To Cllr Steve Caudwell

Dear Steve

Thanks very much for replying, although I fear it was only because you are our GP candidate for W Mids Mayor on the 6 May.  However, I suppose I should be grateful for that fact.

You wrote,

"I'm replying from this account as I keep my Councillor account strictly for Council-related matters; so if you need to get in touch in future I'd be grateful if you could do so here."

My first email, as is this, solely about "Council-related matters".  It is councillors like your good self who are responsible for the four biggest and longest-running scandals in UK finance/transport history!  Here they are:

SIXTY YEARS OF TRANSPORT SCANDALS:

1. Your colleagues completely destroyed our electric tram network in the 1950s.
2. From the 1960s onwards, our well-meaning councillors destroyed about 100 Kms of our railway network in the W Midlands region.  Used the railways for homes, offices, shops and roads.  BEAT THAT! So,
3. In 2021, you are all in your fourth decade of having built and maintained and partially mothballed a 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance", converting it into two short sections of tramway totalling 6.7 Kms; a test track in between; and, an extended cycle-walkway to make it run all the way from Walsall to Lichfield (proposed).
4. Making public transport worse by adding to congestion with trams mixed up with buses, cars, vans, taxis and lorries and, pushing out the buses to make eleven different bus routes take a longer and slower journey!  This, by giving priority to trams and excluding buses from the Five Ways underpass and Broad Street that are now dedicated to trams.

Your colleagues have given me so much fun, over the decades, pointing out the bleeding obvious!!

Are you proud of letting your colleagues do all of this, Steve?

Or, have you said something - ever?

Even when you may not have been a councillor?

Or, will you now, please, ask one or two pertinent questions about the eccentric and bizarre behaviour of your colleagues, Steve?

I do hope so.  It is still not too late to stop the mainline conversion to tramline.  Maps, here:​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

​You wrote,

​"I am interested in the arguments for and against trams - I acknowledge the cost but I see there are concomitant benefits too, so a nuanced discussion is welcome."​

Here are both sides of the case:​

 BOTH SIDES OF THE CASE, here

​

​And good ol', well blessed Solihull gets blessed with even more - HS2, Metro trams, swish Sprint hydrogen buses and all the other transport modes.​  Extravagance for the rich and austerity for the poor!

​With best wishes and thanks again for writing, Steve.