New in the West Midlands (2022 Edition) Part 1: Trams on Broad Street

After a tumultuous couple of years for Midland Metro, now known as West Midlands Metro, the next stage of the tramway's incremental development opened on Sunday 17th July 2022.

In 2021 the Corporation Street section of WM Metro, itself only about five years old, was completely replaced.  WM Metro said this was to facilitate a new junction to serve the next extension, to east Birmingham. But you don't need to relay a whole road for one junction. Something definitely went wrong in the construction here.

In 2021 and 2022 WM Metro also suffered a number of failures of it's CAF Urbos fleet, resulting in three separate fleet withdrawals.

However signs of future extensions as the junction to Lower Bull Street, and ultimately east Birmingham in the direction of the Curzon Street HS2 station, is now in place.

Infrastructure starting to be built on an otherwise empty Lower Bull Street. This should be full of 55s and 94s.....

Back to the subject in hand: one of the WM Metro fleet of CAF Urbos trams heads west along Broad Street past the Figure of Eight pub.

Unusually for WM Metro, on Broad Street it shares on-street running with buses.  However they serve different stops. If only this could be retained elsewhere rather than pushing the buses out of the centre!

This mid-Saturday tram along Broad Street was well loaded.  Many of the WM Metro extensions have seemed a bit 'pointless' to the outsider, adding only two or three stops, but it is an excellent demonstration of the cumulative benefit of marginal improvements. Maybe an economist could explain that better! Or put it another way - build what you can afford and if it's vaguely sensible, the people will come.  Manchester Metrolink has had a more 'big bang' whole new line policy with its extensions.

The new western extension of WM Metro terminates here at a stop named Edgbaston Village.  It is a sensible traffic objective in itself with a large Morrison's supermarket adjacent, as well as other shops.  It ay end up serving as an interchange for buses heading west along the Hagley Road.

The new standard WM Metro stop is reasonably pleasant.  However it is very 'Metro' focussed: publicity does not mention any of the multi-operator or multi-mode tickets availabe across the West Midlands, and there is a 'myMetro' app - not 'myTfWM' or 'myTravel', as I'd expect a public transport authority to do. It's almost dis-integrating in favour of the mode it owns and operates.

Even worse, TfWM (Transport for West Midlands, NOT the West Midlands) have devised a fare zone system for the Metro consisting of for zones that is different to both the fare zone system for the rail network (five zones, itself tendered and overseen by TfWM's West Midlands Rail Executive) (below) or the zonal system used by the dominant bus operator, National Express West Midlands.

 

The stops also do not include ticket machines.  Unlike nearly every other public transport operator in the world, TfWM do not have at-stop machines anywhere.  When the light rail system opened, as Midland Metro, ticketing was provided by Ansaldo Breda. Like the trams, you got what you paid for.....

West Midlands Metro CAF Urbos at Brindley Place (now styled Brindeyplace) stop.

Unnecessarily complicated ticketing, with no mention of multi-operator or multi-mode tickets or any mention of whether these can be purchased from the conductor on the tram.

So in conclusion, as suggested the accumulation of marginal extensions seems to be working for West Midlands Metro, with well loaded trams - though the Commonwealth Games may have influenced this as Birmingham city centre was immensely busy. There have clearly been significant failures in recent years of both infrastructure and trams ( I say it again, you get what you pay for) so to maintain credibility as both an organisation and a system, TfWM have to ensure these mistakes are not repeated on this or future extensions. It took long enough to build, it should be perfect!

Next stop: Curzon Street!