Caroline Pidgeon

Caroline Pidgeon AM, Leader of the London Assembly Lib Dems, joined senior Lib Dems including Lynne Featherstone MP, Sarah Ludford MEP, and party president Ros Scott, at the Pride London 2010 event on Saturday 3rd July - the UK's largest annual LGBT event.

Caroline Pidgeon, Lib Dem chair of the London Assembly's Transport Committee, has proposed a five-point plan to get the Northern line upgrade completed with the minimum possible disruption to residents and businesses who rely on the line.

In a letter to Ed Fordham, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Caroline makes these proposals:

1. All current upgrade plans be immediately suspended for 3-4 months, allowing a full consultation to be conducted, enabling local residents and businesses to have their views heard.
2. Replace months of early evening and weekend closures with short, sharp bursts of work on sections of the Northern line (blockades lasting several weeks).
3. Keep the Northern line open when the London Overground rail network or the Jubilee Line are closed for upgrade work.

The London Assembly Transport Committee has launched a new report, questioning the sums Londoners are paying for the Crossrail project, and criticising the way compulsory purchases of businesses and homes have been handled.

In the report, 'Light at the end of the tunnel', the Committee recognises the value of the £16bn rail link project, which will bring an extra 10% capacity on London’s overcrowded rail and Tube network, thousands of new jobs and a massive boost to the national economy.

However, it questions the fairness of Londoners contributing the majority of the funding, when 8 of the 37 stations are outside Greater London, and the project is expected to generate £22bn for central government over the next ten years. It also points out Crossrail's poor handling of displaced businesses and residents whose premises are compulsory purchased to make way for construction work, especially in Soho.

Pedestrians on Oxford street are reduced to shuffling along overcrowded pavements, while hundreds of buses an hour inch forward at an average of 4mph, according to a new report from the London Assembly Transport Committee.

The report, ‘Streets ahead: Relieving congestion on Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street’, notes that despite its phenomenal popularity with shoppers, the area continues to be divided by a "slow-moving procession of buses and taxis". On average the area suffers an accident involving a bus every 3.4 days - and air quality in the area, already the worst in London, is on track to be the worst in the UK by 2015

At the heart of the problem is the conflict between the need to provide a pleasant shopping and leisure environment, and meeting the demand for transport links through the West End. And various schemes to reduce traffic congestion and improve the pedestrian experience in one of the world’s premier shopping destinations may not be enough, says the report, calling for more radical thinking.