Pre Metro’s Stourbridge’s Bigger Picture Strategy was launched at July’s Mainspring Light Rail Conference at the University of Leeds.

Authored by our team, this strategy builds upon our success with the Shuttle – an early success story of railway ingenuity, using light rail stock on the railway. We want to continue this success by providing greater connectivity between Stourbridge and Brierley Hill.

A 5km stretch of operational twin-track freight lines runs from Stourbridge to Round Oak Steel Works.

On average, a few trains carry steel to and from the Round Oaks Steel Warehousing site daily. Steelworking ceased at Round Oak in 1984, since then, the site has only been used as a logistics hub, typically storing steel delivered from or to the steelworks in South Wales.

With such a low frequency of train movements on this line, we strongly believe that two operational tracks are not required to serve 4 trains per day. One of these two tracks could be segregated to create a cost-effective and efficient passenger service between Stourbridge and Brierley Hill.

The existing infrastructure is in good serviceable condition and therefore requires very low-level CAPEX investment to re-establish passenger services for this line. Indicative CAPEX estimates show that the route could be opened for passenger traffic for between £15 million and £25 million, or between £3 million and £5 million per route kilometre.

Our Press and Marketing Officer, Charlie Merrell, helped to design and write the document alongside our board. He also presented the strategy on the second day of the conference.

“I’m pleased to have created and presented this document alongside our forward-thinking directors, it will be a real game-changer for VLR within the West Midlands when the local authority engages with it.”

“I hope that people can recognise that these ideas build upon the Shuttle’s ever-growing success story, and could save a substantial amount of money on a local level. In turn, this frees up funding to be diverted across other essential services whilst our proposed service enhances Black Country connectivity, improves local commerce, and supports net-zero aspirations.”

The document will also be segmented into two new videos for our online audiences to engage with.

Our Bigger Picture Strategy and accompanying Research Data are available below.