Not Profitable...

[Adam 404]

£34 million has been lost running the metro line between Wolverhampton and Birmingham...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-36381887?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_midlands_today&ns_source=facebook&ns_linkname=english_regions

[JoNi]

Implying it should have been a National rail line with fewer stations all along.

[Metroman]

No surprise, the tram network is severely underdeveloped. It needs much more lines like in Manchester.

[Stuharris 6360]

No surprise, the tram network is severely underdeveloped. It needs much more lines like in Manchester.

Exactly, they built one line and seemed contented at that, more lines should have been built around it. A stand alone line will always struggle to make money.

[Metroman]

Not even a finished line at that. At least they are finally extending it.

[WMT3000]

What I find annoying is that there have been some good ideas over the last 20 or so years such as the currently envisaged extensions to digbeth, wolverhampton city centre etc. but it always seems to be a case of "we're going to do this and we're going to do that", with very little having been done. I know there are economic factors and issues due to the complex mixture of local authorities in the west midlands but by now there should be a decent network built and running. It's laughable when you think that there was such a good system in Brum (as well as most of the west mids) all those years ago and now we're struggling to get anything done that's even a patch on the old routes. It's always made out that profit is the main goal but come on, you have to speculate to accumulate!

[Bob]

So they've closed Corporation St off to buses which was a handy drop off pick up stop for years for loads of bus services to cause massive disruption for months to put in a single tram line that's never made money since 1999? You wouldn't read about it!

[Tony]

Remember the BBC has had to go back 17 years to make this story newsworthy. £34m over 17 years is an average of £2m a year. It was losing a lot more than that when it first started.

A story just reporting the figures for the last couple of years would not have made a news item

[JoNi]

Remember a former Centro leader describing buses in Corporation Street as a wall of steel which prevented shoppers crossing the road!

[andy41]

Remember a former Centro leader describing buses in Corporation Street as a wall of steel which prevented shoppers crossing the road!

Or perhaps a wall of steel delivering shoppers directly to the doors of the shops in the first place. I bet all of those shops on Corporation Street were busier when they had bus stops immediately outside their doors. They are now hundreds of yards away from where most users of public transport arrive in the city.

The funniest part of this story is the BBC's complete lack of understanding of how transport funding works. Their reporter actually thinks that NX take the hit on these losses which we all know is nonsense. The NX bigwig was almost embarrassed trying to answer the question. Their snout would not be in the trough if they were running at a £34m loss!

[Stu]

Or perhaps a wall of steel delivering shoppers directly to the doors of the shops in the first place. I bet all of those shops on Corporation Street were busier when they had bus stops immediately outside their doors. They are now hundreds of yards away from where most users of public transport arrive in the city.

I rarely visited any shops in Corporation Street, and still don't, so its made no difference to me! However, with the spacing of the bus interchanges around the city centre, chances are you're going to end up walking near Corporation Street anyway. Are shoppers really that lazy that they won't go into a store unless the bus drops them right outside?

Personally I think Corporation Street has become a better environment with the removal of the buses; there's less people (still shoppers, just less people loitering around waiting for buses), and it feels more open and pedestrian-friendly, though obviously that will change when the trams are running!