High Speed v Local Rail

The year is 2010, it’s the future, we are my friends just 5 years away from flying cars and hoverboards, yet it still takes longer to get around the Midlands than it does to get from here to London. The future is just one let down after another!

Forget wizzing around in tubes like in Futurama, or having your own bubble car as seen in the highly optimistic era that produced the Jetsons, we are facing an under reported challenge to carry on moving in the face of oil depletion. You see if you look back just 70 years, we started building our local transport networks around electricity. We had trams and we lived so local that one would not even need a car to get to the shops, lest need a bus pass to get to work or school (people could and did have lunch at home), and oh the bus ran on electric too.

Ah but don’t worry, the bofins in central government have a plan; Faster electric trains to London is what we need, for the low carbon economy (to produce a “modal shift” away from domestic air travel) and so in March the spotlight was thrown on a High Speed Rail (HSR) network. This would be linking London to Birmingham in around 45 minutes as phase one, work to begin in 2017 and run (or run over) into 2026 and beyond, phase ONE, which doesn’t really involve linking to Scotland which would make the Third Runway at Heathrow, surplus to requirements. Now I don’t know about you, but the last time Labour sighted the words “45 minutes” in a report, it was rather dodgy and highly sexed up!

You see if you look back just 70 years, we started building our local transport networks around electricity, our rail system was vital to our economic growth. We had trams and we lived so local that one would not even need a car, lest need a bus pass, and oh the bus ran on electric too.

As you can already see, High Speed rail then, has nothing to do with helping us get around day to day any faster or without a high carbon car or bus to move us around. Reading between the lines, the fact that it’s 2010 and we need a plan by 2030, is perhaps the driving force behind this focus on rail.

What About Local Rail in the Face of Oil Depletion
I’ve been so motivated by this issue recently that I’ve asked for information from our local transport authority what the plans are to improve local rail infrastructure. They sent a thick prospectus that raises hopes that Walsall will be connected to Lichfield by train and the suburbs of North Birmingham by light rail, and also highlights the bus routes that are an absolute must to keep running. There is a focus on increasing the area in which the “journey to work” is less than 45 minutes, again I point you in the direction the dodgey dosiers department. All these plans, are just that. Plans.

All these plans, are just that. Plans. Next to the Walsall to Birmingham via Great Barr Metro route, there is marked “phase two”. Next to Walsall to Lichfield by direct train through Brownhills there is marked “no formal status”.

Local public transport is in the grip of a crisis. Our national infrastructure is fine. It takes the best part of an hour and a half to get from Walsall to Lichfield by rail (a 25 minute car journey) because we don’t have direct local rail links. Walsall to Wolverhampton? Forget it, the 529 bus service has put that one on the back burner. Yet you see the problem with the bus is, it hasn’t got a future! Only rail has a sustainable base on which to cope with the coming ceasing up of local travel. The Green Party argued in this months local elections that it is madness to consider a High Speed Rail link bewteen Birmingham and London, when local rail is in desperate need of improved journey times and as a traveller on our local trains, I have to admit, that won my vote.

Now look at Manchester, take a look at Sheffield, consider Newcastle and perhaps take a deep breath, consider European cities who managed to hold on to their trams and improve them despite rising car ownership.

Whatever Happened To our Trams?
The Yam Yam are doing an excellent job on covering the ups and downs of our “tram network” that is made up of just one route, hardley a network then?! We have a light rail system called the Midland Metro, on paper it sounds great. In reality, it was theorised in the 1980’s, it took almost 20 years to open, I rode one of the first journey’s in 1999 (11 years ago), and that’s the only route we have (needless to say it duplicates a much faster rail link between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, but the point is it serves the communites of North West Birmingham and the Black Country, whereas the train doesn’t). Plans for further routes either have no formal status or are facing major funding problems, and Walsall is at the heart of these plans, but they are just plans with no commitments. Now look at Manchester, take a look at Sheffield, consider Newcastle and perhaps take a deep breath, consider European cities who managed to hold on to their trams and improve them despite rising car ownership.

Funding Crisis
With cut backs already being announced, I fail to see how we will even get a second or third Metro route off the drawing boards, let alone a duplication of a service between two major cities. 2010, is a bit late to start putting plans in place for the coming oil shocks, of which we had one at the start of this current downturn, July 2008. High Speed Rail, which is there to replace air travel, can only sap funding away from more local rail projects and HSR would benefit the minority not the majority, therefore we can argue with some vigour that it is wholey unfair to replace air travel with high speed rail while not investing in local rail which would benefit you and me day in day out.

As a commuter who wants to leave the car at home every once in a while and get around to see my friends and get to work in less than 2 hours, I find it highly frustrating that all this money should be going into projects to create a low carbon economy, that fails to 1) get me out of my car 2) improve local journey times and 3) ignores the very real fact that local rail and rapid light rails systems are SO hugely important as we get closer to 2020, it begars belief we are still putting our faith in the bus! We need to look again at this, and localisation is one way we can cope with the idea that we may have to travel a lot less in the future.

It would be great to see lanes turned over to trams, to see local train stations such as Willenhall, Brownhills, Aldridge, Streetly and more, re-open! It’ll take a long time, perhaps we won’t get this before 2030, perhaps we won’t get this at all

I hope this blog post has motivated you to contact Network West Midlands and push for better local travel. I drive a car because our public transport system can be utterly shocking, but I also see it as a vital part of the future of the region of which rail was immensly important. When the next oil shock comes, perhaps £2 or £3 a litre, it might be time to start investing that money which we do in our road travel, into our rail roads instead!

It would be great to see lanes turned over to trams, to see local train stations such as Willenhall, Brownhills, Aldridge, Streetly and more, re-open! It’ll take a long time, perhaps we won’t get this before 2030, perhaps we won’t get this at all. Perhaps our best hopes are the mixed used developments and walkable communities that are poping up in Walsall. I do know one thing, all of us are going to have to get used to a world without the bus or the car, or pay through the nose for oil based transportation systems.

Climate Change? Look Closer!
If this has really aroused your interest in peak oil, there are some excellent films out there to watch, mainly American in presentation, but they did peak in the 1970’s ;) One film comes to mind, “Escape from Suburbia“, highlights these very issues as does “The End of Suburbia”, how we went from living local and having trams and grand train stations, to commuting 50 or 60 miles a day and letting our rail system die. Another “A Crude Awakening”, follows similar lines and interviews the same people. A BBC docudrama set in 2016 (that’s 5 and a half years from now) but made in 2006 put petrol at £1.33 a litre (we are close to that), that was called “If” subtitle, “the oil ran out” and highlighted two years before the downturn that oil at $100/barrel would trigger an economic collapse, low and behold I kid you not, we know what happened at the end of 2008! We hit $147 that summer and the Dow Jones nose dived. We have to sort this out!

Posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010