IN A COST OF LIVING CRISIS LET THE POOR HAVE TRAMS AND FOOD BANKS

A LITTLE TONGUE-IN-CHEEK AND STRAIGHT-TALKING:

You may swan around in a car but give the rest - the 2nd class public transport users - flash, glam and gloriously expensive trams to feel important.

A Metro network is a greedy luxury we cannot afford and is immoral, anyway, in the face of so much poverty, shocking housing for too many and, poor diets leading to obesity and health problems.

The politicians and transport experts have had 40 years of trying to rebuild the tram network but it has ONLY resulted in railway lines being destroyed to get nothing that can be called a tram network!

Yet, there is always top priority for the tram network to be rebuilt rather than the train network reopened.  In six years of Mayoral action, not one railway line has reopened and only the tram from Grand Central to Edgbaston - but planning for that started well before Andy's arrival!

Trams are naughty but nice because:

• They do glide from one stop to another at an average speed of 22mph.
• Unlike buses that are 95% request stops, trams have to stop at every stop strung out at about every one Km, on average.
• They are meant to be the silver bullet to solve all our congestion and poisoned city air problems.
• How come, then the roads are clogged and railways crammed even on the A41 that runs parallel to the mainline railway, now a tramway? 
• Everyone, especially disabled people - and me - love the "bus on rails" trams for their step-free access and gap-less platform to tram.
• However, bus stop platforms can be provided, as well, to avoid a total tram takeover.  Where there's a will there's a way.
• Trams are so loved, we can easily lose 1,000 trees and shrubs felled on the south side of Hagley Road for the tram extension to the Kings Head pub.  Bang goes that carbon capture and storage as climate disaster has another turn of the screw!
• Seven UK places have trams and they are found on the mainland of Europe.  Why don't the other 93 have them too?
• With our growing food banks, it is what a top-rate, wealthy country like ours can easily afford, along with £100 billion High Scam 2 fast-to-stop train.
• Metro is 8-10 times more expensive per Km to build than rebuilding a 50 Km railway in Scotland.  But money is no object, even at £4m per tram.
• At such a price, they make a stunning sight on our two former mainline railways.
• It's worth all the blunders causing work to be changed and redone correctly on the short 700 m extension to get it to the bus and railway stations that they forgot at their first attempt with the first tram in 1999.
• If the trains and stations had gone back in the 1990s instead of the trams, the 700 m extension would not have been necessary!
• The 2020 planned 150 miles of tramlines are a scandalous and immoral waste of our money to worsen the climate emergency.
• Especially when people at the bottom of society and migrants are suffering from poverty and ill health.

MODAL MUSICAL CHAIRS!

5 March 2004 21:41

To: John Maund

DUDLEY AND SANDWELL METRO

MODAL MUSICAL CHAIRS!
In the 1960s, our transport experts closed the rail line now used for Metro One to mean that train passengers transferred mainly to cars.  To now claim that 20% of passengers are likely to be car owners who have chosen Metro One trams - as David Bull, Head of Transport Strategy said at a public meeting on 5 February 2004 - completely overlooks the fact that the car drivers were the ones who had to transfer to their cars from trains.  They have now simply transferred back - but to trams instead of the original trains!

Put another way, after a gap of 20-30 years, the 20% of car owners who
chose the tram, simply undid the enforced modal shift of a similar percentage when the train passengers had to resort to their cars when the current Metro line closed to trains in the 1960s.  In other words, it is not a genuine modal shift from cars to trams.  It is actually, a 20% modal shift from TRAIN to tram!  Returning the trains would have been more cost effective and sensible - and, quicker and easier to achieve, too!  It would also have helped with the modernisation of the West Coast Mainline.

From my research, 77% of the first three Metro lines are to go on rail
lines; the remaining 23% on roads.  Therefore, since Metro development
(lines 1,2,3) is seeing 77% of its trams replacing trains and the further
23% replacing buses, is the colossal expense a prudent and sensible use of taxpayers' money?  Of course it is not.  It simply plays musical chairs
with now three Cinderella and failing public transport modes while car use continues to rise inexorably and completely untouched by all our huffing and puffing to get trams to replace - actually - buses and trains.

Rob Donald, Richard Worrall and David Pywell, our Big Three transport
chiefs, are suffering from self-delusion - that the trams are taking over
from cars!  Incidentally, not one of them turned up for last week's major
Transport Summit at the Burlington Hotel, New Street - except Rob - for the free lunch, only!

to Mike Bird on opposing Metro extensions

Dear Cllr Mike,

Hundreds of millions spent on Metro and Walsall has gained NOTHING in 40 years of endeavour. 

Please insist that further extensions are scrapped, immediately. 

You were brilliant in speaking out in the Board meeting on Friday. 

Please speak out, privately to whoever at 16 Summer Lane.

Our Edinburgh Conservatives have been quite superb over the years in opposing their two tram projects on grounds of cost. They are right. And you are right, too Mike.

 Edinburgh Conservative Group OPPOSES their tram...

Remember, although I am an eco-socialist, I voted for Andy Street for Mayor on both occasions - 2017 and 2021.

Best wishes

Trams destroyed then rebuilt on train network!!

Why have all the trade unions spent 70 years destroying trams then trains and then rebuilding trams on the train network?!

• Tahir Latif, CACC, author of transport chapter in Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency
• Kerry Abel, Organiser, Transport Salaried Staffs' Association
• Simon Shaw, Author of Climate Jobs Technical Companion on Cycling and Walking
• Alethea Warrington, Campaigns Manager, Possible, and co-author of The Right Track for Green Jobs: cutting aviation emissions while boosting employment and climate-friendly travel

No Rails to Recovery for the Derby, Dudley, Devon Railway.

Only railways dedicated to HS2 destruction of our way of life, with the essential concomitant of must have Metro "bus on rails" trams to connect HS2 to everything because buses and ordinary, regular trains won't do for that job!

From  David Gaussen - Birmingham to  Everyone : Question: Why no 'Rails for Recovery': Upgrading/restoring Worcester-Black Country-Derby route'? Could be a great way to bypass delays at New Street station? As well as opening better connections for people in the black country

14:55:34 From  Steve Wright (Railfuture WM)  to  Everyone: Have you considered one or more of the London trains going on to Aberystwyth?  Have you asked TfW if this might be one of their aspirations?

Twitter challenging Ashvir and Sophie

Please let me know what you think with the seven-fold increase in transport expenditure since Andy Street became the powerless, the figurehead, the PR representative of the Combined Authority.  And my wife and I have voted for him twice, now!

Sophie Zumbe

@SophieZumbe

·

15h

32% turnout for the mayoral elections in the West Mids. Depressingly clear indication of how disengaged most people are with local politics.

Replying to @SophieZumbe

"All politicians and the people are not questioning the scam, the fraud, the lie of trams destroying the 120 Kms Black Country Railway and, now in Broad St and at Five Ways making public transport worse for the 11 bus routes that used that quick route for decades. Will you, Sophie engage?"

MORE:

Andy says "seven-fold over the four years compared with what was previously spent." He said this, as though he is so proud of what he has done. But it was nothing to do with him. More to do with the devolution deals in the last decade to give the W Mids the most scandalously expensive transport mode to construct after the ruinous HS2 construction. And more to do with the light rail, "bus on rails" tram national promotion group that shares its HQ with Andy's office, Transport for the W Mids and the Combined Authority - another scam/corruption/improper influence!

Best wishes

Tim

The future of our wasted railway line up the road in Netherton, next to your constituency, James

Dear James - and copied to Head of W Midlands Rail Executive, Malcolm Holmes - and Cllr Ian Ward (Google is not giving me Malcolm's email address at the moment, if Ian could please forward this to him, please.)  Thanks!

This may give you a useful briefing about what TfWM/WMCA is probably planning to do, like Manchester.

A member of Railfuture wrote to me to ask,

 "If it's going to be double (SELF: Metro light rail trams on double tracks) then how do they expect to be able to run heavy rail services along a frequently used tramline in the future?" 

The tram is double track but tram-trains enable them to get round the promise of heavy rail services:

"Light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time." (letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro in September 2000)!

If it looks like a tram, runs as slowly and stops as often as a tram, it must still be a tram.  Therefore, the tram-train is a tram and not a heavy rail train.  However, Metro trams and, presumably, tram-trains can cruise at 50 mph, I believe.  Ultimately, I think electric tram-trains will run between Worcester, Dudley town centre and Derby.  It will be much more expensive and much slower, from the outset, now, than putting faster, with their fewer stops, electric, hydrogen-powered trains through the Black Country to bypass congestion bottleneck Brum.  Far better to use electric buses for what we want electric trams to do.  My suggestions are much more financially responsible with lower greenhouse gas emissions.  Therefore, more money is left to extend free travel from all old people like me to all younger age groups.  Free as compensation for the greater infection risk in using public transport.  SEE:

https://tfgm.com/future-travel/tram#:~:text=The%20Metrolink%20tram%20system%20is,stops%20covering%20nearly%2060%20miles.  

Best wishes

Trains NOT Trams

Dear Campaign for Better Transport

I have suggested as the new name, 'Trains NOT Trams'.

This is because many hundreds of millions of pounds have gone (and are still going) into replacing buses and trains with electric trams in seven towns and cities in the UK.

This, after the transport experts had closed and removed every mile of tram line in the 1950s, except for Blackpool.

Yet, the railway network still has many hundreds of miles of freight only and mothballed railway lines that should have their passenger trains returned to meet growing demand, relieve congestion and to clean up city air.

Or, the money from the tram networks could have been diverted into electric buses as well as modernising "our very old Victorian railway" (Sir Peter Hendy when Chief Exec of Network Rail in an interview on the 8 Jan 2013 on the 'Today' programme.  And he gave plenty of examples!)

Future tram money should be diverted into extending free bus rides for the over 65s and the disabled to everyone.  This might entice car commuters who do not need their cars for their jobs to use the bus, instead.  This would have a greater impact on reducing road and railway congestion and cleaning up city air.

Best wishes

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!

A word of encouragement to our transport, planners, strategists, managers and politicians

Only for the last fifty years our dear transport, planners, strategists, managers and darling politicians (from councillors to MEPs) have been resolute and persistent in thinking that urban railway lines were for cars and lorries to use and, for homes and hotels to be run down them.  An intriguing departure from normal transport practice.  About 80 Km in the Black Country and Birmingham have gone this way.

More by accident than design, one main line railway was not destroyed for homes, trading estates and roads.  Indeed, such is progress that our terrific transport personnel are now turning the UK’s most important, unused but easily reinstated, double track intercity line into use by two different kinds of slow trams.  We are now to have Very Light Rail and Light Rail, very slow and slow - a shuttle tram and a Midland Metro tram - going on 9 Km out of 65 Km that are unused - unused for passenger trains, would you believe - on this nationally vital but overlooked 120 Km main line railway between Worcester and Derby.

Yet, the lot of them do, ultimately, want the trains.  They genuinely think that Metro trams “are the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time” (letter dated July 2000 from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro and repeated last year).  This is complete idiocy!

However, things are definitely looking up.  From being drunk and incapable with their success in putting cars, lorries and buildings instead of trains down rail lines, they have now improved to an E grade.  From F grade to E grade in now being only less than competent by running slow trams that stop almost as frequently as buses on double tracks that are desperately needed for commuter and intercity trains between London and the North via the Black Country.

£55.7 billion for HS2.  Not a dickey bird for the 115 Km double track railway lines in the West Midlands without a single passenger train or station.  Homebase was built on one station in Brum - Kings Heath!

£6 million per Km for Scotland’s new, rural, rail line last year, according to RailNews.

£106 million per Km for Birmingham - Brum getting all the money, yet again - for road running Metro trams to replace buses to grandiose Grand Central Shopping Centre and diesel perfumed, basement station.  A similar sum of £106 million per Km for the status symbol trams to the even more prestigious HS2 stations for Brum.  The £128 m for 1.2 Km did include 21 new trams to replace the 16 year old trams, according to RailNews. So, say £80 m per Km for trams to the HS2 station and beyond.

Enough said.

Midland Metro for never!

* Nearly thirty years of little action have gone by. Only one line out of the three was achieved since 1980 - and that was on a rail line!

* There is even more traffic choked roads alongside empty rail lines.

* Electrification of the rail network is nowhere near complete even after 50 years of trying. It doesn't help when nearly everyone wants electric trams instead of electric trains on these 38 miles of Brum rail lines.

* The train/tram idea of 2008 was, years ago called track sharing or double running. This is something that is impossibly complicated for our rail industry that has trouble in running an efficient and well run rail network as it is. This resurrected idea is way beyond their abilities.

* Keep it simple, keep it plain; keep it obvious.

* Get the two main public transport modes at least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe. Then, extend the tram network further. We now have, not two, but three failing public transport modes - bus, train and tram.

* The green movement's traditional stance of accepting anything as long as it is public transport, is nowhere near good enough when issues of priority, value for money, least impact on climate change and resource depletion and, discrimination and discernment should be uppermost in our minds, I think.

* Even the very long established wish to put freight trains back on the full length Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall rail line is impossible for our rail industry to achieve. Astonishing!

* Still, a rail line goes past the Waterfront complex of offices that are next to Merry Hill Shopping Centre but, office workers and shoppers still have to use their cars, a minority go by bus and I go by bike! This is a scandalous state of affairs because of the supposed popularity of trams everywhere.

* Trams on the middle section of this rail line has been developed for nearly thirty years but nothing has happened in even three decades of desperate transport bigwigs trying so hard. It also prevents, for ever, passenger trains returning to the 13 miles through three Black Country boroughs. This is transport negligence and incompetence, in my opinion.