Long long ago … well 12 years ago I suggested the way to solve the car problem in Birmingham but the politicians ignored it and spent vast sums of money on the metro… costing in places 1 million £s a metre, as eg at five ways £50 million cost to move the end of the line 50 yards from Morrisons to an office block and that cost does not include the land bought up. Of course the metro was designed to go to Quinton but can go no further than 5 ways. The metro is a vanity project because Manchester, Croydon, Nottingham have one. It is excessively expensive. My solution would have cost less than a 1/4 of the price per mile. It would have not interfered with the road system and it would have been carbon neutral and built near Oxford. Moreover it would ensure transport every 20 seconds into and out of town. I drew up plans for a gondola system ie large cable cars running eg above the Hagley Road to Quinton… another one running from where the Hagley Road joins the Wolverhampton Road to Dudley and beyond… to which was added driverless small buses to go to the “stations” en route as for example in our twin of LYON in France, Oakland in Oregon US and in La Paz in Bolivia. Added to this I envisaged as in many German towns and cities underground car stacking, where cars are robotically stacked uNderground near these station hubs or under them… it is one of the tragedies of Birmingham that can best be seen from google overhead camera footage online that 40% of the city centre is designed for the sole use of the car… be it roads, car parking lots, car parks, garages and car workshops. This is a nonsense. Car stacking rather than multi storey carparks or car park plots of land would release 25% of land. Instead politicians were fixated on an expensive metro system. I produced a scheme for 2 billion £ that would have incorporated the whole of the West Midlands. Instead that sum has gone on an incoherent metro system that will never reduce car traffic. As to Perry Barr it is a mess…
Long long ago … well 12 years ago I suggested the way to solve the car problem in Birmingham but the politicians ignored it and spent vast sums of money on the metro… costing in places 1 million £s a metre, as eg at five ways £50 million cost to move the end of the line 50 yards from Morrisons to an office block and that cost does not include the land bought up. Of course the metro was designed to go to Quinton but can go no further than 5 ways. The metro is a vanity project because Manchester, Croydon, Nottingham have one. It is excessively expensive. My solution would have cost less than a 1/4 of the price per mile. It would have not interfered with the road system and it would have been carbon neutral and built near Oxford. Moreover it would ensure transport every 20 seconds into and out of town. I drew up plans for a gondola system ie large cable cars running eg above the Hagley Road to Quinton… another one running from where the Hagley Road joins the Wolverhampton Road to Dudley and beyond… to which was added driverless small buses to go to the “stations” en route as for example in our twin of LYON in France, Oakland in Oregon US and in La Paz in Bolivia. Added to this I envisaged as in many German towns and cities underground car stacking, where cars are robotically stacked uNderground near these station hubs or under them… it is one of the tragedies of Birmingham that can best be seen from google overhead camera footage online that 40% of the city centre is designed for the sole use of the car… be it roads, car parking lots, car parks, garages and car workshops. This is a nonsense. Car stacking rather than multi storey carparks or car park plots of land would release 25% of land. Instead politicians were fixated on an expensive metro system. I produced a scheme for 2 billion £ that would have incorporated the whole of the West Midlands. Instead that sum has gone on an incoherent metro system that will never reduce car traffic. As to Perry Barr it is a mess…
Hooray for Virtue Signalling! And better houses for everyone. With parking areas.
Excellent piece Mike. Very witty. See you down Virtue Signalling Avenue- is that anywhere near the back of Rackhams?