Andy Street's Metro review was never published or made the slightest difference!

Dear gentlemen - much ammunition here for you to make mincemeat of the hopeless Tories!

I believe Andy Street ordered the Metro review in 2020.  It could not have been independent because it was to be conducted and written up by Mark Smith, Chair of Audit, Risk & Assurance Committee of the WMCA, I understand.  Therefore, totally biased and useless from the start!

Was this review ever carried out?

Why have I never been able to get to the bottom of this mystery?

What was going wrong with Metro that prompted the review announcement?

Was one reason, the financially irresponsible and enormous cost of a project whose sole reason for its existence was Andy's much vaunted "multi-modal transport" that he wrote to me about?  

Like for like comparison of construction costs:

In 2003, when opened, the M6 Toll was £21m/Km

In 2015 when opened, rebuilding the Borders Railway was £7m/Km

In 2022, Metro Westside extension was £80m/Km, I believe (Andy's one and only feather in his cap!)

“The 1,350m Birmingham to Edgbaston extension cost £149m, including phase one from Grand Central to the library.” = £110 m/Km, up from £75 m/Km at the start. (Peter Madeley in the Express & Star)

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

What went wrong with the three transport projects that meant that they had to be suspended last year?

A 700 metre section of Metro is taking very many years to build because of stop-start work from mistakes having to be corrected. This suggests serious incompetence at TfWM/WMCA.  Did work on the ground start in 2015?  Surely not!

SCANDAL:

The first idiocy and incompetence was turning a former mainline railway that was unused, into a tramway.  It opened in 1999.

Folly no 2: it was never connected to even the nearby Wolverhampton bus station, let alone the railway station.  As, of course, the railway trains between Wolverhampton and Snow Hill did for 100 years.

Scandal no 3: Commuter and regional trains could have been re-introduced at, literally, a small fraction of the cost that Metro is turning out to be to, eventually, get it to Wolverhampton's last railway station.  And, even then, it permanently bypasses the other station, Snow Hill.  Yet, the go ahead was given by HMG (actually, Norman Baker MP, Transport Minister) to connect Snow Hill to Grand Central that has never come about and never will.  That really was its sole justification.  The epitomy of incompetence!

Why was a new University Station given the go ahead when there were far more urgent transport projects, like re-opening or, simply finishing with freight and passenger trains, the 120 Kms (74 miles) Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby?

In Andy Street's six years, not one railway project has come to fruition because he gave Metro expansion top priority.  Yet, he has only achieved the completion of one tram project in six years (that started way before him, anyway!).  That one scheme is Westside Extension that was shortened to end at 54 Hagley Road instead of seeing the demolition of the fine Calthorpe House on Hagley Road (the original plan).  Metro is a grossly extravagant, prestigious, wealth-flaunting project to impress the tourists and to entice businesses to a city that is wanting to rival the Paris, Milans and Tokyos of this world.

Remember, WMCA transport I believe, takes the biggest slice of the finance pie.  Insulating and solar powering the Midlands buildings should have that slice in the light of your self declared climate emergency that is bringing us all a bleak future.

Please ACT.  And a decent reply would make my day!