Posts Tagged ‘transport for london’
Silvertown Tunnel: Neighbouring boroughs voice their fears
Neither Greenwich Council or TfL will say if the A102 will need widening to cope with additional Silvertown Tunnel traffic
The propaganda battle from City Hall and Greenwich Council over the Silvertown Tunnel has gone up a notch again, after the Transport for London consultation reported, surprise, surprise, “continued support for new river crossings in east London“.
Of course, a dodgy survey proves very little. You can offer children a year’s supply of sweets and they’ll take it, but if you warn them their teeth will fall out you might get a different response. In a similar way, you can tell people building a new road will make their journeys easier and they’ll believe it – particularly if you don’t tell them the evidence proves building new roads simply generates more traffic, add to existing high levels of pollution, and will simply add to congestion elsewhere.
Indeed, the leading question which kicked off the consultation gives the game away – “how many times a week do you cross the river by road?” 32% of Greenwich borough residents who answered the consultation said they crossed it four or more times each week – which strikes me as unrepresentatively high.
That said, the 373-strong petition against Silvertown features heavily in the round-up of responses to the consultation, though oddly doesn’t feature in TfL’s report to the mayor – a beautiful example of officials telling their bosses just what they wat to hear. There’s no mention of Greenwich’s Bridge The Gap campaign, an attempt to rig the consultation, except in quotations from the Silvertown petition.
What is striking, though, is Greenwich Council’s desperation to see this crock built – despite anger within the Labour party which supposedly controls it – with leader Chris Roberts declaring: “We stand ready to assist Transport for London in the work necessary to bring these crossings to the next stage of development.”
Greenwich’s neighbours, though, aren’t so excited. Here’s the views of other boroughs, as taken from the consultation.
Barking and Dagenham Council expressed “serious reservations regarding the current proposals. The Council remain concerned that Silvertown tunnel will draw additional vehicles and ‘clog up the local road network’”.
Southwark Council were “concerned that they may be potentially negative traffic impacts from the Silvertown tunnel” and “cannot support the current proposals.”
Lewisham Council:”has concerns that traffic impacts will result from Silvertown tunnel, particularly on the A2 and South Circular, and requests details of modelling of any proposed mitigation measures. “
Hackney Council were “concerned about the potential highway impacts of increased traffic on the approaches to the Silvertown tunnel”
Redbridge Council “raised concerns with how the Silvertown tunnel’s northbound connected with the existing highway network.”
All the above are Labour councils, except Redbridge, which is run by a Tory/Lib Dem coalition.
These fears would impact the most on Greenwich itself, yet they are barely mentioned in Greenwich’s full response. Even Newham’s support for Silvertown was “subject to concerns over additional traffic impacts in the borough and in particular, around Canning Town and Royal Docks”. No such caveats in Greenwich’s response.
Indeed, if you look at the businesses that line up in favour of Silvertown, the you can see just who’s really influencing Greenwich Council’s line.
Berkeley Homes Ltd – “Strongly supports new crossings at Silvertown and Gallions Reach.” (Greenwich Council’s development partners at Kidbrooke Village, Royal Arsenal developers)
Cathedral Group – “Fully supports the proposed Silvertown tunnel.” (Property developer which owns Morden Wharf on the Greenwich Peninsula).
AEG – “Strongly supports Silvertown tunnel which will provide a much needed relief to the area, support AEG’s next development phases on the Greenwich Peninsula and stimulate growth.” (Owner of the O2.)
Quintain – “Strongly supports the proposals, in particular for the Silvertown tunnel.” (Greenwich Peninsula developer whose projects include the socially-cleansed Peninsula Quays site.)
A further report will come from TfL this summer, so expect our elected representatives to be issuing more propaganda and campaigning on behalf of the people of Greenwich property developers.
But there’ll also be more from the No To Silvertown Tunnel campaign – if you want to get involved, feel free to drop me a line. Watch this space…
A real river crossing campaign – run the 108 to the Olympic Park
Amid the row over Greenwich Council’s dumb Bridge The Gap campaign, a little opportunity to improve cross-river links is looking set to be squandered. Ever one to leap on board a passing bandwagon, this website is today launching an “all-out” campaign to extend the 108 bus to the Olympic Park.
You what? I’ll explain. Transport for London’s launched a consultation on which buses should run into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park when people start moving in later this year. It suggests seven services, including a night bus, should run into the park.
All well and good. But one’s missing. Why can’t we have a bus from south of the river to the Olympic Stadium?
The 108 is one of London’s oldest bus routes – it’ll celebrate its centenary in March next year. In 1930, it schlepped all the way from Clapton to Crystal Palace, charging a shilling if you were mad enough to want to ride all the way, but there was never long to wait – double-decker buses ran every three and a half minutes through the Blackwall Tunnel back in those days.
The route’s shrunk, grown, shrunk again, gone 24-hours (a lifesaver) and been tweaked since – the double deckers vanished in the late 1960s, but the Stratford to Lewisham service has been the sole bus service through the tunnel for decades. For many years, it was the only public transport link across the Thames east of Rotherhithe. Back then, it actually wasn’t a bad service, if the tunnel was behaving itself – in the mid-90s, when I lived in Greenwich and went to college in Clerkenwell, it only took 20 minutes or so to get me to Bromley-by-Bow station so I could get a Tube to Farringdon; making it pretty much the equal of taking the train.
But while other transport links have got better, the poor old 108′s been left in the shadows – an enforced diversion around the Millennium Dome building site months before North Greenwich station opened ruined it as a commuting route to anywhere but North Greenwich, but despite the idiotic transport arrangements around the Dome, it still carries healthy numbers through the tunnel each day. Remember, it’s a damn sight cheaper than the Tube.
I’ve heard loads of horror stories of endless waits for people in Blackheath who depend on it for travel to North Greenwich – they desperately need extra buses, but instead those get thrown into the schedule late at night for chucking out time at the O2. It’s time for someone with felt pens and a bus map to get to work and rearrange matters – but so far, there’s no sign of progress.
But there’s one change to the 108 that could gives us a real – yes – Olympic legacy, and might also improve the service. Tweaking the end point so it ran into the Olympic Park, rather than Stratford bus station, would still enable it to serve Westfield and the massive transport interchange there; but would also get it away from the awful traffic in Stratford, bring a 24-hour bus service from south of the river to the Olympic Park, and help us get to and from events there.
It’s a change that’d cost very little, but would make the regenerated Olympic Park feel a bit closer to us in an area that’s not been left with many physical reminders of the Olympics (especially once the mud goes).
Obviously, I’ll now be arranging a photoshoot with various pub landlords, kebab house magnates and the Stratford Westfield Massage Angels as part of my “all out” campaign to bridge this gap, but in the meantime, if you want to suggest it to TfL, head to its consultation page – it closes on 22 February.
The great bus queue of North Greenwich
Sunday night at North Greenwich, and a familiar problem after an event at the Dome – a traffic jam of buses which can’t leave the bus station because the traffic lights are set to favour cars (which themselves then queue up through Greenwich Millennium Village). It was taking about 10 minutes for buses to negotiate their way out of the station, with the queue snaking around both corners on the left and right of the screen at one point.
This should be a simple, and cheap, problem to fix, but instead, TfL spent £26m on a cable car.
Greenwich Council tries to hijack Silvertown tunnel consultation
Greenwich Council tried to hijack the consultation into building a third Blackwall Tunnel yesterday – but ended up having to start again after its Twitter feed started spouting spoof messages.
The council has launched a “bridge the gap” campaign to encourage residents to sign TfL’s consultations into building river crossings on the Greenwich Peninsula and at Gallions Reach in Thamesmead.
Conservative mayor Boris Johnson wants to build a tunnel close to the existing two Blackwall Tunnels, and open a ferry at Gallions Reach, which would replace the Woolwich Ferry.
Greenwich’s ruling Labour councillors voted to support the Silvertown policy at a behind-closed-doors meeting last week.
But some were surprised to see Chris Roberts launch a full-blooded campaign yesterday, with a front page story on the front of its weekly newspaper Greenwich Time, demanding a tunnel to Silvertown and a bridge at Gallions Reach.
On Monday afternoon, a page on the Greenwich Council website was launched to promote the campaign. Residents were asked to fill in their name, an email address, and to tick a box to send a message to Twitter. Upon clicking the “submit” button, you would be redirected to the TfL survey page, where you’d presumably follow the instructions on the previous page and say you strongly supported options you were were told to support.
The idea was that the council’s Twitter feed would then carry your name, a hashtag (#bridgethegap) and a link to the survey page. Essentially, the council was trying to use Twitter to hijack a public consultation.
There were no facts on the page, and no encouragement to read the info on TfL’s website – just a instruction to vote, and a link straight to the start of the survey.
Classy. Except there were several flaws. The feed wasn’t moderated. No genuine name ever appeared on the feed – because the hijack was, well, hijacked, by person(s) unknown.
One taxpayer wasn’t amused…
.@Royal_Greenwich how nice that my council tax goes towards funding use of the phrase "some stupid berk"—
James Worron (@JamesWorron) December 03, 2012
Whoops. But the Dear Leader’s pet pussy wasn’t long for this world, as council press office staff scrambled to delete the auto-tweets before they could spew out any more nonsense. Instead, it just started spouting “new pledge of support made for…” every time a “resident” signed the petition.
But worse, there were still no checks on email addresses or where people were signing from. I managed to sign under spoof names at least twice from the same computer, opening up the opportunity for someone to either sabotage or hugely inflate the numbers of “residents” signing the petition. There was also a promise that names wouldn’t be published – but names on petitions to public bodies have to be public.
Eventually, the council saw sense and gave up trying to hijack Twitter before its account got suspended. And last night, a proper sign-up page appeared with following message:
Thanks to everyone who has already pledged their support on the Royal Borough’s website for the campaign for extra river crossings. We have decided to ask people for additional details when they sign up to the ‘bridge the gap’ campaign in order to confirm their identity.
Whether “residents” George Hamilton III, Mickey Mouse and Pope Pius XXIX will have to do it all over again, remains to be seen. There is now an assurance that names won’t be published online – well, perhaps not on the council’s website, but it’s a public document and should be easy to obtain.
But the page still carries signatories straight into TfL’s survey. Nothing about reading the info provided, just instructions to say you strongly support the council’s favoured options. Try it yourself – the petition still allows you to sign multiple times.
The council’s own press release is as much as a fact-free zone as the petition page – apparently there are “campaigners” demanding a third Blackwall Tunnel, which is news to anyone who lives locally. “For far too long we have put up with congestion, pollution and this barrier to growth,” rants Roberts, oblivious to the fact that a third tunnel on the Greenwich peninsula will merely attract more traffic to the A102, which it emerges, has flyovers that aren’t in the best of health. It’s also emerged that car ownership in London is falling, not rising.
No studies have been carried out into the impact a Silvertown tunnel would have on traffic, while it’s certain to increase pollution in some of London’s most polluted areas.
“We need Transport for London to see that local people are really behind the idea,” Roberts continues. Sorry, Chris, 88% of respondents to a poll on this website at the beginning of this year weren’t behind the idea. And my poll’s no more scientific than yours.
The Dear Leader is usually good at picking campaigns he thinks he can win – and the Tory mayor’s likely to press ahead with the scheme anyway – but with a few marginal seats along the affected route, he and his Labour colleagues may well pay a heavy price for backing Boris.
Just 16 commuters touching into Greenwich’s cable car
It’s a bit lonely up there in the mornings. More over at Snipe.
Mayor Boris proposes slapping tolls on Blackwall Tunnel
Monday’s confirmation that Lewisham Hospital A&E may close made it a very good day to bury news in SE London that some people might not want to hear.
So, on Monday, Transport for London launched its consultation into building a third Blackwall Tunnel – the Silvertown Tunnel. I’ve dealt at length before about why sending more traffic down the A102 will only move the tunnel bottleneck further south as more traffic seeks to use it.
Naturally, Bexley Council, from whose borough much of the traffic will come, backs this – it shoves the problem out of the Conservative council’s backyard, after all. But so does Greenwich Labour, with both council leader Chris Roberts and Eltham MP Clive Efford speaking up in favour of sending more traffic through Greenwich, Charlton and Blackheath.
But there’s a shock in store for some of those supporters – TfL, which doesn’t have the money to start digging, proposes tolling the Blackwall Tunnel to pay for it:
There is currently no funding set aside in TfL’s budget for the major infrastructure projects outlined in this consultation. This means that in order to deliver them we would need to identify a means of paying for them.
We believe that the most appropriate way to fund the projects would be to charge a toll for using the Silvertown Tunnel and any new crossing linking Thamesmead and Beckton. Tolling would provide a new revenue stream to pay for the crossings, and would ensure that those who benefit most from these new projects – by using them – help to pay for them in return.
Because the Silvertown Tunnel and the Blackwall Tunnel are located so close to one another and share common approach roads, if the Silvertown Tunnel is built and subject to tolling, the Blackwall Tunnel would also need to be tolled – otherwise there would be serious delays at the Blackwall Tunnel as so much traffic would wish to use it.
The charges are likely to be similar to the tolls charged on the Dartford crossing (which are now £2 for cars £2.50 for two-axle goods vehicles, and £5 for HGVs). Charges at around these levels should help to manage traffic while not constraining economic activity and growth.
That wasn’t in Boris Johnson’s election manifesto in May, and won’t go down very well in Bexley, many of whose residents think it’s unfair they have to pay to use the Dartford crossing. (To be fair, if they got it for free, it might take some of the load off Blackwall.) Maybe he should have kept the congestion charge in Kensington and Chelsea after all. The consultation also makes it clear the Thames Gateway Bridge at Thamesmead isn’t dead, either.
Sneakily, there’s no indication in the consultation of the huge construction work that’d be needed on the Greenwich Peninsula, effectively cutting off the O2 from the rest of the peninsula. Check out the size of the planned approaches on the Canning Town side.
Of course, we’ve been here before – the last politician to suggest charging at the Blackwall Tunnel was none other than… Greenwich Council leader Chris Roberts, five years ago, when proposing a congestion charge for SE10, a bizarre idea which seemed to have died a death when Boris Johnson was elected.
Now it’s back – but would a toll make the Silvertown tunnel any more palatable? You can contribute to the consultation here.
PS. Some of this stuff might be on the agenda at a meeting of Greenwich Council’s transport scrutiny committee on Thursday (6.30pm, Woolwich Town Hall) where representatives of TfL and Southeastern will be quizzed by councillors. It’s open to the public.
No medals for Greenwich or Lewisham on TfL’s map
I was in the London Transport Museum shop the other day, admiring the Tube map of Team GB’s Olympic medallists – yours for a mere fifty quid. But then it was pointed out to me – something was missing…
Yup, the DLR’s retreated north of the river for the first time in 13 years. Still, it’s not like they held any Olympic events around here, is it? Oops.
Greenwich cable car: A brief report, and a future worry
So, at about 7pm, I thought I’d have a look at the cable car since I was passing by. Having seen lots of publicity about “boarding passes“, I saw a couple of ticket machines with Oyster readers on, topped mine up, and tried to find where I could get one. I couldn’t, except at the tourist rate of over four quid.
“Can I buy a ticket with Oyster on these machines?”, I asked a staffer. “No,” she said.
I took a look at the queue for the kiosk, remembered I had an appointment in the pub in a couple of hours, thought better of it, and went to get my bike to ride home.
A couple of hours later, I met my chum in the pub. She’d taken a ride just after I left. “Oh, you can just touch in and it’s fine – heaven knows what it’s taken off my Oyster though…”
As a vertigo sufferer (though one that’s been fine with cable cars in Lisbon – which is what I think London’s is based on – and Barcelona) I might have had a lucky escape, mind. The wind whipped up when I was getting my bike, and the gondolas stopped, swaying slightly in the air. Turns out this is what they do when it gets windy. It gets windy a lot on the Greenwich Peninsula – that could be interesting…
Still, despite it being a multi-million pound drain on a public transport budget, it seemed to have a steady stream of customers, if not the crowds predicted by TfL. It’ll be interesting to see how many people are using it during Friday’s morning rush hour. Probably not a lot, but I’ll keep an open mind.
(Here’s Diamond Geezer‘s Arabfly Dangleway photos, if you really want to see what it’s like.)
But there’s an ominous warning for the future in this week’s Greenwich Council propaganda rag Greenwich Time, where council – sorry, royal borough leader Chris Roberts came out in favour of building a third Blackwall Tunnel underneath the cable car site, having fudged the question at a council meeting during the mayoral election after Labour candidate Ken Livingstone criticised the project.
So, with the Greenwich Labour party in support of clogging up the area with more traffic – if there’s any opposition to the Silvertown Tunnel – 88% of 853 readers were against it in a poll five months ago – then perhaps it needs to get organised sooner rather than later.
No Travelcards on the two-speed Thames Cable Car
So London’s most baffling piece of public transport will open to the public a week on Thursday, with many unanswered questions about quite what it’s there for. London Reconnections has done a sparkling job on bringing together all the info on the Thames Cable Car, and last night the station was proudly displaying its EMIRATES GREENWICH PENINSULA signage.
But why, and what on earth is it for? Here’s some discussions you’ll be hearing more of over the next couple of weeks.
The fares. £3.20 with an Oyster card, £4.20 in cash (£1.60 and £2.20 for children); Travelcards and Freedom Passes not valid. If it doesn’t accept Travelcards, then it isn’t part of the London public transport network, surely? But then there’s also a 10-journey “frequent flyer” rate at £16. It’s clear this is like the river buses – not quite part of the public transport system, but somehow fudged into it. But unlike the Thames Clippers river buses, this is owned and run by Transport for London. So why are we paying for its construction, then paying a premium rate to use it?
The operating hours. Last journeys are at 9pm – with “extended hours” promised when there are “events at the local venues”. Does that mean all O2 shows or just high-profile ones? What about busy Friday nights when there’s just something on in the smaller Indigo2 venue? Or when an O2 act stays on stage well beyond time?
Two speeds. Journeys will take five minutes in the mornings and evenings – but 10 during the daytime. Sorry, shift workers, you’re stuck on the slow tourist special. Tourist wanting to see a leisurely sunrise or sunset? Forget it. So here’s the baffling thing…
Public transport or tourist attraction? It’s clear TfL is trying to have its cake and eat it. It’s obviously going to be a big hit for the first year or so, as public curiosity tempts the masses into having a go. But as a piece of public transport? This remains a journey that very few people actually need to make – myself, I’ve only had to visit ExCeL twice, and one of those was for a cable car press event.
Sure, the Thames Clippers are reasonably successful, but they span a wider area and attract a different clientele – people who both live and work near the piers who are happy to trade in the speed of rail or Tube for a higher level of comfort (and a drink at the bar) for a price. The cable car offers a view – but so do other forms of public transport, and they don’t demand a surcharge on your Oyster card.
The website. Just for a laugh, take a look at its official website – www.emiratesairline.co.uk. South London attractions include, er, Brixton, Hampton Court Palace and the London Eye, none of which are anywhere near Greenwich. As for the “North London” attractions – Little Venice, the Albert Hall, and, er, the Millennium Bridge. Not that the cable car even goes to north London. All this on a website which carries the TfL roundel.
Anyhow, what do you think? Time for a couple of polls – I’d be interested to see what you think of the cable car and its split personality.
PS. As ever, Diamond Geezer has nailed it.
Olympic travel latest: Southeastern timetable out, 286 bus cut
If you’re planning on taking a train during the Olympics, Southeastern has released its Olympic and Paralympic timetables, which confirm draconian service cuts for many stations around venues in Greenwich and Woolwich.
As first revealed by this website 14 months ago, Woolwich Dockyard station will be completely closed, with Deptford and Westcombe Park losing two-thirds of their services. Maze Hill will lose Kent-bound trains in the morning and London-bound trains in the afternoon and evenings, while Kidbrooke trains will be cut to four per hour.
The restrictions will not only last during the Olympics (28 July-12 August) but they will also be reimposed during the more lightly-attended Paralympics (29 August-9 September). The timetable, opposed by both Greenwich and Lewisham councils as well as local MPs, was backed by the Government, while mayor Boris Johnson has declined to intervene.
It’s worth pointing out that mainline services near the Olympic Park itself, which will see crowds far in excess of what Greenwich and Woolwich will see, are not suffering such steep cuts, with just Maryland station at the north end of Stratford closing for the Games.
Don’t go looking for details of those services on TfL’s lousy Get Ahead of the Games site, though – they’re not on there, although they have belatedly added our own service cutbacks.
Full bus service details are still to be worked out, but this lengthy TfL document covers the current situation clearly and with maps, as well. There are few surprises compared with how things were the last time they were covered here, with plenty of extra buses on services including the 53, 108, 177 and 188.
But there’s a nasty surprise if you use the 286, which links Greenwich with Blackheath, Kidbrooke, Eltham and Sidcup. That service is being reduced from six to five buses per hour because of the diversion buses will have to make in Greenwich. (Ironically, this is what Greenwich Council suggested TfL do permanently to make room for its now-shelved pedestrianisation project.)
Route 129 is also running a reduced service, but will be uprated to double deckers to compensate. No such help is available for 286 users, on a single-deck bus which is regularly full to the rafters at rush hour. Apparently the bus is single-deck because of trees in Rochester Way, Eltham – maybe if Greenwich Council got some chainsaws out, TfL could get hold of some double-deckers? Just a thought.
Finally, above are the stats for people reaching this website via search engines on Monday. They were roughly the same on Tuesday. Sometimes I fret I’m talking nonsense and I’d be better off outside the off-licence shouting at the bins, but yes, it really does look like Greenwich Council has made a balls-up of telling people about Olympic parking permits.
But finally, today (Wednesday) should see us able to get information and apply for parking permits at www.2012gamesparkingpermits.com. If you live in an area roughly bounded by Deptford Church Street, Lee High Road and Plumstead Common, it’s worth a look, whether you drive or not.
