| Topic: | Re:Re:How might the cuts to TfL affect W4 ?? | |
| Posted by: | Thomas Barry | |
| Date/Time: | 07/11/08 16:34:00 |
| "The TfL press release" Which is a piece of spin worthy of New Labour at their best - it's reannouncing all of the committed Livingstone era projects (Crossrail, Tube upgrades) without mentioning who started them, while scrapping any that haven't got secured funding and blaming Livingstone for it. He's also floating some pointless stuff about a new Blackwall link and building Tube lines in South London using the Crossrail TBMs, despite them being the wrong size. Pathetic decision, sets the city back years, and illustrates exactly why a lot of people knew Boris was bad news for transport. Chiswick suffers because neither main party is really interested in major transport improvements in West London - Labour aren't especially interested in the western areas and the Tories evidently aren't interested in initiating expensive projects full stop, since they're just completing a few and not starting off any more. The pipeline will be empty come 2012 and a lot of project expertise will be lost, particularly on the DLR. However, there are small improvements that we do get, such as new Overground trains which are on course for May 2009, according to Peter Hendy. They're being tested now. Oyster PAYG on South West Trains I haven't seen a date for, but the original intention of January 2009 won't happen, summer at the earliest. However, Boris's heavily trailed 'Rail Summit' to get the operating companies to agree hasn't happened at all. They aren't particularly interested in talking to him, apparently, since he doesn't have any control over them. |