To Lewis Goodall - a hustings Chair in 2024

 My own questions:

• Why are the main candidates for Mayor believing that "light rail provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" on the UK's only 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby?
  
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  In other words, they believe that Metro trams must return first on two tiny sections in order to get the commuter, regional and intercity trains back on this nationally important railway between London and Edinburgh - one of only two, north-south, between Brum and the Irish Sea!!
• Could my suggestion of rewards for car commuters in using buses on Hagley Road, be more effective in relieving car congestion and polluted air than destroying 1,000 trees/shrubs and front gardens along Hagley Road, for the latest, planned Metro extension?
• Since "passive provision" is built in to the current construction of the region's second tramway to allow the passenger and freight trains back, would the candidates support, therefore, keeping the tram on the railway to connect the Dudley Tram to the national railway network at Stourbridge, rather than boosting trade and profits at Merry Hill Shopping Centre at the expense of Dudley town traders?
• Do the candidates believe that their self-declared Climate Emergency means saving nature is essential, rather than wiping it out with more concrete, brick and tarmac with tramways replacing and duplicating buses and trains? 
• Do the candidates believe that freight and passenger trains must return to our unused or partly used W Midlands railway lines?
• Is a carrot and stick approach to relieving road congestion and pollution more cost effective than highly expensive and difficult to achieve Metro tramway extensions?
• Andy Street's kind of multi-modal transport 'Ultimate Solution' is not found in London.  Why, therefore, is multi-modal transport seen as the obvious answer to Climate disaster, chronic road congestion and air pollution in the W Midlands?
• How will wiping out housing land, public open space and so much nature, including my magnificent vertical guerrilla garden - all at Merry Hill SC - help to ease warming oceans and land?  PHOTO to show what is lost:
  
   6 glorious white trees.jpg
  Everything, and more out of shot, gets bulldozed between the Dudley No 1 Canal at the top of the embankment and, the road, below the bank.

Lewis, I will treat you to coffee and cake if you will meet me at the squat clock tower, in the photo, to be taken round my one hour tourist trail of treats.  You see:

1. Dudley's top canal next to the planned Metro tramway, the Dudley Tram aka Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE).
2. The remains of the magnificent monorail from the 1990s.
3. The 22,000 sq m housing land, High Plateau, that is available but unused since the 90s.
4. The rusty metal sheet piling and official attempts at hiding it.
5. My vertical guerrilla garden started in the 90s - destined to have the 400 metre concrete and steel tramway viaduct built over the top of it, would you believe!
6. The Waterfront marina and the nearby 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance".
   
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
7. Green deserts that could be used to finish the Black Country Urban Forest.
8. The possible SSSI on Daniels Land adjacent to the canal.
9. MAP:
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

As ​a​n up and coming Brummie journalist, Lewis, who ARRIVED and hit the Big Time a long time ago, please meet me and see the sights of Merry Hill - to complete your Oxbridge education!  I can make any day and time except Tuesdays (grandad duties), although I am trying to get off to Scotland's big hills - shortly.  Meet when I get back?

Best wishes