Change, nature, waste

 CHANGE - change in the light of changing times.  Not just climate change but change in resources.

NATURE - we are part of nature; live in tune with nature and her life support systems.

WASTE - refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle.  Cut back on waste of energy, resources and railway lines still not destroyed but available but still not reinstated for their original purpose.

METRO IMMORALITY - the flaunting of wealth and over-indulgence to excess; because it is more expensive to construct per Km than HS2 and almost every maglev train project in China, Japan and South Korea.

Wrong decision, wrong priorities from a nation that should know better

MORE MONEY SPENT MEANS MORE GREENHOUSE GASES, WORSE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE, EXTINCTION BROUGHT FORWARD - otherwise, we are doing very nicely, thank you!

1. Ten years of Tory austerity has allowed the country to have our High Status Symbol 2 train for £106 billion by 2040 and billions already spent in its first eleven years, from its start in 2009 under Gordon Brown and a Labour transport secretary.
2. Ten years of cut backs for the NHS, social care, education and, housing for the less wealthy, to allow for extravagance for the rich - and Crossrail 1 for £18 billion to help out London.
3. Ten years of government austerity has allowed the construction of tram lines as the second most expensive transport mode after High Status 2.  Even more expensive than most maglev train projects in China, Japan and South Korea.
4. Ten years of austerity and four election wins for the party that brought in austerity to bring the crises in health, housing and benefits - much less money for all three but plenty to give us £7 billion for two massive aircraft carriers AND real rises above inflation for the armed forces to support their actions in the Middle East.
5. Over £100 billion to replace our independent nuclear deterrent over the next two decades so that we can continue to sail the high seas as the monarch of all we survey.
6. Ten years of cut backs for local authorities throughout the UK but great largesse for regional devolution and a new layer of bureaucracy to run regional government.  Mrs Thatcher did away with the West Midlands Country Council in the 1980s.  The New Conservative Party has brought it back, at the most enormous expense, as the West Midlands Combined Authority.  All paid for by cut backs in core services that the less wealthy, MOSTLY rely on.
7. Ten years of many billions for brand new high status, high speed train lines for London and England and, £15 billion to 2040 for mainly slick, swish, smart looking trams for the Black Country and Brum.  Trams both underground and overground to replace dull, boring buses and overcrowded commuter trains.
8. Since December, the people's government knew all about the deadly coronavirus that, with globalisation and popular air travel, was bound to spread.  Yet, they slept at the wheel and made no plans to increase supplies of tests, PPE and ventilators in case they would be needed for the UK.  No action in January or even February.  Nothing until 16 March with Johnson's TV talk to the nation.
9. Crises with Covid-19 and the climate, both worsened because of austerity in health and social care and wrong priorities to get flash, prestigious projects to impress and to make people exclaim, 'Wow' at all the vanity projects at the expense of basic, core services.
10. Crises in health, social care, housing and education but no shortages to get trams replacing even intercity railway lines or to get High Status 2 while 24 railway schemes remain closed or unfinished or in need of improvement, modernisation.

The Black Country Ghost Train Attraction

The Black Country Ghost Train attraction

There is still time to stop Brum palming us fine Black Country people off with a piddling little shuttle tram line. This, on our own mainline railway to our neighbours' in Sandwell. Ours gets completely ruined in the process. How scandalous and stupid is that?

STATION Hotel, that smart top hotel opposite the site of the railway station, has to put up with a tram stop of all things. Giving it the trains back will help it flourish between traditional old Dudley town and new, low town at Castle Gate.

Please protest, act and insist that we get the proper thing back - TRAINS, once more on all 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby, through Dudley.

​

OR,

Beware of audacious, dishonest scam  

1. Digging up roads and wrecking any prospect of completing our 120 Kms mainline railway is done to replace diesel buses/trains with electric trams.
2. It is turning a mole hill into a mountain.
3. No mole hill exists because the tram brainwave is a solution looking for a problem.  And this has gone on since 1981 but, in this decade it has taken off - big time.
4. Road digging, moving pipes and cables and overhead power lines all makes tram extensions the world's second most expensive form of transport after HS2.  SOURCE:
   
    Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...
5. Even more expensive than nearly every Maglev train project in Japan, South Korea and China!
6. All you need are electric, fareless buses on 100% bus lanes, with traffic light priority to speed buses and inconvenience car commuters but help those who must use vehicles. 
7. Democracy is denied to drive through, autocratically, that road digging, railway wrecking project.
8. It appears that not one political party, even the Green Party, has ever discussed and then voted on the wisdom of spending over £1.5 BILLION for the 32 Kms and five schemes in the Black Country and Brum.
9. Every political party wants trams.  Everyone includes them in their manifestos.  But with no democratic legitimacy.
10. Not one council in membership of the Combined Authority has ever voted to approve this massive expenditure.
11. The HQ of the Combined Authority shares the building with the HQ of the national tram promotion group.  Vested interests.  Improper influence.  Complicity, collusion, corruption.  That explains it all in upstanding, Boris's Brexit Britain!
12. Maintaining the first very expensive tram on a railway line meant every tram was replaced after only 17 years and the track after 18 years.  And, four business in Bilston went bust over the many months of work!

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