We need trains not trams
Councillor Patrick Harley, leader of Dudley Council, said: “This is a real game changer for Dudley – the Metro is vital to the town and the borough’s economy.”
It is indeed a game changer to put slow, six trams an hour ‘bus on rails’ trams on the UK’s last remaining, unused with everything there bar the trains, principal main line railway.
Such stupidity has never been even attempted anywhere else in the world!
Million to dig up the roads to move the cables and pipes before the tram tracks can be laid – to a ghost town on top of the hill. Returning the trains to the UK’s last, half completed, main line railway, linked to electric buses (not trams), would be more fiscally responsible, quicker to achieve and help many more people.
Dudley town centre has moved to Castle Gate – exactly where the much-needed main line railway station sits – with the innovation centre soon to be put on top. This is the only feasible site for the railway station. Yet more road and railway congestion as another railway station bites the dust!
The UK lacks capacity on its railway network because the thoughtless and inept transport bosses have been spending decades turning them into roads, for retail, housing estates and industrial units. Since the 1990s, even putting trams on 20kms to destroy 3kms of urban double track railway line and one of Wolverhampton’s main line stations!
Our stupid transport bosses and planners have been doing the equivalent of putting London Underground trains on the London to Paris HS1 line! With us, it is a slow, local, frequent stopping, six trams an hour service, on only 6.7kms out of 56kms in the middle of a half completed 120kms main line railway. But that prevents the fast, regional and national trains from ever returning, anytime soon, between now and the end of the world!
Tim Weller
Halesowen
