Monday, 11 November 2024

to Leslie K

Very many thanks, Leslie for your encouragement and support.  Wonderful!  You are the first - almost!

I do need to be fair on all the political parties by writing here, that every one of them, including the Green Party (strong in Solihull!) have been in agreement with Metro trams ever since I started writing in opposition to rebuilding the tram network on the two surviving mainline railways, only 20 years after the councillors and officers had destroyed the first tram network.

Labour's Cllr Phil Bateman and former PTA/TfWM Chair, Richard Worrall, who still attends Transport meetings at Transport/Tram HQ as a member of the public now, were the leading lights for starting Metro in 1981.

Solihull, already well blessed with buses and trains, is getting the lot - HS2, Metro and Sprint - the full slate!  The subsidy for trams is also many times more per passenger per Km travelled than for buses.  SEE:

Please work on Ian Courts who knows me and on Bob Sleigh who also has met me.  They are both happy with Andy Street's £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure) to 2040 for 150 miles and eight lines of Metro tram expansion.  Both Ian and Bob are longstanding and leading members in the WMCA and are on the full Board, of course.  They are VIP decision-makers who should be stopping this scandalous misuse of taxpayers' money.  But they are doing nothing.  Unless you can persuade them, please Leslie.  The 15th Nov is largely a rubber stamping exercise, I fear.  You, Ian and Bob need to please cancel, scrap, withdraw the WBHE Phase 2 finance package BEFORE Friday, please.  Phase 2 must not proceed.  Andy Street's Metro review request of 2021 or '22 seems never to have been done, either.  Scandalous!

Many thanks and best wishes.  By the way, I voted for Andy on all three occasions - 2017, 2021 and 2024 - even though he was desperate for Metro expansion.

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