to Bob Warman of Central TV

Dear Bob - my full contact details are at the bottom of this email.  Tim Weller

Is this value for money? Does this nice piece of idiocy deserve a mention on your excellent programme, Bob?

6.7 Kms of a half finished 120 Kms, 'Out of Use' (mothballed) mainline railway "of national strategic significance", is about to be turned into a short shuttle tram line to transfer passengers to the mainline railway in the next borough.  This, for £449 million when the Taxpayers' Alliance says nearly all of it can be re-opened for £120 million with three new stations. And, for £449 m there is still 49.3 Kms wasted, unused apart from a 2 Kms VLR test track and a new extended cycle-walkway, alongside or near to jam packed M5/M6 and many main roads!!

I am referring to the missing, middle half of this supposedly nationally important mainline railway between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby.  It was very well used for 100 years until the 1960s when we all deserted the railways to buy and use cars. The track bed and every bridge, tunnel and viaduct are all in place under or over every congested motorway and main road. But, not even a single ghost train is to be seen!

Isn't it funny. Every business case ...

is called robust;

robustly justifies every kind of expenditure from spending £1 billion of public money on 14 Kms of tramline to duplicate a bus route in 2014;

to spending nearly the same but, this time, private money on the M6 Toll for 43 Kms in 2003;

to splashing out £17.6 billion of public money on 117 Kms Crossrail;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to extend your £1 billion tram line to replace buses;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to convert our ready made, but they forgot the trains and stations, 120 Kms mainline "of national strategic significance" into a piddling shuttle tram line on two short, middle sections, totalling 6.7 Kms.

All this, when there is never a business case to slash public spending on the Police, the NHS/social care or education to pay for all this largesse.

The money is always found for the flash, the glamorous, the most prestigious projects to hasten Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "the extinction of much of the natural world" warnings from the COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

Are you good Scots getting in on the English act?  Don't follow the English way of the most perverse spending priorities and isolationism!

GLORIOUS ENGLISH ECCENTRICITY: the UK's only mothballed, easily reinstated, ready made but they forgot the trains and stations, mainline railway!

WHICH IS MORE SENSIBLE THINKING?

2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations to complete the

120 Kms between Worcester and Derby;  OR: 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."

SMART POLITICIANS?

£449 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms.  All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure).  Or, stupid politicians?

SMART RAILWAYS?

Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?