Dear Editor, As I am retiring in mid-March after a lifetime in the transport industry, I didn’t think that I would be writing any more letters to the Post in my last weeks of working life, but the article “Vision for City Has A Blind Spot For The Car” (Post February 23) meant I had to have one last go.
Councillor Dennis Birbeck is of course right, and I have been saying the same thing for over 15 years to various council officials, the Chamber of Commerce, Centro and others.
I concluded long ago that it was ridiculous that Centro, being the passenger transport authority, should have the control levers for the West Midland Regional transport plan.
Why councillors have not seen this over many years I know not, and is it any wonder therefore that we have a transport strategy which has (and Coun Birbeck is right) almost blanked out the car, and so favours public transport – against all people movement and financial statistics.
All this, of course, in a region which so dependent on car production, and with the car not only getting more efficient with each new model, together with alternate fuels, the car, by far, outstrips any other form of passenger transport on a number of counts, not least the ability to get from A to B at any time, the lowest and unsubsidised (neigh, highly taxed) cost, and with a high degree of personal security, which sadly, public transport is still suffering from such anti-social issues.
So there you have it, until our system of government (national and regional) really recognises that it should be local business people, and not local bureaucrats who design our future transport strategy, we will be at the whim of the very same vested-interest folk, who have got it so wrong over the 15 years or so that I tried to change things.
With that, I bow out.
Chris Kelly, Chairman,
Keltruck Ltd,
West Bromwich
