The car may need to be king in rural areas, but in inner city urban areas like Cardiff public transport has to be the default option for those unwilling or unable to walk or cycle. People in Cardiff are starting to wear face masks like they do in Beijing. This is the consequence of the do-nothing approach to 80,000 people commuting into Cardiff and Newport from neighbouring authorities by car. The whole region experiences road gridlock at peak times. If the Welsh Government fails to act over the illegal levels of air pollution, they will end up in court, costing a huge amount of money that we could be spending on public transport.

People want to do the right thing. The demand for rail has grown from 20 million passenger journeys to 30 million in the last decade. That's just on the Valleys lines. It's impossible to drive more people out of their cars and onto rail services without increased capacity, so one of the things we need to know is: at what point in the contract for the new rail franchise provider will there be greater capacity and ticket transferability to enable more people to do the right thing?

This motion welcomes the commitment to the first stages of a south Wales metro, but I want to ask: where is the rest? It's five years since Mark Barry's report, 'A Metro for Wales' Capital City Region', and two years since Cardiff capital region board identified that an integrated transport system, aligned with land use planning, could be the catalyst for economic change across the region. And at the heart of this aspiration is the metro vision for a modern, high-quality, multimodal, integrated public transport network.   

The Central Cardiff enterprise zone is expected to attract thousands of jobs to Wales, but only a fast metro connection will enable the people of the south Wales Valleys to access these jobs. Inward investors have been promised access to 1.5 million people within a 30-minute commute, and that cannot be achieved without the metro. Only a fast metro connection can cater for the tens of thousands of predictable short journeys people make every day to and from work and school.

So, the consensus is there, but where is the money? We know that £734 million has been allocated for the south Wales metro, of which £250 million is from the Welsh Government and £375 million from the UK Government, which includes £150 million for electrification. And then there is some European money of something in the region of £120 million to £130 million. So, in this £375 million the UK Government has promised is a conditional sum of £125 million to electrify the Valleys lines, only if the Welsh Government also puts in at least £325 million for electrification. If not, the £125 million from the UK Government can be withdrawn. So, I'm concerned that we're going to put at least £450 million of this £734 million into electrification, and it's not cost-effective.

The topography and number of stops on the Valleys lines means heavy electric trains will never achieve speeds in excess of 50 miles an hour, and that can be provided by trams. Like Nick Ramsay, I am a fan of the tram. It's a much cheaper alternative. It means that from Pontypridd, instead of six or seven trains an hour with an electrified train, you can get 10 to 12 fast trams. From Merthyr, two trains an hour could be substituted by three or four trams an hour. Only then can you reduce the journey time from Merthyr to 40 minutes—you can't do that with heavy rolling stock—because you can run light rail much closer together and they stop much more quickly. 

So, what if the successful rail franchise bidder says that electrification of the Valleys lines is a waste of money and a much more cost-effective approach is light rail on all or nearly all Valleys lines? Will we have to be dictated to by London and go ahead with a less effective, more costly approach? What does that say about Welsh Government desire for industry to provide the answer to what mode of transport will work best through market testing and eventual bidding procurement processes? I want to ensure that we are able to do the right thing so that we have enough money to get the rest of the metro vision of an integrated public transport network, with centralised ticketing, and to make it cost-effective. We know that, in order to get the rest of the money, pound for pound, a mile of rail investment costs about the same as a motorway mile but benefits up to 20 times more people. We have to stop chasing car-centric investment and invest in a fully integrated public transport system if we're to provide a practical alternative.

This is the shift—