to Customer Services

Adrian - referring to your email, below this: 

Please could you go back to Toby and explain that it is most unlikely there was a business case ever written.  If there was, I would like to read it, please.  Secondly, it is inefficient to spend 42 years achieving a pathetic 23 Kms of tramway (18 Kms on the first mainline railway destroyed) from Wolverhampton to Edgbaston Village tram stop; to build a tramway on the UK's ONLY principal mainline railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

and, to put a VLR Innovation Centre on the 100 year old successful Dudley Castle Hill mainline station, plus a 2 Km VLR test track from the former station, on its mainline, to Cinder Bank roundabout.

 

TfWM/WMCA can recover from the mess they have created by completing the Stourbridge Loop to meet the Dudley Tram at Cinder Bank roundabout.  This is the missing link freight line from Port Talbot, via Stourbridge Jct to the roundabout.  It is efficient to bring back commuter and regional passenger trains to a freight railway.  As was done for the first 100 years of the railways in Britain.

 

The Worcester to Derby section of the London to Edinburgh Railway will then be a TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN principal mainline - a world first for us world-class, brilliant Brits.

 

The UK's Nationally Determined Contributions from HMG says, "The UK commits to reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 68% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels."

 

My suggestion to concentrate on restoring our surviving railway lines, NOT the tram network on those railway lines, is one easy way of helping.

 

Thanks

8 mentions of FREIGHT in email from TfWM

Dear Mr Weller

I am contacting you to ask for your help in relation to your communications with Officers and Members of West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).

Constructive feedback about the transport network is very much welcomed. While your correspondence is appreciated, the distribution of your emails is causing some duplication of effort and it is in relation to this, that I want to ask for your help. We have noted that your correspondence with WMCA is sometimes sent to multiple WMCA contacts at the same time. This is causing duplication of effort because multiple teams within WMCA are receiving and reviewing the same correspondence.  It is urgent that the maximum number of employees read and either confirm I am right or, I be corrected, please.

To resolve this and to support us being able to work most efficiently and answer your queries as comprehensively as possible, it would be extremely helpful if you could send all of your correspondence to our Customer Relations Team via the dedicated email address customerservices@tfwm.org.uk This team has direct links to every department within WMCA including the Mayor’s Office, meaning it is ideally placed to respond to enquiries spanning the breadth of WMCA’s work as well as share feedback more widely as appropriate.  Wide circulation saves you having to do it!  Public education as to how we can deal with the present crisis is vital.

In connection with your recent enquiry to David Harris, I am pleased to provide a copy of the slides that were presented at Dudley’s Housing and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday 22 September 2021.  Thank you.  My comments:

In the light of the dire climate emergency confronting us, we have to retrench and NOT recharge/regenerate/expand the W Mids economy for carry on regardless, business as usual. These practices are accelerating the rush to 2.4 C rise in global average surface temperatures.  ECOCIDE will be inevitable.

See 'Guardian', 9.11.21:-  'COP26: world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report'

More travel must NOT be encouraged unless it is commuting by regional Fare-Free Public Transport on no more HS2, Metro, Sprint, LR, VLR, ULR extensions.

Much less finite fossil fuel travel and working from home is urgent to cut fossil fuel use and to postpone extinction.

AN EXEMPTION -

Go for fare-free ULR (Stourbridge Shuttle), to allow for pedestrianisation of High Street and Market Street in Stourbridge and linking with the big car park at the Civic Amenity site entrance on Birmingham Street (A458).                 

Map, here:-    https://goo.gl/maps/43Fb6gj1rEbrSgu48

Growing travel demand must be urgently abated by rationing, as we almost had in the 1973/74 energy crisis when fuel coupons began to be issued.

Jolly Japes Johnson's 'levelling up' can only come from the rich levelling down to allow the poor to level up.  It is called socialism, social justice, sustainable society or, the Kingdom of God in the New Testament that the UK is supposed to still, officially, believe in - our Leader Boris Johnson must do so with all his talk of 'levelling up'.

You have also specifically asked for clarification on the reinstatement of heavy rail and freight services and how light rail investment supports this. Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) has acquired an approximate 7km section of the old railway corridor from Network Rail. Although Network Rail currently has no plans to bring this line back into operation, as part of our agreement we will make passive provision for freight trains to return to that section of track. This means that we will be carrying out work that could enable this to happen in the future. In its current state of disrepair and without the work we will be undertaking, the section of route we have procured cannot be used by freight trains.

Our plans for Metro construction involve upgrading or replacing several structures to be suitable for use and accommodate heavy freight where possible. We have also acquired Parkhead Viaduct which needs considerable remedial work to make it safe, before carrying trams or freight trains could be considered. We are also moving a small section of track near to Round Oak to allow for both Metro and rail/freight.  I would like to see a plan/map, please to understand your intentions.

Please note our agreement with Network Rail will not make the full line ready for freight, so some additional work would be carried out if the reinstatement of freight trains was agreed.

There is currently no firm scheme in place to extend Metro down Hagley Road. WMCA has however, been invited to submit a City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) bid into Government to support capital transport investment within the region during the period April 2022 to March 2027. We have submitted a bid to be delivered through Transport West Midlands and our constituent Local Authorities which incorporates a package of investment for the Metro to include development of further route options on the Hagley Road corridor connecting the west of Birmingham to the Black Country.  Please don't bother with Metro "bus on rails" trams.  Just do electric buses minus rails, directly on the road.  Making steel tracks and concrete is VERY HIGH in greenhouse gas emissions that are bringing all life on earth down (apart from cockroaches, I hear!)  

This feasibility work could inform longer term implementation plans linked to our new Local Transport Plan which would be subject to consultation. If it goes ahead, this feasibility work would consider how the tram could work as part of an integrated system, including specific impacts on buses. Please be assured that this assessment would inform the viability of any future development.

I hope this information is helpful and that you can help with my reasonable request relating to your contact with WMCA. Finally, while we are unable to acknowledge all information we receive, please be assured that we will respond to correspondence with specific questions and enquiries to matters which fall within our remit.

Kind regards

 

Lee Eteo

Customer Relations Manager

THEIR MISLEADING GLOSS IS HERE!

THEIR MISLEADING GLOSS is here:  https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/      The video promises "1000s of extra seats for commuter services at over 100 stations on the UK's existing network and, free up space for more freight by rail".

MY REALITY is here:  They can't even put freight on to finish the railway they built between Worcester and Derby through the Black Country, let alone the rather necessary commuter and regional trains alongside traffic-choked main roads and motorways!

They replace one perfectly fast enough high-speed line with an even faster, dedicated high-speed line that does not stop at any of the stations the first high-speed line stops at!!  We have an overcrowded railway network because the trainspotters have never spotted that they themselves have been destroying railway lines that Beeching very properly closed but, never intended to be obliterated as our trainspotters have done.  Why don't they stop destroying railway lines, first?

MORE HERE:

Media reports indicate that the E arm to Leeds is uncertain and may be cancelled.

The monetary cost, for both arms, is over £100 billion of deadly greenhouse gases from unfortunately finite fossil fuels, we must conserve URGENTLY.

External costs are ecocidal and are never taken into account (probably for that uncomfortable reason).

YET, on dedicated tracks, it is isolated from the rest of the railway network and because it goes so fast it can only stop at very few stations - outside of London at two stations (Crewe, Toton), two airports (Brum, Manchester) and three terminus stations (Brum, Manchester, Leeds).

A useless, vanity project of selfish prestige and self-aggrandisement.

GOOD NEWS: Public transport is looking up. We have a new Vision of the future!

"the refreshed rapid transit proposals": -

• All our West Midland councillors are now ambitious for "public transport connectivity" (report on website http://www.wmita.org.uk/media/1296/item-11-black-country-rapid-transit-review.pdf)
• To this end, they formed themselves into the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority last year.
• This year, if they approve a report on WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY, the seven leaders will form a steering group to review snail-like progress, since 1980, on getting a comprehensive network of trams across the West Midlands.
• In 34 years of fruitless endeavour, one line from Wolverhampton to Birmingham has been achieved when the Birmingham city centre extension is finally opened to New Street Station - THIS YEAR.  Praise be!
• The late arrival of the trams has been cleverly designed to coincide with the £600 million cosmetic refurbishment of New Street that is designed 'to enhance the passenger experience' as they wait for their (very, very occasional) delayed or cancelled train or tram.
• Not content with their lack of success over light rail Metro, our leaders are now wanting VERY light rail while not abandoning light rail Metro on the same one mile line that for 100 years had passenger trains on the Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Company line that took hundreds of thousands of passengers to Birkenhead and the NW.  This was a journey that was considerably longer than the one mile that is their medium to long term ambition, now.
• Umpteen reports, studies and plans are sweated over, poured over and finally produced.  But to what effect?
• NO!  That's not fair.  We have had 50 years of ghost trains on 45 miles of our unused or grossly underused double track freight lines - all from our Integrated (no less) Transport Authority.  Extraordinary performance!