Those of us who use Edgware Road tube station to travel west regularly will know full well how unreliable the Circle Line is. More often than not in order to reach destinations in West London beyond Gloucester Road you have to rely on other lines, like the District Line, even though this involves changing at Earl’s Court. It also appears that the Circle Line is stopped at the drop of a hat, when we have bad weather or the other lines are disrupted for any reason.
The new plan by Transport for London to extend the Circle Line to Hammersmith and increase the regularity of the service should mean that one of the worst lines on the tube map will get a whole lot better, but we could do with some other improvements.
Edgware Road station is central to the new arrangement and many things need to be done in and around that particular station. It has been in a big hole in the ground for many decades and clearly neglected, with an adverse impact on both passengers and London Underground employees. There is a lot of rubbish at the back of the station that needs to be cleared immediately (see picture below). Staff are still working and resting in temporary accommodation in the form of portacabins. The entrance on the Marylebone Road should be kept open more often and the signage to the Bakerloo Line is pretty awful.
Let’s try and get this all done before the enhanced service begins in December.
March 5, 2009
Has anyone noticed how much longer the lines of taxis are getting on taxi ranks at rail stations? Passing through Marylebone station on a daily basis as l do, l have noticed queues of black cabs waiting for passengers going around the block. It is the same picture at Paddington station where going around the block involves passing over a bridge at the back of the station, along the Harrow Road and even up to the Edgware Road. And that’s a very big block indeed!
While this is clearly a sign of the times, we don’t want the black cab trade shooting itself in the foot. But that may well be the case with the recent increase in taxi fares announced by the Public Carriage Office. This at a time when many corporate accounts have withdrawn from hiring black cabs to send their executives around town. It was for this reason that l tabled a question to the Mayor on black cab fare rises to which I received an answer indicating that Boris has not seen the evidence on the ground. This is clearly an aspect of London life that we need to keep an eye on during the downturn of the economy.
March 5, 2009
One of the first things Boris Johnson did in May, as the new mayor of London, was to ban the drinking of alcohol on public transport, particularly on the Underground. Previously this had not been an issue much raised by Londoners in my experience, but the ban – and along with it the authority of the mayor – may well come up against its biggest challenge on New Year’s Eve when free travel will be offered on the tubes and buses of London for all the revellers.
It’s a time of year which attracts and encourages a lot of drinking including in public and often on our transport system. So how is Boris going to enforce his ban? Extra police cells could be appropriate, as I suggested in jest at the last Mayor’s Question Time on the 17th of December. Maybe we have time enough for an one-evening amnesty to be put in place. Now this could be a real test of Boris’s mettle and his libertarian credentials, both at the same time!
December 24, 2008
It remains a continuing scandal that, nearly six years after it was first introduced, many embassies in London are still refusing to pay the Congestion Charge. Their justification for this stance – that the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations frees them from the obligation to pay taxes – is an entirely spurious argument, since the CC clearly qualifies as a user charge rather than a tax. Refusing to pay it is no different from refusing to pay the charge for driving across a toll bridge, for example, and no embassy anywhere is claiming they are exempt from that.
The precise cost of this Congestion Charge evasion to Londoners was unclear, so I tabled a question at Mayor’s Question Time in November asking for a breakdown of the amounts owed by the various London embassies. The report (Word document here) supplied by Transport for London contains some shocking statistics.
Top of the non-payment league is the US embassy. Its diplomats have driven through the Congestion Charge Zone 26,165 times without paying. The embassy owes £209,320 in unpaid charges and a staggering £2,735,245 in unpaid fines.
The total figures for money owed by payment-dodging embassies are even more eye-watering. Altogether, diplomatic staff have made 220,540 journeys through the CCZ without paying, resulting in £1,764,320 in unpaid charges and £23,120,389 in unpaid fines.
This situation is totally unacceptable. It is not for embassies to pick and choose which rules they obey and which they don’t. While we are belt-tightening during these difficult economic times, Londoners are having to carry these skinflint diplomats on their backs.
The Mayor needs to stand up to these freeloaders, and insist that they begin paying the Congestion Charge and clear their outstanding debts. It’s not on to have such large sums of money being lost to TfL, particularly at a time when fares are being increased above inflation by the Mayor and transport projects cut.
(See also reports in the Guardian and the Times.)
November 20, 2008