Boris the Slasher
Boris Johnson has just dramatically cut London’s future transport plans. And he’s also announced that the fares Londoners pay will be going up.
Boris is cutting a whole raft of projects:
- the Thames Gateway Bridge
- the Cross River Tram (Euston to Waterloo - two very badly served termini)
- extension of the Docklands Light Railway to Dagenham
- tram extension to from Crystal Palace to Croydon
- the Oxford Street tram
- plans for bus routes on two new estates in East London.
At the same time he’s said fares will rise by 1% more than inflation. That basically means 6% or more for next year, I’d reckon.
To be fair Boris does make some good points. The money isn’t necessarily going to be there - Ken Livingstone was planning these routes in a boom, and we’ve now got a recession to deal with.
And the Mayor’s office points out that the schemes that are going ahead will deliver a 30% increase in transport capacity over the next ten years.
But I can’t help feeling Boris just doesn’t think public transport is worthwhile.He might want to move the Thames Gateway Bridge to another site - Friends of the Earth, among others, objected to the previous plan - but by pulling in the plans, he’s junking two years of planning as well as potentially risking several hundred million of committed central government funds.
And by cutting those east London links, he’s effectively cutting adrift a huge number of residents - and ruining the prospects for the Thames Gateway development. All the houses there are presumably going ahead, just they’ll have no transport for anyone to commute into London for work. Boris has just created a sink estate. That’s not clever.
(Of course the Thames Gateway plan is a Labour plan. Am I the only one to think that Boris might be sinking it for party politcal reasons? Or am I just a really nasty cynical person?)
Meanwhile we’ll all be paying more. Well, fares rose under Ken too - unless you had an Oyster card or a season ticket. But now, we’ll be paying more for less.
At least Crossrail will be going ahead. About twenty years too late, but that’s life for you.
Full details of the ten year plan are to be found on the Mayor’s website.
Photo, a witty comment from Annie Mole on flickr
