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

Post from: The London Traveler

With a major shift, from a secure Labour hold to a Conservative win, you might think it’s going to be all change. But I’m not so sure. It looks like normal service will be resumed.

• ‘Red Ken’ was renowned for being a maverick and an independent spirit. He was often on the outs with his own party and he was never a diplomatic type; if he could open his mouth wide enough to put his foot in it, he would. Oh, and he kept newts. Boris Johnson is exactly the same kind of guy – Conservative Party leader David Cameron is apparently rather worried about what Boris is going to get up to, fearing it might cost him the next election. So in terms of buffoonery and faux pas, nothing’s changed – we should get a lot of fun out of Boris.
•  Public transport remains an ideological battleground. Boris wants to get rid of Ken’s bendy buses and bring back the Routemaster, or the “new Routemaster”. He doesn’t seem to be clear how much that will cost, though. Strangely, at no point during the campaign did I see the price of public transport mentioned. London is now one of the most expensive cities in the world for the out-of-town traveler (buy an Oyster Card to cut down on this).  So, no real change here, either.
• The thing I personally found most disappointing about the whole campaign is that despite the apparent ideological and personal differences between Boris and Ken, neither of them really articulated an idea of what kind of city they wanted London to be. Or if they did, it didn’t come through to me.  The whole campaign seems to have been fought on tiny issues, bit by bit, with no real ideas behind it.

I’ve been underwhelmed by Boris’s first two great ideas. Number one, tell the police to work harder. Number two, ban alcohol on public transport. Nice headlines – but I don’t know what it will actually do to improve life in London. Unless you ban people from drinking alcohol before they get on public transport, you’re still going to get drunks on the tube at 1130 in the evening. Or is Boris going to insist you take a breathalyser test before getting on the bus?

Post from: The London Traveler