A decision to opt for metro and bus transport improvements instead of a 'fully funded' monorail system will see the region 'strangle itself' with congestion, a prominent campaigner has said.

Neil Maybury believes that regional bosses are 'living in cloud cuckoo land' if they believe that the region's congestion problem will be solved by encouraging more people to take buses and the metro.

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) is currently working on a number of projects aimed at improving the region's transport network, with six different metro lines and three separate Sprint bus routes set to be completed in the next six years.

Part of the West Midlands Combined Authority's (WMCA) ten year transport plan passed last September is aimed at "improving transport and unlocking economic growth across the West Midlands".

How the planned Monorail might have looked in Birmingham.
How the planned Monorail might have looked in Birmingham.

But Mr Maybury thinks that transport bosses have missed a major trick by not considering what he believes is the best transport method available at the moment - a monorail.

When was the monorail plan first revealed?

First put forward in 2009, plans to introduce what Mr Maybury says would have been a 'fully funded' monorail to the region have long been championed by the Greater Birmingham Monorail Company.

Initial proposals were to introduce the technology, which already exists in countries such as Brazil and is set to be built in Dubai and China, along the A34 corridor. However, the decision was made to construct a Sprint bus network along the corridor instead, with proposals to link it to the metro in the city centre.

But Mr Maybury believes such proposals are a mistake.

"Firstly, it does not take up road space, and secondly it can be built very inexpensively and very rapidly, and carries a lot of people," he said of the technology.

"We knew, in a city with next to no money, that there was no use in going to the city and saying ‘we estimate the cost of building the 10km from the centre of Birmingham out to the M6 at about £350 million'. There was no way the city was going to come up with that sort of money.

"So we started to talk to a couple of funders who have got significant investment available for transport infrastructure projects, and they were very keen to get involved in this. Interestingly they weren’t particularly interested in one line, they wanted to go for the seven line option, we’re talking probably between £2.5 and £3 billion, in place of methods such as the metro.

So what's the problem with the metro?

"The problem with the metro is it's very slow, has to run on rails in the road, and doesn’t carry very many people, 10,000 an hour if you’re lucky. I'm yet to see an absolutely rammed metro passing through the centre of Birmingham.

"By comparison, monorail will carry something like 40,000 an hour, runs at 55/60 kmh, is environmentally friendly, driverless, doesn't occupy any road space and perhaps even more importantly the actual cost and time of construction are absolutely fantastic.

"One of the big issues we have got in the centre of Birmingham is the mess and the chaos which is being caused by the extension from New Street up to Five Ways, which in my opinion is a line going from nowhere to nowhere.

"The mess is unbelievable, the roads have been closed for over a year, Pinfold Street is still a great hole, there’s a huge role around Victoria Square and the back of the town hall.

"They’ve just closed off Paradise Circus, and the chances are in my opinion it’s a 50/50 bet as to whether that line will be finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. I suspect it will hit unbelievable problems going up Broad Street. So in terms of advantages the monorail is head and shoulders above anything else that you can care to name.

"Also, I’ve always said, I think this would have a tremendous tourist attraction factor, people just see it and say ‘wow, what is that’ and want to go on it for a ride, 20 feet above the ground, and having a nice bird's eye view of the city."

Was wasn't the monorail plan fully considered?

Mr Maybury says that he and his team had detailed talks with Bombardier about building a potential monorail, as well as with Birmingham City Council and Transport for West Midlands.

But he claims that, despite being told that proposals would be considered as part of the ten year plan for the region, the WMCA went ahead with its plans without fully considering monorail as a possibility.

"So in June last year, after conversations with Andy Street, Andy sent a very interesting email to TfWM, saying that the monorail scheme must be considered in the context of the A34 corridor.

"On 17th August last year I got a call from Laura Shoaf [head of TfWM] saying she needed a letter of support from the council to enable me to look at this and to include it in their deliberations, which I told her was not a problem.

"The letter from the council arrived on 18/19 September last year, but within a few days of that I then discovered that the WMCA's ten year transport plan had been signed off a few days before, without mention of a monorail.

"We’d basically been shafted, and that really was very aggravating.

"So I went back and had further discussions with the funders, and we got to the point that, in order for the feasibility for the whole seven line situation for the whole region, that the funders might be willing to put the money up for it.

"They would pay for it and, subject to it all being accepted, it would go forward with funding being provided by them and not costing the council or the WMCA anything.

"So I went back to Andy and said ‘look, we can do this. It doesn’t need to affect what you’ve already got signed off with the WMCA, but why don’t you look at something in parallel to that for the future?

"These things take years to do, it’s not going to cost you anything, it is tried and tested technology, it will be a world beater, we’ll be the envy of Europe, and it will make us an incredibly attractive place from an investment point of view?"

The mayor responded to the letter from Mr Maybury with a joint-letter from both him and Birmingham council leader Ian Ward, stating that "there is no capacity or interest in taking the monorail proposal forward ahead of 2022 which is consistent with both the forward plans of the City of Birmingham and Transport for the West Midlands."

What impact will the monorail rejection have on the West Midlands?

But Mr Maybury believes that such a decision is not best for the people of the West Midlands.

"Frankly the people of Greater Birmingham deserve better than this, and frankly, this is not the way those in charge should be behaving. Because they're putting their heads in the sand, sticking with metro which is Victorian technology updated.

"We got rid of our trams in the 60s, we had a brilliant tram system in Birmingham and we got rid of it.

"And you’re going to rely on buses in a city of over a million people? Are they seriously telling me that the plan is to try and convince people to use the bus rather than the car? They're in cloud cuckoo land. I think the people of this area need to know what’s going on. That there was a fully enthusiastic worked up, detailed alternative plan which the WMCA just turned their back on completely without any thought.

"And it's obvious why TfWM aren't too enthusiastic about this. They’ve been working on metro for the past 10/15 years, their jobs depend on it. They have nailed their colours to the metro mast, this is the solution to the region’s congestion problems. And basically what they’re afraid of is if they start looking at something like monorail people would start saying ‘well you’ve backed the wrong horse, this is the way we should have been moving forward.’

"We’re now, potentially, going to be left with a city that is going to slowly strangle itself depending on buses. Because the metro is not going to do anything at all in its current planning.

"As far we’re concerned we’re packing all our things up, our partners are disappointed beyond belief.

"And that’s where the region is. It's hugely important to the future of the region in terms of its economic growth, and we’re just going to carry on building Sprint bus lanes, so that every time you go down the road you’ll see stationary traffic next to an empty bus lane."