West Midlands Mayor committed to improving the region in 2024
Andy Street's plans are to focus on transport and economy.
We've been told the Mayor of the West Midlands is focused on much more than just the next election in 2024.
Mayor Andy Street's told us he's committed to improving transport systems in the region despite the HS2 cuts last year.
As a result, The prime minister's promised to put the money from the scrapped leg of HS2 into smaller transport projects.
The mayor's using some of this to open new stations in places like South Birmingham.
In addition to this, bus users in the West Midlands will be able to continue to enjoy discounted single bus fares after National Express West Midlands confirmed its continued participation in the Government’s £2 single fare cap scheme until the end of 2024.
We've heard, the most important thing this year is to improve transport systems and to keep fares low.
"The most important thing is keeping the transport system running and we've got stations to open in south Birmingham.
"We've obviously also got this whole question of keeping fares low, really pleased with the work we've done on that with the National Express of course, so that's really important."
This comes as WMCA have announced they're putting £400,000 of funding into disadvantaged neighbourhoods around the West Midlands too, to improve the economy and to create more jobs.
"Then of course there's the whole question of getting people skilled for the jobs of the future. We've just announced 75,000 people went through training programs with the Combined Authority in the last year.
"I want to better that, and of course make sure more people are getting their boot camps to get really quick training, into jobs quickly."