Building a grey, unsustainable, dead end society

Thanks, Josh for the email and all the very useful stuff I've read!  What great work you are all doing.

My own green (actually grey) transition is attempting to get others to join me in pointing out the bleeding obvious to get a more sensible dead end, grey, unsustainable, totally ungreen society.

It is nothing to do with worthy causes like renewables, net zero, low carbon, energy efficiency or being nature/planet/future friendly.  Simply about, when you start a project you don't leave it hanging in mid air - but you actually finish it - unbelievable!  But everyone else is totally unmoved, unshockable and honestly believe it's the most ordinary, normal and sensible thing to do!

For example, these photos:

20 years since the bridge was built but it is still wasted, unused, empty of trains as we all sit in traffic jams on the adjacent roads in the middle of the uncompleted 74 miles of railway with trains at the top and bottom ends but not in the middle 56 Kms where the worst congestion is!​

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

​​I'm talking of the 120 Kms Worcs, Dudley, Derby principal mainline railway bridge completed in Dec 2003 when the M6 Toll opened.  But they forgot the trains.  Soon one line​​ was nicked by metal thieves!​

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

​OR, this

​Empty, wasted railway lines leads to trams, instead at a cost second only to High Scam 2 and the planned destruction of the ​whole of this 400 metre canal embankment!​

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​​AND,

the part destruction of 23,000 sq metres at High Plateau, desperately needed for low cost, highly energy efficient, solar powered, 1/2 bedroom apartments.​

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

​FINALLY,

the 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway - the UK's only urban-rural-urban business, commuter and leisure route for food fueled, no longer fossil fools, active travellers by cycle, horse and by walking!

Does any of this give you any ideas for you to pick up on and run away with to your heart's content, Josh?!!

 

All the best

to Bob Sleigh - Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society

Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society is letting the poor go to the wall as more of them become dependent on food banks and more have difficulty paying food and energy bills.  It is immoral and foolish to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money on replacing buses and trains with light rail trams, very light rail trams and ultra light rail trams.  Give the money to the poor or, at least give them FFPT (that I've had for nearly 15 years) rather than wasting it on destroying yet more of our railway network.

to Bob Whitehead re unsustainable W Midlands

Dear Bob - and invitation to John Christophers in case he might like to join us on Tuesday evening.

70 YEARS OF CITY COUNCIL DESTRUCTION, AND NEGLIGENCE AND IDIOCY!

You seem to be the person who has come the closest to understand what I am getting at!!

You wrote, " ... the money diverted into upgrading the current regional public transport system, including the opening of new routes."  Those new routes, I think should be your own local railway line through Kings Heath, mine through the Black Country and the Sutton Park line.  The lines are already in place or safeguarded, in my case in the Black Country but are not fully used!

For decades I have been toiling away pointing out to the authorities that they first need to build a sensible unsustainable West Midlands where perfectly good transport infrastructure and buildings are NOT destroyed or mothballed/overlooked.  And, where building sites are used to house the badly housed.

My futile attempts to kick up a fuss about the destruction of our railway lines in Brum and the Black Country has been ongoing since the 1990s.  Yet, the UK's only remaining, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 is still being broken up into heavy rail (HR), light rail Metro trams (LR), Very Light Rail (VLR) and, possibly ultra light rail Stourbridge Shuttle (ULR).  Incredible!

When it comes to housing, we are still building well below best energy efficient standards and, overlooking building sites, like the massive 23,000 sq metres at Merry Hill Shopping Centre that has been wasted since the canal was straightened in the 1990s, I believe was the decade.  23,000 sq m designated for housing at High Plateau since, at least, 2020 as here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 On High Plateau, I'm suggesting solar powered, very high energy efficient apartments for the badly housed, including some of this year's record 40,000 small boat migrants.  Any chance of WMCC going along with that?

BACK TO TRANSPORT:

Transport infrastructure destruction has been continuing for 70 years when it started with the total obliteration of the Midlands tram network in the 1950s and continues with the Dudley tram on the nationally important mainline railway to this very day!!

More here about the merry dance we've all been taken on:

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

 One horrible history of truly terrible transport

 Dudley's Seven Smashed railway lines

FIRST, get a sensible, unsustainable, non-green transport and housing practice!!

Best wishes