The BBC covers the news that the Conservative party has rejected Boris Johnson's plan to build a new airport in the Thames Estuary.
The story quotes Caroline Pidgeon's comment that Boris's only success has been to "unite councils in Kent and Essex, environmental groups, and now, we hear, all three main political parties in Parliament, against this mad idea".
The full story is on the BBC website here.
The London Assembly Transport Committee has launched a report, The Future Of London's Buses, setting out a number of questions to the Mayor about how he will guarantee the future of the capital’s world-class bus service despite large cuts to the bus subsidy.
The report captures a range of views expressed at a seminar hosted by the Committee to debate both the benefits of the bus service and how any changes to it would impact on Londoners.
Buses are by far the most popular mode of public transport in London, catering for nearly two billion journeys each year. However, despite a growing population, and for the first time in several decades, the bus network is not anticipated to expand at all between now and 2012. Over the next eight years, the bus subsidy will be cut by a third, from £700 million in 2008/09 to £450 million in 2017/18.
First Capital Connect admitted last week that the Thameslink service has been “appalling” and “totally inadequate” at a meeting with Chris Nicholson, the Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Streatham and GLA Transport Committee chair, Caroline Pidgeon.
Chris Nicholson asked for the meeting as disruptions on First Capital Connect’s service worsened over the last months. First Capital Connect’s Larry Heyman apologised for the reduced timetable, the inability of trains to run in the snow and incorrect information provided to customers. He acknowledged that some train motors struggled to cope with the snow and said that these would be replaced by next month.
Figures released today showed that just 62.8% of Thameslink trains ran less than 5 mins late in the period between 13 December 2009 to 9 January 2010. In the same period, 11.7% of all services were cancelled.
FCC trains were running late again today on the Bedford to Brighton line and some consisted of just four carriages instead of the normal eight. Other trains stopped short of their advertised destination or did not stop at all stops.
The Evening Standard has a report on the London Assembly Transport Committee's investigation into the poor performance of Southeastern rail service during the recent severe weather.
Caroline Pidgeon is quoted in the article:
Questions have to be asked how freight trains can run and yet passenger ones can't on the same lines.
Passengers need to be compensated and serious questions have to be asked about Southeastern's management during this snowy weather.
The full article can be read here.
Lewisham Lib Dems have also launched a petition calling for Southeastern to reimburse Network Rail with 3 days' worth of its public subsidy. This would provide £1.1m for improvements to stations served by Southeastern.
Caroline Pidgeon AM, on behalf of the London Assembly Liberal Democrat group, and London Lib Dem Transport spokesperson Tom Brake MP, has submitted a formal response to the Mayor's draft Transport Strategy.
While welcoming some of the Mayor's proposals, the Lib Dems see several areas where the strategy is in need of improvement:
The document contains welcome and useful proposals, some of which need strengthening. Regrettably, important issues that need to be addressed are neglected or omitted.
There are contradictions in the document – measures to promote walking and cycling sit uncomfortably with plans to smooth traffic flow and an absence of plans for pedestrian precincts. The document lacks interim measures of success for the Mayor’s projects: this will make it very difficult for Londoners to hold him to account. To secure new infrastructure investment takes many years of hard work and campaigning. If valuable projects are excluded on the grounds that funding is not currently available, they will never be delivered.
