Mayor's Question Time

Since coming to power, Boris Johnson has taken part in two Mayor's Question time sessions. You can read his written answers here and here. Lots of predictable non-answers to awkward questions, but a few interesting things come up:

• The East London Line phase 2 extension does not have funding. If it does get it, the target opening date is December 2011.
• London-wide Oyster PAYG on National Rail is now officially pencilled in for mid-2009 (the January 2009 date has seemed unlikely for some time).
• London Overground carried 29% more passengers in its first 5 months than Silverlink did in the equivalent period a year before.
• Feasibility studies for the Oxford Street Tram will not be going ahead. This answer is notably more negative than that given to the other tram schemes (which are merely "under review"), so don't expect it to happen in the foreseeable future.
• On Cross River Tram, Boris notes "the Government’s 2007 spending review allocation of funds to TfL to 2017 did not provide for the implementation of CRT". It's looking like time to cross that one off the list as well.
• A North London Line extension to Kingston is officially off the table (if it was ever on it).
• Not transport-related, but I think question 1052 (in the second document) may be some sort of secret of code.

I've also listened to some of the webcast of the June 18th meeting. About an hour in there's a long discussion of the Routemaster/bendy bus replacement project, which Boris sounds very keen on pushing ahead with.

During the discussion an assembly member points out that the first wave of bendy bus contracts comes up for renewal next year, which will put the Mayor in a very awkward position. He could renew them (can't do that), replace them with double deckers (not enough capacity) or replace them with lots of double deckers (increasing congestion). An issue to watch, certainly.

Crystal Palace Tramlink follow up

While I was writing my post on the Tramlink extensions to Crystal Palace, I emailed a few questions to the project team. They just got to back to me, saying:

• Complete taking over the rail route from Crystal Palace to Beckanham Junction is still a possibility, although not currently part of the preferred scheme.
• The route across the other rail tracks is still under consideration.
• They reckon they can get from Penge Road to Anerley Road using only existing railway land, rather than talking away adjacent back gardens as I suggested*, though I doubt they can manage this between Anerley Road and Crystal Palace station.

* Yes, they bothered to read my blog. A lot better than when I phoned TfL's press office to ask for an explanation about Bank-Monument, and was yelled at almost immediately, and told I should just post whatever nonsense they'd put in their press release, how dare a blogger question TfL.

Transport Committee minutes

I've just been reading through this transcript of a recent London Assembly Transport Committee meeting in which Peter Hendy talks in detail about the East London Line Extension Phase 2, Cross River Tram, Oxford Street Tram, taking over local rail services and various other topics. There aren't any major revelations, but it's worth a look if you're interested in TfL's current thinking on these projects.

One thing that did catch my eye was blaming the overcrowding at King's Cross St Pancras tube station on the Thameslink station being moved away, putting more passengers through the ticket hall gateline.

He also mentions the advantages of putting in the junction by Surrey Quays for ELL phase 2 while the line is still closed, and hints at a development in this area. On the subject of why TfL won't just pay for it themselves, he does some logical maneuvering to label Thameslink as a national project and so its knock on effects should be paid for out of national funds, ignoring that TfL wanted to do it anyway. Unconvincing.

TfL nationalise Croydon Tramlink

TfL have announced they're buying Tramtrack Croydon Ltd, the private consortium that built, owned, ran and in part paid for the Tramlink network. TfL are planning various service improvements, which are outlined in the press release.

This page has a nice overview of who Tramtrack Croydon are. The consortium's owners contributed £75m towards the project, and TfL are buying them out for £98m. Blithely ignoring any money that's gone in or out in the intervening years, I make that 5.8% APR. Not bad.

Board Papers: March 2008

TfL held an "open session" board meeting today. While I couldn't stay long enough to hear anything interesting, I did manage to snag an early copy of the board papers.

[ Update: The PDF is now online ]

Notes:

Tube

• Installation of Automatic Train Operation equipment to the Jubilee Line fleet is expected to be complete in October. The associated new signalling system (and possibly ATO) is down as coming into use in March 2009, starting from the east end.
• Severe delays on the Jubilee Line on February 5 and 6 were caused by a loose earth strap on one particular train causing shorts. It was installed as part of the ATO modifications.
• The last refurbished District Line train is due back in July 2008.
• The Shepherd's Bush Central Line project is now directly managed by TfL directly rather than Metronet, which may explain the sudden change of plan last December.
• A "Euston Interchange" project is mentioned, probably meaning linking up Euston Square. Initial design and "optioneering" (which shockingly is a real word) will happen in July.
• Acton Town and Hendon Central will shortly become step-free.
• Planning to provide step-free access is underway for: Green Park, Waterloo (Northern and Bakerloo), Baker Street, North Acton, Tower Hill, Paddington, Southfields, Finsbury Park and Vauxhall.
• The new signalling system on the Victoria Line will come be used in service from January 2009 (and as I understand it, has to occur at exactly the same time as the first new train).
• Kensington Olympia will be gated in October.
• The "London Underground extensions" section in the budget is conspicuously blank.

DLR

• A pilot test of a DLR ticket machine with (gasp!) Oyster starts in June.
• The board voted last month to apply for powers for the Dagenham Dock DLR extensions.

London Overground

• Crime on London Overground is down 40% and revenues are up 17% over the same period last year.
• LOROL's new integrated control room is yet to open, but should improve information provision.
• Five of London Overground's electric train fleet have "received the fleet refreshment package" and other improvement schemes are in the works.
• "Manufacture" of the first new train for London Overground began on 11 February 2008, 35 days late ("production" began last September). Testing of it is pencilled in for 23 June 2008.
• The apparent upping of the London Overground train order to 54 Electrostars (216 carriages) is mentioned again.

• "Discussions continued" regarding Thameslink and East London Line phase 2.
• One part of the East London Line construction schedule has been extended by 13 days to allow Crossrail-protection works to be done at Whitechapel so that the line can stay open during Crossrail construction.
• The ELL Operational Building Complex will be "available for use by employee" from December.

• Unlike the last two months, the possible takeover of Southern isn't mentioned anywhere.

Buses, Trams, Oyster

• A new lower level extension opened at Hammersmith bus station on February 16
• Oyster PAYG will be rolled out on a "TOC by TOC" basis if possible this year, "in advance of a wider rollout in 2009". That appears to be a backing off of the January 2009 date for all train operating companies.
• Visitor Oyster Cards are selling well on National Express coaches, particularly airport services.
• All buses will have iBus (i.e. talk) by February 2009.
• Bus priority schemes for "flagship routes" 53, 207 and 253 are planned, and bus 38 on Shaftesbury Avenue.
• Preferred routes for the Cross River Tram and Crystal Palace extension won't be chosen until next January.

Oxford Street Tram

At a debate last night Ken repeated his ambition to replace the buses on Oxford Street with trams:

If re-elected I intend to start installing a tram running the length of Oxford Street. There are some factors which pose difficulties but we have thought about it and there are ways of overcoming them. It will either be a shuttle tram or will be linked to the Cross River Tram

We would demolish the gyratory system [at Marble Arch], handing part of it back to green land and building two developments on part of it which will fund the project. People getting a taxi would have to use the roads running north and south of Oxford Street. We would phase the buses out slowly and maybe run some along Wigmore Street.

You can find a few more details in this Evening Standard piece, which mentions a £200m cost and a 2012-18 timescale. The article quotes statistics from this New West End Company press release, who sponsored the debate, and are major backers of the proposal. Ken discussed much the same idea in 2006.

Board Papers time again

The notes from this month's TfL board meeting have been published. A few things of note:

• TfL have started ordering Oyster equipment for the roll out to the whole National Rail network in 2009
• London Bridge may not have capacity for South London Line trains when it's rebuilt for Thameslink (there'll be fewer terminus platforms). TfL suggest the East London Line phase 2 should go ahead ASAP to solve this problem.
• Major DLR works will happen at Stratford during the Christmas closure on Liverpool St (this probably actually means the new North London Line platforms).
• An "Oyster Control Centre" has been setup, whose main job seems to be reprogramming the gatelines to fix unresolved journeys after station evacuations and other events.
• The first new Piccadilly Line train is due in 2011, with the upgrade progamme finsihed by 2014
• TfL are having doubts about how feasible it is to extend Circle Line stations for 7 car trains, and are investigating other options.
• TfL are still deciding whether to go with the "Harmony" or SLC2k service patterns for the North London Line upgrade. No idea what either of these are.
• The future of the Cross River Tram and Crystal Palace Tramlink extension looks very murky
• "The review of a number of projects in the Planning directorate continued this quarter, including tram and bus transit schemes. The outputs of these reviews are expected to be made available at the end of the year."
• The East London Transit project (Ilford-Barking-Dagenham) appears to be progressing, but isn't due to start in October 2009.
• Greenwich Waterfront Transit is still in public consultation, and will take even longer.
• A TWA application for the DLR Dagenham Dock extension will be made early next year, but the project has no funding after that.

The last few bits are from the appendices.

Update: The document has been updated with a load of extra bits tacked on, including enormous tables of Travelcard and London Overground prices.

London gaps

Inspired by this post, I've created a map showing exactly how well covered London is by rail services (click to enlarge). Tube stations are blue, DLR and Tramlink stops are green and National Rail stations are grey. The blobs indicate the area within a quarter mile and a half mile of each station, so anywhere the background is visible is outside the easy walking distance of one. The light grey area is Greater London and the white area is Travelcard Zone 3.

Update: A better version, with labels.

All data sourced from the Google Earth Community: Tube stations, National Rail stations, DLR stations, Tramlink stops and the Greater London boundary. Map created using a combination of grep hacks, PHP and Inkscape.

TfL October board meeting notes

Transport for London held a board meeting on Wednesday, and today they published the stack of documents (5 MB PDF) produced for it. A skim through the 286 pages reveals:

Oyster

• On October 7, TfL began replacing the now-redundant push-button Few Fare Machines with Advanced Fare Machines, which do Oyster, but don't do change. 100 are planned by January, and the full 350 by April.
• TfL's rollout of Oyster to Overground faced problems at Clapham Junction, because South West Trains are meant to be selling ITSO rather than Oyster cards. TfL ticket machines will be installed at each entrance.
• Barclaycard expect to issue 75,000 OnePulse Oyster cards by the end of the year.
• Cash fares are down to 3.5% of tube journeys and 2.3% of bus journeys.
• All the train companies have finally signed an agreement for Oyster PAYG use, which includes details of how fares money will be distributed. The Financial Services Authority have confirmed the scheme doesn't fall under e-money regulations.
• It's stated "C2C, ‘one’ and First Capital Connect" will be expanding PAYG from this January, but I think they mean Chiltern rather than FCC (see this blog's sidebar).

London Overground

• The upgrade plans for the North London Line are due to be agreed with Network Rail this month, for delivery in 2010-11. This presumably includes resignalling, 3 and 4 tracking in places and platform extensions for 4 car trains. The associated improvement in service is called "SLC2k" and is due in January 2011.
• The superstructure design for the "bridge at Liverpool Street" has been approved. I'm not sure if refers to the one over the Liverpool Street tracks by Brick Lane, or the one nearer Liverpool Street station over Shoreditch High Street.
• The 3 extra Overground trains ordered in July are said to be dual voltage and intended for the North London Line, rather than for the East London Line as stated at the time. I'm not sure which is correct.
• Stations on the Gospel Oak to Barking line will get shelters by March 2008, and initial repairs at all Overground stations will be completed by May. The full upgrade programme will run until November 2011, however.

Tube, DLR, Rail and Trams

• Approval has been given to apply for the Victoria and Archway station upgrade Transport & Works orders.
• Automatic Train Operation on the Jubilee Line is due by the end of 2009, and on the Northern by the end of 2011.
• The first new Victoria Line train is due in service by January 2009.
• Southfields, Baker Street (SSL only) and Green Park will be made step-free in time for the Olympics.
• The DLR City Airport extension is carrying 48% of the airport's passengers.
• The first new design DLR car is scheduled to be delivered on 14 December this year, a bit behind schedule. It's already running on a test track in Germany.
• Train and platform lengthening are planned for many London National Rail lines (details are in the minutes).
• TfL has now officially disbanded the West London Tram team, and appear not to be leaving open the possibility of restarting the scheme.
• Funding for the Crystal Palace Tramlink extension appears hazy.

Cross River Tram consultation results released

TfL have published the results of the Cross River Tram consultation. Other than generally positive support (though 3% wrote in to say "the CRT is generally a bad idea and there are no reasons for agreeing with this route choice"), there's nothing much to report. The most interesting thing are the linked copies of the consultation brochures, which have nice high-res diagrams of the proposed routes.

I notice TfL have opted not just to avoid discussing a proposed opening date, but any future timescale any next step of the project. Their FAQ asks and immediately sidesteps the question.

West London Tram officially dead

Ken has admitted defeat on the West London Tram scheme:

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, today joined Councillor Jason Stacey, Leader of Ealing Council, to announce that, on the assumption of a positive government decision on the construction of Crossrail, the Mayor and the local boroughs will work together to address the problem of improving public transport on the Uxbridge Road, between Uxbridge and Shepherd’s Bush, via a bus-based solution rather than the tram originally envisaged. This is because Crossrail would significantly increase public transport capacity in the area reducing the need for a tram and making a bus solution more practical.

It gives a Crossrail completion date of 2015, so presumably they think it's practical for it to be under construction at the same as the Olympic site and Thameslink.

Thames Gateway Bridge in doubt

Yesterday the mayor released this statement:

Any delay to the Thames Gateway Bridge is a blow to east London and south east London in particular.[...]The re-opening of the public inquiry will delay bringing the benefits of the Thames Gateway Bridge to an area that sorely needs them.

Yes, they put out a press release starting with the word "any", and published it before the thing it relates to was even news.

The context is the decision by Hazel Blears to re-open the public enquiry, following the publication of the inspector's report. The inspector concluded the bridge would do more harm than good in Bexley and that TfL did inadequate traffic modelling in general. Blears also reports receiving a large amount of correspondence since the original enquiry closed, which she thinks needs to be considered publicly.

If you aren't familiar with it, the Thames Gateway Bridge is a proposed road bridge across the Thames just east of City Airport. It would feature six lanes including two for public transport, linking the proposed East London Transit and Greenwich Waterfront Transit schemes.

Tramlink Crystal Palace route survey results

TfL have published the results of their consultation to choose a route for the Tramlink Extension to Crystal Palace. 67% preferred Option 2 (illustrated right), which runs directly past Crystal Palace station, with minimal on-street running. Although the press release says it will "run off-street along the existing railway line", this is slightly misleading. The railway is in a cutting and trams will run alongside it on the embankment, which will require ripping up a lot of trees but hopefully only minor demolition (see the left side of the tracks in this Google Map).

The actual route will be decided by the end of the year, with opening due in 2013 if everything is approved.