Plenty of good ideas for Dudley Hippo!

Dear Cllr Qadar - and copied to my powerful MP and influential councillors who are meant to decide on TfWM transport policy - I thought!

Dudley Hippodrome turned into "a driverless car testing site" - Express and Star 30 November 2018

Wrong priorities; a diversion from more important matters; and an irrelevance.  Who at TfWM came up with this idea?

Rather than demolishing the 1938 Hippodrome, can it not be used to house the homeless if the front facade, at least, can be saved?  Apartments for low income families and singles to help revive Castle Hill? A refit rather than demolition? A conversion job for housing units?

If it must be demolished, why not use it for something more worthwhile than a driverless vehicle centre?  A driverless car must still have one person in it. He or she might just as well drive the thing, in that case!  I suggest:

1. A research centre into making batteries better at holding renewable electricity from PV solar put on every roof in the borough.
2. Some deep thought into how your very own 120 Kms Black Country Railway can be finished with the final stages to rebuild the stations and to put the regional and commuter trains back through the new Dudley town centre at the foot of Castle Hill.
3. Some innovative thinking into how you can reverse the decline in bus use; bus fares have risen by 13% above inflation since 2010; and bus routes cut.
4. A electric bus and innovation centre for yet more electric bus developments, perhaps?  There is not one electric bus in the TfWM area, is there?
5. A research centre into how we can capture and store CO2 and how to reduce all our greenhouse gas emissions.
6. Or, a new Dudley Central Mosque to replace the shabby and unsuitable present, converted, Victorian primary school building on the same road.  Soon, supposedly, to have the glitzy, glamorous tram running past this blot on the landscape and that of shameful Cavendish House.
7. Again on the same road, use the only feasible site of Dudley railway station, to rebuild it for the desperately needed commuter and regional trains into Brum and on to Derby.  No need for trams first to get the trains later (actually, tram trains that are still trams) where you end up paying twice and still don't get the fast trains back from Derby to Devon via Dudley and Burton to Bristol via Brierley Hill.

Could I please be granted an appointment, urgently, to see you to discuss these more sensible ideas, Cllr Qadar?

Thanks and best wishes

Tim