This morning I joined local Conservatives at Wanstead Station to greet travellers and explain Boris Johnson's transport investment plan. On the Central Line there will be new stations at Bank, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street, designed to relieve overcrowding and provide easy access to Crossrail. On the District Line we can look forward to a new station at Victoria - the busiest on the Tube - and new air conditioned trains, to be accommodated in the enlarged depot at Upminster.
The investment programme also means more construction jobs for Londoners, with 14,000 created by Crossrail and 18,000 by the Tube upgrades.
Despite the strong winds, darkness and pouring rain, we got a friendly reception from the people we met. A few Labour people turned up later to promote their fare cutting plans which would endanger the upgrades, and there was even a rumour that Ken Livingstone was going to put in an appearance. I expect we will be seeing a lot of each other in 2012...
6 comments:
Have you been using a soft focus filter to make you look more youthful, Mr Evans, Doris Day style?
I see you have also airbrushed out the crowds of grateful commuters and voters keen to offer thanks to Boris Johnson for the crippling fare rise he has forced us to endure.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Mrs A.
The weather and light conditions were clearly too much for my camera's auto focus. At least it got the station sign clear...
oh you old train spotter: I despair ...
Roger,
Firstly happy new year. I was a bit intrigued by the implication that crossrail and the new stations were "Boris's investment". There was me thinking they'd been planned years ago.
Other than the Boris bus, which unlike a few other commentators I quite like the idea of, are there actually any completely new intiatives in public transport, providing new infrastracture, which have been children of the Boris era and can actually be considered initiatives of the Boris Johnson regime?
Happy New Year Rog!
When over 2,000 Labour supporters are blaming you for the fares, it is only logical, and helpful to the debate, to say what the money is being spent on. with blame comes credit.
One of the difficulties we have with transport investment is the gestation times of projects - so if you are in power over a long period of time, during an economic boom, you will be able to claim more projects from start to finish.
In addition to the buses, Boris can claim the bike hire scheme, the cycling superhighways and the Greenwich cable car. Locally we also have the Gants Hill Roundabout resignalling and more police with better CCTV on the buses.
Ken, to be fair, could claim congestion charge and bendy buses - and he is welcome to both of them.
As for Crossrail, it has been around for so long that even I can claim a role! In 1993 I worked on the response to the evolving plans on behalf of the Royal Mail - a task which involved riding around on the Post Office Underground Railway and learning all about tunnelling, a great job for an aspiring train spotter...
Roger,
I'll give you the Cable car. I don't think it is really transport infrastructure in the classic sense, more a good tourist draw, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Ken was investigating the bike hire scheme. I don't dount that Boris has given it a profile way beyond what Ken would have.
I was under the impression that the cycle superhighways were in the planning stage prior to Boris.
A good friend of mine was a senior designer for TFL working on the Cross River Tram. He's not a particularly political guy and would never let me quote him, but if ever you want an expert opinion of what Boris could have done relatively cheaply to vastly improve London's infrastructure, give me a call and I'll put you in touch.
I think that Boris has missed a few massive opportunities to make huge improvements.I'd like to see Transport become non political. I sincerely hope that if Ken wins, he doesn't can the Boris Bus project as I think this would be a supreme folly
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