X1, X2 and Sprint

The main city centre stop for the X1 and X2 is by Moor Street Station (at the side opposite Selfridges). These services also serve the Digbeth coach station and the markets.

Phase one of the Sprint project involved the installation of infrastructure on the highways including bus lanes and junction upgrades to offer buses priority. It is these which have improved reliability of service and journey times on existing services such as the X1 and X2.

The second phase will install more of these priority measures as well as see the introduction of a direct bus service linking Walsall, Birmingham City Centre and Solihull.

Aside from this TfWM is working with partner councils on developing further bus priority measures and routes over the next five years using funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS). These will be announced in due course and subject to usual consultation and approval processes.

Can you please assist us by sending all future enquiries to the Customer Relations team directly via customerservices@tfwm.org.uk 

WMCA Director of Housing

Dear Gareth

Thank you for your email.  That is fine and I hope they copy you in, too.

I would like to try and influence you away from affordable housing which I suspect is not really affordable at all!  I would like this: 'Very low cost, highly energy efficient apartments or terraced housing, partly powered by solar PV on their roofs'.

My own home since Jan 1976 is just that!  Mid terrace, 3 storey town house that is so cheap to heat, run and maintain with the E/W roofs with 12 solar PV panels on each.  £1/day in total energy bills for the last six months with Octopus Energy as my supplier.  More for the next six months, of course!

I'm also asking you to fast track High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Brierley Hill.  Both remain designated for housing for decades but nothing is ever done.

Please can you authorise ACTION!  Only your good self has the power and authority to make all the difference.  To smash through all the paralysis as superman!

Best wishes

UK at war every year for over 100 years. And very expensive luxury, always!

Bob wrote,

"There was also a report in the Guardian about ten years ago for the UK ... "

That reminds me that there was a quite superb 4 page spread in the Guardian in Jan 2014.  It detailed how in only one year, 1968 I think it was, since 1914 that the UK military did not suffer any deaths from their operations somewhere or other around the world.  Have I got that right?  Can anyone else remember?

It shows how extensive our love for warfare and the killing of people around the world is!  And why, the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway (BCMR) "of national strategic significance"​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​ needs to have its trains back so all the relatives can visit the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas by train instead of GHG emitting ICE car or e-car (elecy from largely finite fossil fuels).  Metro trams on one section of the BCMR is meant to be the catalyst to get passenger and freight trains back.  Seriously!!

"By focusing on the military, not that we should not mention it of course, we let industry, the car economy, the cold and leaky buildings, the oil exporters, Drax etc off the hook when it comes to the dreadfully urgent task of reducing CO2 emissions."  (Bob)

Don't let HS2, Metro, Sprint off the hook that also accelerates GHG emissions in their construction.  All high GHG because of their luxury and diverting money from the poor and from upgrading the basic/regular bus and train services that need the money.

One question about two mainline railways

There are two Black Country mainline railways that were in use and, successfully, too for about 100 years.  Should you use parts of them for, certainly heavy rail as is the case still to this day but, also to put light rail trams on them, too on other parts?

The first re-opened for trams, as far as Wolverhampton, in 1999.

With the second, I am always told by the experts, the trams must go on them as the catalyst to, eventually, get the commuter and regional trains back on the full 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby!

CLIMATE, COP, CHRIST (WWJD?) - just stop wasting oil!

Dear friends

I was at a wonderful Care for the Family meeting at Life Central last night.  I, personally, thought the auditorium was overheated in the light of the multiple crises and, as we continue to rejoice in fairy tale, eternal, economic growth and, joyfully live infinitely on a finite planet and live unnaturally on a natural planet.  In addition, one external door was jammed open on the carpet when we entered, was difficult to close and was still open when we left three hours later!

This is wasting oil and means we are still not stabilising our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which are still rising.  UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres gave us a Code Red for humanity warning in August 2021 and now, on Monday, telling us we are all (8 billion of us on 15 November and up from 3 billion in 1950!) that:-

“Our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” Guterres said. “It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century. It is unacceptable, outrageous and self-defeating to put it on the back burner.”

The very least we can do is to turn down the heating, to wear more and to travel less using up fewer exhausting oil reserves (electric cars and bikes are also dependent on oil/gas).  I can easily do this.  Why can't others?

Saturday, 5 November 2022

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please

How on earth can we address the multiple crises facing the nation, let alone climate catastrophe, if we can't even stop replacing or duplicating perfectly good buses and trains with trams and, with buses that think they are trams?

Hundreds of millions of pounds in price and in weight of GHG emissions are still being spent on Metro extensions and on Sprint, "the bus that thinks it's a tram".

Up to as many as 1,000 trees/shrubs are planned to be felled along the south side of Hagley Road, Birmingham to duplicate the many buses with super expensive, flash, over indulgent, wealth flaunting Metro trams and, perhaps, Sprint too (a 2010s, £12m scheme for Hagley Road is still not cancelled).  Metro, definitely, has the second most expensive construction costs, of all transport modes, after the well over £200 m/Km for High Scam 2 that is the very greediest, yet totally unnecessary.

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please.  REPLY to condemn or support!

Your excellent "transition to ecologically sustainable degradation."

For example, food waste (which should be greatly reduced of course) should be digested by bacteria, in a similar way to that done on sewage. There is such a sewage plant somewhere near your way that I took children to visit when a teacher. Kiddermnister way?  After being left to be digested by special bacteria for some time, the sewage is safe to pump into rivers, I was told at the time.

There are new bacteria coming to light that can digest plastics I have read recently.  Now, glass, porcelain and tin cans are a different matter of course, but paper and cardboard might also be able to be biologically digested.

Let's have returnable deposit-linked drinks bottles. No more plastic ones or milk containers.

Greatly reduce disposable nappies.

How's that for a start? It would begin to drastically reduce CO2 from incinerators.

I don't have a site in mind for more info at the moment, but I'm sure they must exist.

to Simon Phipps, Dudley's Regeneration Lead

Dear Simon - copied to Cabinet

I am so sorry to have to be a wet blanket on the day that, after 60 years, my home town since Jan 1976, finally gets a much needed, updated, energy efficient, swimming pool.

The problem is this.  You all joined everyone else in piously declaring a climate emergency in 2020 and then doing nothing (hypocrisy charge from people like me).  In fact, you are continuing with business as usual with our totally unsustainable lifestyle wholly dependent on finite fossil fuels.  Living unnaturally on a natural planet and living infinitely on a finite planet.  Extremely foolish and dangerous.

Running a swimming pool, I'm told, is very heavy on energy and thus heavy also on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  It is urgent that we all cut our use of fossil fuels, as my wife and I have done both at home and me, with my driving drastically reduced.  Yet, your council moved the second newest leisure centre a distance of, precisely 1 Km when it could have been retrofitted to make it more energy efficient.  No wonder my council tax has gone up 30% over the last three or four years, I think!  I'm sure it was £100 at the end of last decade, if I remember correctly and it is now £136 by direct debit every month for ten months.

This climate catastrophe that is unfolding before us means we all have to make sacrifices in order to win the bigger prize of living much more simply, sustainably, in tune with nature and, with the realities of resource shortages.  And to postpone extinction (the planet's sixth).

Having paid £200 per year since 2013 when I retired in order to swim three times a week, I will be boycotting the swimming pool for the rest of my life and will confine my physical exercise to walking and cycling and using the bus, train, tram as much as possible - running or smartly walking to catch the bus!

What you must do now is to reduce the temperature of the pool water, as Germany has done with so many of its swimming pools.  Definitely, cool showers, too - seriously.  Like Germany.  Find out the temperature they now use.

The emergency means, of course, you have to stop even more destruction of the UK's only and last railway "of national strategic significance" by scrapping immoral and idiotic Phase 2 Metro and all the other Metro extensions - £15 BILLION to 2040 for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops!!  Remember, when you have a nationally important railway in use at the NE end and at the SW end, all you have to do, Mr Regeneration is to put commuter, regional and freight TRAINS back on the middle section in the Black Country without them.  Very simple and blindingly obvious from a man who failed the 11+ and went to a secondary mod!

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

Best wishes

Tim

PS bonus

to the British Mountaineering Council

Hi Peter

Thanks so much for this email and your previous emails, read but not replied to!

I am very concerned about your examples and, I'm most unhappy with all these five developments that I definitely don't approve of.  The path to Crafnant sounds way over the top and unnecessary.  I don't want our national parks to become like country parks.  Near me, in the Black Country and Brum, we have many country parks and traditional Victorian parks that do have to be maintained with paths and cycle-walkways that are well surfaced and drained for heavy use.  Signs are also essential.

In national parks, the local communities must decide what is done.  The UK population is growing, as is leisure and the use of electric cars that are no more sustainable than petrol/diesel.  This, when we are supposed to be responding and making concessions to growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leading to the 6th extinction episode that is overtaking humanity.  I am.  I'm leading by example.  And, I've been a full-time cycle commuter since the mid 90s.  See:

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

where I have cut my car travel by well over 50% (down to 5,000 miles in 2021 and, I hope, a little lower this year), sticking to 60 to 65 mph on 70 mph roads to get well over 70 mpg while still having my very low impact expeditions to Scotland in April and October to try and complete my 1,101 summits visited over 2,000 feet.  I've now banned myself from using the car to go into Wales for hill walking and am doing train/bikepacking instead.  We all have to gladly make sacrifices to win the bigger prize of tackling and overcoming our unsustainable behaviours.  Especially old men like me who must show even greater restraint than you youngsters, after my lifetime of excesses.

If at all possible, car parks must not be extended, unless they will be used by walkers who will use the Sherpa bus.  We all have to show restraint and be prepared to restrict our activities, especially car use, in the light of the many pious declarations of a climate emergency - that then get totally ignored as we all carry on regardless with our fingers crossed behind our backs.

Somehow, there has to be a sea change in attitudes and behaviour away from the ubiquitous car towards active travel and travel by bus and train.  I am doing so.  I want other BMC members to do likewise.  You are welcome to read any of this out at your meetings, please!

LESS RELEVANT to read:

For the last few years, I've been pleading for the UK's major, urban-rural-urban, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to be upgraded for use as a commuter and business route for cyclists, as well as its present leisure use by dog walkers and visitors to the Woodland Trust property, three nature reserves and two traditional railway stations used as refreshment stops.  The 22 Kms is on two old railway lines that are best for active, food-fueled travellers not reliant on fossil fuels.

When it comes to our national parks, work must be done to maintain honey pot locations to minimise erosion and to attempt to keep the majority of visitors to those popular locations.  For me, the further you go from the car parks, the wilder and the more natural the environment can be, the better.  However, well built paths in local stone are a real help to keep us all within the narrow bounds of the path and prevent widening.  Some footbridges are also essential even in wild country, as I've so valued in Scotland.  The very occasional cairn is also reassuring in wild, remote country.  The Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society have also done excellent work for decades and their signs are great to see.

Best wishes

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please

How on earth can we address the multiple crises facing the nation, let alone climate catastrophe, if we can't even stop replacing or duplicating perfectly good buses and trains with trams and, with buses that think they are trams?

Hundreds of millions of pounds in price and in weight of GHG emissions are still being spent on Metro extensions and on Sprint, "the bus that thinks it's a tram".

Up to as many as 1,000 trees/shrubs are planned to be felled along the south side of Hagley Road, Birmingham to duplicate the many buses with super expensive, flash, over indulgent, wealth flaunting Metro trams and, perhaps, Sprint too (a 2010s, £12m scheme for Hagley Road is still not cancelled).  Metro, definitely, has the second most expensive construction costs, of all transport modes, after the well over £200 m/Km for High Scam 2 that is the very greediest, yet totally unnecessary.

Tell me I am mistaken, in some way - please.  REPLY to condemn or support!

Fuel Poverty task force for WMCA or Climate Emergency?

Dear John - and copied to 'core' people: Chris, Richard, Bob and Jules for their thoughts.

Thanks so much for engaging and reading my stuff, including the CANWM (or Climate Coalition) Nine Action Points that were part of the 19 November 2021 petition that hundreds signed.  Bob took the lead and wrote it, if I remember correctly.

You wrote, "In the taskforce I think we should concentrate on the emergency."  By that, I think you mean the WMCA fuel poverty emergency taskforce that CANWM is suggesting and lobbying for and now wants to be part of.  I see this as:

1. a diversion from our primary aim of climate action on the climate emergency that was reflected so well on what Bob led on on 19 November last year when we met in Wolverhampton outside the CA Board meeting and our delegation, led by Bob, presented the petition to Andy Street.
2. The current wider and more serious fuel poverty is one of the results of past economic and mainly national government but also regional government decisions - like the greedy, GHG emitting, wealth flaunting but well intentioned, High Scam 2, 150 miles and 8 lines of Metro and similar mileage for prestigious Sprint (the bus that thinks it's a tram).
3. Our focus should be solely on ways to emit fewer GHG and our original 2021 Nine Action Points does that so well and has been overlooked, I feel, in the recent discussions in our meetings on the fuel poverty/cost of living emergency.
4. Only one year has gone by and we must, I think, concentrate on one thing at a time, viz our brilliant petition and the Nine Action Points - for the time being.
5. Fuel poverty is already well taken care of by quite a few national organisations from my Google search and, in the region, there are many charities involved if you include all the faith groups.  In Halesowen our churches are setting up 'warm places' on every single day.  So this addresses local fuel poverty very well and is a first-rate, practical, hands-on response to the energy and cost of living crises.
6. I feel that CANWM is unique in, up to now, concentrating on ideas to cut GHG emissions with the very popular, colourful leaflet from its inception and, from last year, Bob's excellent Nine Action Points.  Every point is so relevant and vital.
7. I would prefer the CA to set up a climate emergency task force rather than a fuel poverty task force.  I was ribbing/teasing a few on Friday as I welcomed them to their Board meeting that nothing had changed in the three years since they declared a climate emergency.  In fact, only got worse!
8. Our recent emphasis on the fuel poverty emergency rather than the urgency of slashing GHG emissions with more sensible spending, has now led Ed Cox to change the forum on the 21 November from transport to fuel poverty and the cost of living crisis.  Fuel poverty could have waited to the forum after the one on transport this month, I think.
9. With COP 27 from Sunday, it seems not quite right for us to be emphasising fuel poverty rather than the worsening climate crisis with too much regional spending on all the wrong projects.

But what do you all think?  I'm happy, as always never to have my way!!

Tim

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

On 02/11/2022 at 10:03 AM, "Tim Weller" <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all

This is excellent and so good to read.  Thanks.  However, my concern is that the culture of WMCA and all its constituent councils is one of very high spending on far too many prestigious, totally unnecessary and, definitely, harmful transport projects that are diverting them from our first rate, Nine Action Points plan (with my own 10th added!), as here

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

and my own ideas from 2019 that I gave to most members who attended last Friday's Board meeting, as here:

 My ten point West Midlands plan for the new Gov...

.

I would have preferred us to stay concentrated on the original 'Nine Action Points' that Bob, Chris and I presented to Cllr Ian Courts, Chair, Environment and Energy Board - was it two years ago, now?  They have now forgotten about it and certainly done nothing.  They need reminding and chased up!

I would like all of us and especially for those chosen to go to next week's meeting with Ed Cox, to read through our original Nine Action Points with him and to insist that even faster moves, already taking place towards FFPT, are fast tracked by abandoning their £15 BILLION to 2040 mainly immoral Metro expansion programme.  This would help fuel poverty and all the other multiple crises that affect those using public transport much more than the wealthier swanning around in their personal motors and worsening the climate emergency.

Does that make sense to anyone out there - please?!

Tim

Andy's bright spark plan

Hi Jules - and many thanks

You wrote, "If you know of a comprehensive view of the CA revenue and capital budgets and work programmes, please share a doc or a link so our team can go into meetings well prepared."

Andy's bright spark plan on splashing out billions on all the wrong things to bring fuel poverty to an even wider circle of people is here:

https://www.andystreet.org.uk/news/andy-street-unveils-his-ps15-billion-twenty-year-plan-metro-and-rail-west-midlands

Fuel poverty to more people because, like Liz Truss whom he voted for, Andy also wants our finite reserves of resources more quickly exhausted by BIG spending on everything wealth flaunting, greedy and over indulgent.  In other words, he (no longer Liz) is busily bankrupting the country so that we'll have to be bailed out by the World Bank.  That means more poverty and not just in fuel, either.

Spending 'til you drop = poverty.  Re-allocating funds from HS2, Metro and Sprint to our Nine Action Points = building a society where all levels of society are using public transport regularly and using the car for treats and rewards for climate friendly behaviour.

I read recently on Twitter, "A developed country is not where the poor have cars.  It's where the rich use public transport."

I've just heard alarming news on Radio 4, 'PM' from Evan Davis.  Europe has seen the fastest temperature rise of any continent - "more than twice the global average over the last thirty years."  COP 27 approaches and we must be shrill in demanding that the WMCA slashes its disastrous irresponsible overspending on Metro and Sprint.  Immediately.

Climate First at this time in talks with the Combined Authority as COP 27 is in progress next week is what they would expect from us.  Stopping the future planned spending on unnecessary Metro and Sprint extensions can then release money for more concessionary travel for more passengers to help with energy and food bills.  This is the quickest, painless and easiest way for the WMCA to address fuel poverty and the cost of living crisis.

We ourselves took an initiative in presenting the nine action points and that really is what we must emphasise to Ed, Laura and Andy on every occasion we get to meet them or write to them.  I will do so myself.  We mustn't let them off the hook but make them squirm over their three years of no action on climate.  I reminded them of their Declaration last Friday morning as, in the corridor, I cheekily welcomed them to their own Board meeting - what fun!

The problem with Metro and Sprint

Metro and Sprint.  Both have been disastrous in destroying railway infrastructure and in delaying the return of freight and commuter trains in the Black Country and Brum on surviving railway lines.

Both are astonishingly expensive, second only to HS2 and, take public funds that could be more sensibly spent on getting the two main modes of public transport as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.

Both are wasting precious finite resources that we need to conserve and use more wisely to fight the climate emergency.

Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway

Dear Shaz

Clearing the undergrowth on Dudley's section of Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway

Please, can you do more to make your/our section fit to use without wellies?

Please ask your workers to clear the undergrowth back from the path to allow the mud and puddles to dry out more quickly.

The Dudley section has two short public rights of way connecting it with the Crooked House, "Creative rustic cooking and local real ales served in quirky higgledy-piggledy old world pub."  (Google Maps)  It is off Himley Road and is well worth a visit for the mining subsidence that has caused it to be 'crooked'.  I've never seen anything like it for its visual illusions!

The whole 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway is clearly marked on the OS Explorer map as "Traffic-free cycle route" (from the map Legend or Key).  It has brown circles on the full length on the map that stand out so well.  On the ground, in Dudley, it is a disgrace in the vicinity of the Crooked House pub through to Barrow Hill Nature Reserve.

to Ed Bradford of Dudley MBC

 Dear Ed - please reply

1. What is this detailed report mentioned last time?
2. Could you agree that chemicals/herbicides are only used as a very last resort to kill weeds?  A bare minimum spraying regime be enforced, perhaps?
3. That residents who complain at lack of spraying may be asked if they would like to receive payment for voluntarily pulling up unwanted plant growth along pavements that they are complaining about?
4. That a no mowing regime is enforced to keep vegetation only away from road edges.  Especially the section of the A456/Manor Way between Jct 3 Manor Way and Manor Lane, Halesowen.  Rewilding to give nature a hand when it does not affect visibility.
5. Can the money saved in minimising the use of finite fossil fuel chemicals in this way, be used to pay for a twice yearly cutting back of vegetation on the UK's major but unrecognised, 22 Kms urban-rural-urban, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway?  The Dudley section is a disgrace and, most immediately, needs the vegetation cut back to about 1.5 to 2 metres width to allow wind and sun to dry out the puddles, pools and mud from the Barrow Hill Nature Reserve section, going towards Himley.  It should be a popular, commuter, leisure and business route for cyclists (no 70 mph, e-mopeds), walkers and horse riders.

Best wishes

HS2 illogical, unevidenced, clutching at straws statements

On the 13 October 2022, W Mids transport chief and Leader of Brum CC, Cllr Ian Ward said,

"HS2 will be net carbon neutral in operation and it will allow more freight to be moved to the local rail network."

Unfortunately, so many GHG will have been emitted in construction, it will take decades, that we don't have, for those emissions to be wiped out by only, a supposedly too, net zero operation (not gross).  It ain't worth persisting with HS2 when the climate catastrophe is now upon us.

Net zero simply means that you hope that carbon capture and storage will be successful.  But like nuclear fusion, CCS is still out of reach.  And we don't have enough land on the planet suitable for growing enough trees, anyway.

You can't move any freight from the West Coast Mainline when you will still need the same number of passenger trains to serve the many stations that HS2 is too fast to stop at.  HS2 is of use, mainly, to only three cities and two of their airports.  Some trains will stop at Crewe and Toton (or is Toton the new E arm terminal?).

In addition, people take as gospel highly optimistic claims by supporters.  So exaggerated and optimistic that there is no evidence to back them up - only hope in desperate, absurd claims.  Therefore, they should not be made.  It verges on lying.

PULL THE PLUG ON BIG SPENDERS TO HELP THE POOR

The best way to help is to insist/demand that ALL the expensive, unnecessary projects, eg: HS2, Metro, Sprint get pulled and the funds redirected and staff redeployed to Fare-Free Public Transport for all, true affordable housing at Merry Hill instead of Metro, urgent insulation of homes of those on benefits ... and much more, as here:​

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

​

Radio 4 this morning had:

"UNESCO says a third of the glaciers located in World Heritage Sites will vanish by 2050 because of climate change.  Researchers who used existing satellite data to track the shrinking of nearly 19,000 glaciers, say it is already too late to do anything about it.

Our Climate and Science reporter explains:

'This report concludes that even if global temperature increases are kept to below 1.5C ... glaciers at sites like Kilimanjaro and Yosemite and Mt Purdue in the Pyrenees will be gone in three decades.  These rivers of ice are crucial for human survival.  It is estimated that 50% of us rely on them as a water source for our homes, for growing food and generating energy from hydro power.  The researchers say that global emissions need to be cut dramatically to reduce the loss of other glaciers.' "

Climate Action Network is about cutting GHG emissions urgently to minimise/delay climate catastrophe.

Tim Weller

MP for Buckingham on HS2

 Want to save the economy? Scrap HS2 once and for all

This is the Government's opportunity to make the right savings in the right places for the right reasons. Please don’t squander it.

Greg Smith MP - 31 October 2022

Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have been crystal clear about the difficult financial decisions to come. That inevitably means reductions in public spending, which in turn conjures images of the axe falling on politically impossible budgets like health, education, social care and policing. But in an era of difficult decisions, there’s one cut that should be an easy choice: HS2. 

The financial incontinence of HS2 was once again under the spotlight last week, with the new Transport Secretary issuing the latest six monthly review. Horror show admissions littered the document, from revelations that contingency budgets are already being burned up, to the waste of £100m on design work at London Euston. “Unexpected” construction costs were blamed, but it was always a fairy tale to believe costs would not go up from the 2019 benchmark on a project that would take in excess of a decade (perhaps two) to deliver. 

HS2 is currently on a path to costing the taxpayer in excess of £100 billion, and the true figure is likely to be even higher once the sustained loss in productivity to impacted businesses and the ancillary costs associated with delays caused by the pandemic and inflation are accounted for. That could equate to £307 million per mile. 

If this hasn’t already sharpened the Chancellor’s mind, then he should read the latest analysis by Lord Berkley. Allowing for inflation, using indices published by the Office for National Statistics, he has calculated that the cost of HS2 at today’s prices is a whopping £155.52 billion. More significantly, he presents a compelling case that through absorption of existing works into the current railway and road network, with the vast swathes of land that have been compulsory purchased being returned to former owners or sold off, the money lost on this white elephant project can be reduced to just £8 billion, making the overall saving of £147 billion. That is around a third of the Covid debt. 

If this project is allowed to continue it will be an albatross around the Government’s neck. Costs will go up and up, with a continued need to find efficiencies within the project’s scope, including the potential for an alternative temporary terminus at Old Oak Common in West London whilst delayed and over-budgeted works at Euston, and on the new tunnel leading to and from it are carried out. Such contingency plans will ultimately have a very disruptive impact on the existing rail network, particularly on the Great Western Main Line, in turn spreading the economic damage far beyond the immediate vicinity of construction.

This is to say nothing of the devastation being caused on a human level by the project within that vicinity. I speak with experience on this. HS2 will run for approximately 19 miles through my rural constituency, parts of which are currently being decimated without due regard or concern for the surrounding areas, none of which asked for such damaging upheaval to these otherwise peaceful and idyllic communities. Arable farms, the beating heart of the rural economy, have at times been made inoperable by construction, as have several other local businesses, including a bus company that transports school children from villages across my constituency. The cost to businesses and the residual effect on the local economy from HS2 remains stark. 

Rather, we must prioritise revitalising and upgrading our existing railway network, which would benefit far more people and businesses and would deliver those benefits in a much quicker, more effective, and more tangible way. Those travelling to work or school or for leisure simply want a seat, a fast and reliable internet connection and a toilet that doesn’t resemble the facilities on the final day of a third rate music festival – not to mention the certainty that their train will turn up in the face of constant industrial action. These should and must be the Department for Transport’s priorities, not a multi-billion-pound white elephant.

Likewise, if the case above is not convincing enough, if there was genuine demand for this monster, then why are private investors not falling over themselves to invest in HS2? Their silence and unwillingness to touch it with a barge pole should speak volumes. Furthermore, no test of public opinion has ever proved favourable towards HS2. Looking at the YouGov biannual tracker, since 2019 “strongly support” has never got over 8 per cent. So scrapping it would surely be popular, especially compared to wider public sector cuts. 

HS2 remains unviable, unaffordable, and undeliverable. It needs to be scrapped in its entirety. Chancellor – this is your opportunity to make the right savings in the right places for the right reasons, please don’t squander it. 

Greg Smith is the Member of Parliament for Buckingham

Regional Transport Chief invitation

I'm still angling for a proper discussion with you, please, that we did not have when we met at your surgery on that occasion.  Or, a walk and talk meeting and site survey of what your officers are wanting at Merry Hill as Phase 2 of WBHE.  I will treat you to coffee and cake as, not a bribe but a reward for seeing my landscape enhancement scheme at Merry Hill!  Seriously, please come over to a different part of your patch and see the monorail station and where the tram is due to go.  You are the regional transport chief, after all.

I've now watched all of the YouTube recording - parts twice, even, in case I misheard!

I thought you were very good, knowledgeable and you came over extremely well, as you always do.  However, I want to pick you up on a couple of things you said.  Your wish you had been bolder on the A45 bus priority; the two statements you made on HS2; your thoughts on Berlin transport; Edinburgh's handling of trams; and, road pricing experiment for Hagley Road only.

In addition, your feedback on this:

1.   Pausing Metro and Sprint extensions.  Andy wants tens of billions of pounds to be spent to 2040 on eight lines and 150 miles of Metro expansion, alone.  What do you think?

2.   POSITIVE: The carrot of Fare-Free Public Transport extended from my old crocks age group to everyone else.

3.   HELPFUL: The stick of the Clean Air Zone made stricter; as well as road pricing to penalise the car commuters who don't need their motors for their job but who thoughtlessly clog up the road space for essential business users.

4.   CONSTRUCTIVE: My two year Hagley Road experiment, as here:

 24 month experiment on Hagley Road

These basic, vital proposals are in the light of multiple crises: climate, energy, cost of living, inflation, resource shortages, population, spending way beyond what the planet can possibly deliver.  My proposals/suggestions are for pure humanitarian reasons - above all else!

Can WBHE terminate at Level Street to save, at Merry Hill, housing land, public open space canal embankment, a nature site that includes my guerrilla garden and, trees, shrubs?

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

As CA Transport portfolio holder Ian, is there any chance you can promote the UK's major 22 Kms, urban-rural-urban, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway - please?  The Dudley section is a disgrace and, most immediately, needs the vegetation cut back to about 1.5 to 2 metres to allow wind and sun to dry out the puddles, pools and mud from the Barrow Hill Nature Reserve section, going towards Himley.  It should be a popular, commuter, leisure and business route for cyclists, walkers and horse riders.

The other cycle matter is no kind of pavement, let alone a professional cycle-walkway, is provided down even one side of Duncan Edwards Way in Dudley, let alone both.  Even in the 90s (the bypass was open in 1999, I think), HMG was telling local councils to provide for walkers and cyclists on new road schemes - but Dudley did not!

More on both schemes, here:

 My ten point West Midlands plan for the new Gov...

Best wishes

Incorrigible Councils!

Hi all

This is excellent and so good to read.  Thanks.  However, my concern is that the culture of WMCA and all its constituent councils is one of very high spending on far too many prestigious, totally unnecessary and, definitely, harmful transport projects that are diverting them from our first rate, Nine Action Points plan (with my own 10th added!), as here

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

and my own ideas from 2019 that I gave to most members who attended last Friday's Board meeting, as here:

 My ten point West Midlands plan for the new Gov...

I would have preferred us to stay concentrated on the original 'Nine Action Points' that Bob, Chris and I presented to Cllr Ian Courts, Chair, Environment and Energy Board - was it two years ago, now?  They have now forgotten about it and certainly done nothing.  They need reminding and chased up!

I would like all of us and especially for those chosen to go to next week's meeting with Ed Cox, to read through our original Nine Action Points with him and to insist that even faster moves, already taking place towards FFPT, are fast-tracked by abandoning their £15 BILLION to 2040 mainly immoral Metro expansion programme.  This would help fuel poverty and all the other multiple crises that affect those using public transport much more than the wealthier swanning around in their personal motors and worsening the climate emergency.

Does that make sense to anyone out there - please?!

Tim

BACKGROUND to my thinking:

the post below

The HS2, Metro, Sprint, Grand Central Shopping Centre Syndrome!

The authorities are so well-meaning, sincere and want the very best - so think HS2, Metro, Sprint, Grand Central Shopping Centre are the most essential and desirable projects since sliced bread.  But they are sincerely wrong!

The already very well-paid love their wealth flaunting, out to impress, flash projects like these.  In contrast, nearly 40,000 desperate migrants have boated across the Channel, just this year, and remain in almost equally desperate straits with their wretched accommodation in England.  This is shameful!

And the UK is near the bottom of European nations in taking asylum seekers.  We do the least - almost!

Fleeing war, famine, and environmental degradation from climate consequences, we would do the same if we were in their plight.  And only the Ukrainian refugees get quickly housed with UK families, it seems.

It does not matter what subject is talked about at the Green Forums, we can still talk about the even more desperate need not to waste money as they are doing but to get the brownfield sites like High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill given to the most desperate and not to immoral Metro "bus on rails" trams.

We can still talk about the grossly extravagant, greedy HS2, Metro, Sprint and the desperate need for a more sustainable, more eco-socialist, the poor first and foremost emphasis.

This is urgent: Very low cost to run, highly energy efficient apartments, small housing units with their own rooftop solar PV to make the electricity for warmth and food for the worst housed.

The millions of pounds in price and in weight of GHG emissions must, like the staff, be redeployed into these new priorities.

Tim Weller