free up the limited road space for essential business vehicle users, like buses, HGV drivers, district nurses, midwives etc who have to use their vehicles.
• These drivers must register to have the right to drive in daytime, Mon to Fri, because of their work.
• The car commuters who do not register are then picked up by CCTV and fined.
• The money goes to Fare-Free Public Transport for all and the phasing out of diesel buses for electric.
• Essential vehicles use the nearside and overtaking lane with traffic light priority for them.
• Car commuters who pay the penalty every day are only allowed to use the overtaking lane.
• This encourages more people to leave their cars at home and jump on a free bus, train, tram throughout the region.  
• Thus healthier, safer communities that are doing more to slow the climate crisis/breakdown and resource depletion.
  

What do you think?

The 4 Bs to free up road space

Metro or Sprint?  And the 4 Bs to deter car commuters

How do you decide when to put in a tram that UK Tram (at your HQ at 16 Summer Lane?) has described as "a bus on rails" ('Today' interview at the time of the 2016 Croydon tram ​crash when 11 died out of 69 passengers) on a dedicated bus lane with steel tracks or, a Sprint (the bus that thinks its a tram) on an additional dedicated bus lane without steel tracks?

Does both mean taking front gardens, landscaping, car parking, drives for the new lane?  Like the planned felling of 1,000 trees/shrubs for the Hagley Road Metro extension to the Kings Head, Bearwood?

Would the existing, nearside lane dedicated to bus and pre-registered business users be more helpful in weaning car commuters into Platinum buses to free up road space for genuine, essential business users​ - with traffic light priority for them​?  Bus/business lanes covered by cameras to catch the driver who only commutes to avoid using the bus, train, tram even when Fare-Free Public Transport is the BIG BRIBE

2 Bs = bus on rails, the bus that thinks its a tram,

plus bus, business = 4 in total.

Or, 6 if you include Big Bribe!

"Better Buses for Brum" petition

Dear Liz - the petition has:

Please explain why you have always fully supported "bus on rails" Metro trams, together with your political party

"The Mayor has failed to secure enough money from his own government to fund transport properly."  NOT TRUE!

In fact, since 2017 when he was first elected, Andy Street, on behalf of Transport for W Midlands, fully supported by all political party colours (including those on the left and good eco-socialists, as I am), has secured many hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions for Metro trams to replace and duplicate bus and train services.  This is stupid and irresponsible and escalates the climate emergency.

Tram extensions are the second most expensive transport mode to construct after High Scam 2 that is the world's most expensive to construct.  The money should have been used to extend Fare-Free Public Transport from my old crocks age group to all you youngsters.  And, for all the bus priority measures on the nearside lane of dual carriageways to inconvenience thoughtless car commuters who don't need their cars for their work and should be using buses - buses having top priority.  This will help to free up road space for essential vehicle users.  Expand buses directly on roads (minus the railway tracks) without the grossly extravagant "bus on rails" trams blocking them!

Your actively pursued and extremely costly in finance and climate wrecking policy of "bus on rails" Metro trams is still planned to take precious housing land, the destruction of nature, trees, public open space and my wonderful, vertical guerrilla garden.  PLEASE STOP, CANCEL WBHE PHASE 2 FOREVER and DO BUS PRIORITY MEASURES as I have advised for very many years.

Please write back and explain why I am wrong and you are right, Liz.

Many thanks

Kiddi's Slum Bus Station

Choc-a-bloc Tesco car park next to the near deserted, dreadful looking, missing roof panels, Kiddi Bus Station!

Your disgraceful slum bus station ​next to the full car park at Tesco ​is symptomatic of how Kiddi folk  - and everyone else - regard public transport. Private transport is paramount and is all that really matters - plus trams, of course. Very sad!

Thank you Adam for the email.  However, your disgraceful slum bus station, next to the full car park at Tesco is symptomatic of how Kiddi folk  - and everyone else - regard public transport. Private transport is paramount and is all that really matters - plus trams, of course for the few. Very sad!  Would you chase up Wharf Management, who own the site -  please?   Many thanks!   Tim Weller

Why such a very strange, eccentric looking, black (and wooden?) bus shelter that looks nothing like one?!Are you sure there is a timetable somewhere on the structure?  I don't remember seeing one.  The lady standing there in my photo did say it was a bus shelter, so I had to believe her.

Would your civic pride, Adam not want it brought up to date with a modern, conventional shelter that we have in Stourbridge and Halesowen?  This shelter of yours is not even attractive or, interesting as an historical artefact!

The two 20th century, more modern shelters round the corner on the way out of the town centre were also very poor with missing information and not like the TfWM ones in the W Midlands, next door.

Standards need to be urgently raised.  That disgraceful slum of a Kiddi Bus Station needs to be razed to the ground for something more respectable.  Are you not aware of the climate emergency, with the Secretary General of the United Nations saying at COP 27, two weeks ago, "We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator"?  One simple answer is to make bus use much more obvious, attractive and, indeed irresistible to those many wedded and welded to their cars.  You know what to do, Adam.

Best wishes for much higher standards of provision in future days - PLEASE!

The oddest bus shelter in the world!

Thank you Adam for the email.  However,

Why such a very strange, eccentric looking, black (and wooden?) bus shelter that looks nothing like one?!

Are you sure there is a timetable somewhere on the structure?  I don't remember seeing one.  The lady standing there in my photo did say it was a bus shelter, so I had to believe her.

Would your civic pride, Adam not want it brought up to date with a modern, conventional shelter that we have in Stourbridge and Halesowen?  This shelter of yours is not even attractive or, interesting as an historical artefact!

The two 20th century, more modern shelters round the corner on the way out of the town centre were also very poor with missing information and not like the TfWM ones in the W Midlands, next door.

Standards need to be urgently raised.  That disgraceful slum of a Kiddi Bus Station needs to be razed to the ground for something more respectable.  Are you not aware of the climate emergency, with the Secretary General of the United Nations saying at COP 27, two weeks ago, "We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator"?  One simple answer is to make bus use much more obvious, attractive and, indeed irresistible to those many wedded and welded to their cars.  You know what to do, Adam.

Best wishes for much higher standards of provision in future days - PLEASE!

Tim   (Weller)

PS bonus of 3 photos and 2 cartoons:

WMCA press release on 10 June - extract

Key features for the £88 million transformation plan include:

• Lower and streamlined fares – with prices frozen to 2018 level until 2025
• Enhanced bus network with greater operating hours, increased frequency and greater integration with other transport services
• Boost the Safer Travel team with nine extra uniformed transport safety officers to offer greater protection and reassurance to passengers
• Create a Bus Passenger Charter to set out clear pledges for customer satisfaction and retention

TfWM, councils and operators already work closely through the West Midlands Bus Alliance and our existing Enhanced Partnership will be extended to support the BSIP delivery.

https://www.wmca.org.uk/news/lower-fares-and-more-uniformed-safety-officers-part-of-88m-plan-for-bus-services-across-west-midlands

Scandalously expensive, grossly extravagant, over indulgent, a serious showpiece, white elephant! Vanity of vanities!

 

Scandalously expensive, grossly extravagant, over-indulgent, a serious showpiece, white elephant!

At £75 m/Km, too! Is that right? Is that 10 times the cost per Km of REBUILDING the 50 Kms Borders Railway for £353 million in 2015? And, every bus is now badly inconvenienced with a longer and slower journey into the city centre. This is not very good, is it? Are you pleased with what you have done?

Refers to the mighty Metro "bus on rails" tram extension to amaze, shock and awe in Centenary Square (rebuilt 1991, 2013, 2019 for £16 m!) and Broad Street/Hagley Road, Brum.

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

"MP Fabricant backs cycleway on disused rail route"

Dear Editor

I smiled with delight at the headline, "MP backs cycleway on disused rail route".  At last, a sensible MP wanting the major, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway upgraded with an all weather surface and signs to allow many more walkers, commuter cyclists and horse riders to use it.  However, as I continued reading I found that our darling Michael Fabricant MP was actually supporting the half completed 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" being turned into a cycle-walkway (quote, from letter to self, dated 8 March 2018, from Network Rail and the DfT)!  As I was sitting almost next to him at a Conservative Party meeting in Edgbaston, I tried to speak to him but, I was given the brush off.  The man should have listened and learnt a thing or two! 

Our other VIP is Cllr Roger Lawrence, Transport Boss of all he surveys in the Midlands.  For all his time, as first councillor then Leader of Wolverhampton City Council this man has also wanted trams on only 6.7 Kms of the half completed 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance".  His idea is to block the commuter and regional trains for ever.  Like deluded Michael, this guy actually says he has to have trams first, for £343 m, in order to get the 120 Kms finished with commuter and regional trains.  This is unheard of anywhere else in the world!  Both men suffer delusions in wanting trams to get trains.  Both men like to pay once for trams, then twice for trains on the same line.  Both men have more money than sense.  Roger's policy is either dishonest, is thoroughly mixed up or, is as incompetent as well-meaning Michael MP!

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

Transport Boss Roger, in the summer when I asked him to graciously accept a sheet of paper from me, told me to "Stuff it up your arse" and walked on by!  His mind is closed, he is so arrogant, that for a second time, he is wasting £343 million of taxpayers' money to fund his bizarre, his weird and wonderful obsession with trams on main line railways and roads to replace trains and buses.  All he needs to do is to give us all free bus travel - not just for the old and decrepit, like me - and, electric buses like Nottingham.  He must put trains on train lines when he has already provided every bridge and tunnel for the phantom trains to cross two motorways and three major dual carriageways as we all stew and quietly steam on our traffic choked roads.

PHOTOS for a little light relief.  Exactly, where mistaken, uninformed Michael MP wants his cycle-walkway, instead of regional and national trains!  Does he actually cycle, himself, as I do?  Does he get stuck in traffic jams, as I do?

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

Two of our top politicians, from both major parties, are wanting the UK's only main line but easily reinstated in full, 120 Kms Black Country Railway, "of national strategic significance", to be turned into a piddling little tram line, a test track, a trail of trees and a cycle-walkway!  No wonder our politicians are so poorly regarded.  They are just not up to the job.  Roger should definitely and gracefully retire.  Soon to be followed by clueless Michael You've Got The Wrong Railway Line Fabricant!

Tim Weller  (full contact details, below)