Dear Helen, Laura, Anne, Ed and Dan - and I would like a response, please.
JUST STOP ENERGY HUNGRY MULTI-MODAL TRANSPORT - keep to regular buses and trains reinstated, only
I would still like to read the slide presentation that Dan gave to the Transport Delivery Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Monday. However, the change seems sensible provided that elected members really do the research and study of all points of view, including my own - not so likely! I very much doubt this amount of work is done by either retired people like me who have many more attractive alternatives in our final years of life or, are so busy with work and family commitments that take priority. Therefore, everyone trusts the experts and leaves it up to them. Hence, perhaps, the tragedy of transport over the fifty years I've lived here!
Thank you for cutting the number of committees - but is it just the one Transport Scrutiny that has gone? However, it is the councillors who should have been constructively criticising your decisions and not just me - the role of scrutiny that I felt never happened, anyway. It seems, the members have been rubber stamping whatever you officers have wanted. For example, I have never heard one member raise the serious matter of the 'independent' review into Metro never being published. Was it ever written, in fact?
I expect, there has never been any question asked about the serious over-spending into many big transport construction projects that has caused suspensions and delays. Is that right? Never any questions over the enormous costs. Never any scrutiny over acting on your own declared climate emergency with positive and helpful action, it appears. Four years have gone by but, has anything been done to slow the exhaustion of finite fossil fuels and to slow the rapid rise in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions?
Has there been any movement towards the W Midlands Climate Coalition 'Nine Action Points', here:
They do involve burning oil and gas but only to make for less dependency on fast depleting international oil and gas reserves in the long term. One day, renewables will be all we will have. Yet, we live in a fantasy world where we behave as though oil and gas will last forever.
My own insistence is that you must immediately abandon Metro and Sprint extensions and very light rail and ultra light rail new projects and use up our remaining oil and gas reserves to make our bi-modal transport (bus and train) as least as good and as popular as the average on the mainland of Europe. Easy to say, I know. However, 100 Kms of mothballed or freight only railway lines remain in our region and south Staffordshire. I've also suggested a bus/business lane trial on Hagley Road for two years to free up road space and slow GHG emissions. And, my own five pledges to pressure the authorities also help (5 questions quiz, below).
In order to respond to the climate crisis, I would urge you not to continue with the Citizens' Panel or a London-like Assembly. Our representatives, the councillors, are the elected members of the public. To save energy and GHG emissions, simply encourage the members to be up to speed on the uncomfortable realities of having to live more sustainably on a finite planet subject to nature and natural laws.
My suggestion, that I think is far more important than yet another layer of bureaucracy, and a talking shop, with a Citizens' Panel, is to allow any member of the public, at public meetings of the CA, to have a 'Have Your Say' item at the beginning of the agenda of every public meeting. Dudley Council has done this for many decades, giving us three minutes to have our say. Please adopt it. Dudley also has community forums that allow the public to have their say for longer than three minutes - and even meet with councillors. Wonderful!
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