I would dare to suggest!

Dear Ian, Bridget and Waseem

I have now met all three of you and I am impressed!  You are the three senior leaders of the Cabinet and I don't want you to fall out with a painful and fractious leadership election.  Please continue to work together for the good of us all - as co-leaders.  Don't bother with just one of you having to speak as the sole leader all the time.  Share the job.  Go for consensus, give and take, for compromise for the sake of unity.

I first came to Brum as a prospective student for an interview in 1966.  The Victorian New Street station had been demolished that decade and the new underground station in the basement of the Pallasades shopping centre was being built or had just been finished.  The Smallbrook Queensway of the inner ring road was in place, I remember.  Since then, congestion and air pollution has worsened throughout the fifty years.  Not helped by the inexplicable and foolish demolition of the free-flowing inner ring road in two places only to be replaced by traffic crawling through traffic lights and a slow one-way system.

But, after fifty years of worsening congestion, Waseem and indeed all three of you and the Cabinet brought in the Clean Air Zone.  BRILLIANT!  I think it now needs tightening up to make it stricter.  However, you have had the courage to do it.  Well done!  The only sensible or, certainly, best transport decision scheme in fifty years.

I think you now need to stop any further expansion of the highly expensive and extravagant, in both monetary terms and in worsening the climate emergency, Metro "bus on rails" trams to unnecessarily replace mainly buses but some trains, too.

I would like you to act over the thoughtless behaviour by motorists who insist on driving down Hagley Road even when there is a perfectly adequate eleven bus routes going into the city centre.  The CAZ must be helping but we must cut our use of oil from Russia, in particular.  We must stop wasting oil because of the 'Code Red Warning' for humanity from Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.

The Metro Westside extension has discouraged motorists switching to buses because the fast, direct route into the city centre via Five Ways underpass and Broad Street has been blocked to buses.  We still have the tortuous bus route via back streets with parked cars because of Metro.  Even when its operating, a maximum 15 mins wait is possible before the tram departs from Edgbaston Village tram stop, if you try a change from bus to tram.  HOPELESS!

Perhaps, Waseem as transport lead for the WMCA, with Ian and Bridget as co-leaders of BCC?  Another thought!

Best wishes to all three of you - united in sharing leadership, especially in opposing Andy Street's £15 billion, 150 miles, 380 tram stops, Metro expansion project.  Especially, at this time of cost of living crisis, energy crisis and climate crisis.

And, save the only public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre by keeping Metro to the railway line all the way to Stourbridge, instead of stopping it at Cottage Street, Brierley Hill via Merry Hill to have the most inappropriate and destructive concrete railway viaduct next to Dudley No1 Canal.

Tim