Travel map of West Midlands
The Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street officially unveils a travel map of the region, showing the current transport links and the new links being built and being planned for the future
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00:00 So bringing the sign down, now we have to do the sort of formal bit about what this is all about.
00:05 First of all I think everybody knows Anne Shaw who is the executive director of GFWM.
00:10 She's the one who goes grey overnight worrying about all these things actually whether we can
00:13 do it all on time and on budget and all of that. But Anne, thank you for what's been done by your
00:18 team to prepare for today. Now I've got an easel here for today because obviously the immediate
00:23 news is all about Dudley interchange, the fact the metro's coming, Ross station is being dismantled,
00:29 a new interchange to serve the borough and the centre of the town, so really the construction
00:33 gets underway in earnest today. But it's part of a much bigger story and the bigger story,
00:39 I think you've all got the press release, is of course that taking the whole of the
00:42 West Midlands together we're now investing £6.1 billion in our transport infrastructure
00:49 and if you work that out that's over 15 years from when the CA was formed in 2017 up to 2032.
00:55 The average expenditure there is £406 million a year, the year before the CA was formed it was
01:01 just £38 million. So you can see the big story today is of a tenfold increase in investment in
01:08 our transport infrastructure. Some of it's already in the ground well underway like the stations in
01:14 South Birmingham and in Walthall, the sprint routes that are underway, of course the metro extension
01:18 here, but some of it and it's a big part of today's announcement is still in the planning stage and
01:24 so what we are announcing today is five more rapid transit routes where the business cases are being
01:29 prepared and then subject to their feasibility they will form the backbone of our investment
01:35 plan, but let's call it the next phase. And they obviously, and the details are all in the press
01:39 release, but they include obviously the Hagley Road scheme in Birmingham, Birmingham Eastside
01:44 extension out to the NEC through North Solihull, then of course in the black country from Briley
01:50 Hill on to Stourbridge, from Wensbury on to Walthall, and then the forgotten one, I've forgotten
01:57 one, and oh and of course the route from the city centre out to Longbridge and then there's a further
02:03 examination in the black country from Wolverhampton city centre out to Newcross. So all of those being
02:08 done and I hope they will be the backdrop, backbone of what we're doing. We put it all together in one
02:14 plan, one map. You'll remember I launched my vision of what the 2040 plan would be. What we've got
02:20 on here is a little different because this is what Anne and the team have already been able to get
02:25 funding for or are actively working on now. So this is the plan as we know it up to 2032 and then of
02:31 course there will be a political vision of what we like to do beyond that, but this is what we know
02:35 about now. So I think we, Anne you should do this, you should do this, come on you should do this, you won't be
02:40 honest with doing that. Just you have to give it a big pull I'm told, pull it off completely. So there
02:45 we go. So what it shows is what we've got already, what's coming, already been committed to and the
02:51 pieces that we're doing on the current feasibility. The green of course is the sprint, the pink is the
02:57 metro routes, the orange is the main rail that we've already got and the blue of course
03:04 is the light blue that we're standing on right into Dudley. So it brings all the modes together
03:09 to see one integrated network we've got. Last thought, it's not just about the infrastructure,
03:14 it's also about funding what we've already got to make it clean, make it reliable and make it
03:18 affordable. And so one of the big schemes of course as well is to be able to use one ticketing scheme
03:23 on all of the different modes and have everything capped. That will be coming next year as well,
03:28 all as part of the expenditure that we are investing. There we are, a modern transport system
03:33 fit for a leading region, that's the simple phrase.