I didn't give you the full picture in the zoom mtg yesterday

 Dear Phillipa and John - succinctly as poss!

• There has been no indication that Andy's £15 billion Transport Plan of 150 miles, 8 lines, 380 tram stops to 2040 has been scrapped.
• In March, TfWM modified it to £6.1 billion to be spent between 2017 and 2032 on mainly new tramways.
• West Yorkshire CA (Leeds) is also going for a mass transit (tramways) scheme to 2040.
• Our own TfWM/WMCA will finish Metro Eastside extension and reopen the whole 1.7 Kms for £245m, by 2030 when Curzon St Sta is opened.  Even more expensive by 2030, of course!  £7m/Km to rebuild the 50 Kms Borders Railway in 2015 when it opened.
• "The extension will service the Eastside regeneration area offering connections with New Street, Moor Street and Snow Hill Railway Stations, in addition to the new HS2 station. The scheme also includes a new bus interchange adjacent to Clayton Hotel Birmingham to provide an efficient bus, Sprint and coach interchange with HS2."
  
• The Dudley Tram (WBHE) opens to Flood St, Dudley in time for Christmas, this year!
• I think that Dudley Council and TfWM are still desperate to finish the tram at Merry Hill SC.  Perhaps, even to Brierley Hill instead of, more sensibly, keeping the tram on the former, principal, mainline railway to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct station.
• The tram to Merry Hill is exactly like levelling up the rich owners with a rich man's tram to level down the poor who need FFPT and warm homes to counter climate catastrophe.  This is scandalous and a misuse of public money!

WE CANNOT ALWAYS RELY ON WHAT WE ARE TOLD IS CORRECT/TRUTHFUL
I wrote this on the 3 May, to a Labour councillor on the Transport Committee of the CA:

Andy has attended every husting, except the very first and holds public meetings and engages with the public.  I voted for him because he comes over so well as the WMCA Public Relations man which is all his job is.  He has no more power than any of the other elected council leaders.  From Monday, Richard or Andy has to work with the CA and not lord it over them.  Andy, I think, will be better at doing that.  He comes over so well, even though, as you say, he "does not tell the truth on the literature that has come through my door."  Nor, on Radio WM in answer to a question I put to him on the 25 July 2023!  He is far too optimistic, exaggerates and gets carried away with his own enthusiasm.  But he (or Richard) must be accurate and correct when he opens his mouth or writes.

I want bus services much more fully funded, with FFPT for all and other inducements for car commuters to leave their cars at home.  Use the £6.1 billion between 2017 and 2032 for mainly underground and overground trams over 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops.  The money for trams can be better spent as the 

  The Conservative Group on Edinburgh City Council OPPOSED both of their tram schemes on grounds o...

The UK tram promotion group, with its HQ at 16 Summer Lane, called the tram a "bus on rails" at the time of the Croydon tram crash in 2016.  Let's have the very best buses on streets without the railway tracks, whoever owns them!  Ownership is much less important than maximum funding taken away from tram extensions.  And partnership, collaboration between operators and TfWM.

"On 9 November 2016, a tram operated by Tramlink in London derailed and overturned on a sharp bend approaching a junction. Of 69 passengers, there were seven fatalities and 62 injured, 19 of whom sustained serious injuries.^[1] This was the first tram incident in the United Kingdom in which passengers died since 1959."  Wikipedia