The Evening Standard reports that Transport for London has spend £18 million over the last year in providing replacement buses during Tube, DLR and Overground closures due to engineering work.
Caroline Pidgeon told the Evening Standard:
Caroline recently joined Ian Shacklock (Chair of the Friends of Regent's Canal), Caroline Russell (Chair, Islington Living Streets), Del Brenner (lifelong canal campaigner, Secretary of Regent's Network) and Michael Rosenbaum (Angel Canal Festival committee member, local resident) to walkabout the Regent’s Canal in Islington and Hackney to look at a number of issues including:
Following on from extensive work by Caroline Pidgeon on Oyster overcharging, London Travelwatch have now looked at the issue and discovered that 8 million passengers are overcharged every month.
The Evening Standard covers the story here, and discussed the situation with Caroline:
Speaking to the London Assembly Transport Committee, the Managing Director of the London Underground has publicly acknowledged that problems on the Tube over the past year have resulted in an increase in lost customer hours on almost every line.
Chair of the Transport Committee, Caroline Pidgeon AM, said:
We recognise the challenges London Underground is facing as it works to deliver an extensive upgrade programme while carrying more and more passengers, but the past year has seen an unreliable service for passengers who are exceptionally frustrated by their daily commute.
While we heard today that if you go back several years things are generally improving, the recent performance of the Tube has undoubtedly deteriorated and is not good enough.
With major upgrade work about to start on the Northern line we hope lessons have been learned so that passengers who use it will not have to deal with the levels of disruption seen on the Jubilee and Victoria line upgrades.
Caroline went on the new high speed train from St Pancras to Stratford International Station to see how the transport infrastructure has been completed ahead of time for the 2012 Games.
Caroline joined other Assembly members, the mayor and other officials to experience the fast train journey which will shuttle thousands of spectators when the games come to London next year.
The trip then went on the new DLR extension from Stratford International to the main Stratford station. This is due to open in July according to TfL after further test.
Caroline Pidgeon is continuing to support action to tackle the high number of accidents and fatalities that face cyclists on London's roads. London faces an especially serious problem with accidents involving collisions between lorries and cyclists at junctions.
A recent question asked by Caroline to the Mayor revealed that in 2009 six cyclists were killed on London's roads in accidents involving a Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV), and with a further two cyclists killed in accidents involving a refuse lorry and a cement mixer. In 2010 there were two cyclists killed in accidents involving vehicles and two further two fatal collisions including a skip lorry and a cement truck.
Caroline has already given her full support to the campaign by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) for better training for lorry drivers and recently received the petition that had already gathered more than 10,000 signatures. Read more information about the campaign here.
Caroline Pidgeon AM joined Baroness Sarah Ludford, London’s Lib Dem MEP, and local Councillor George Allan for a tour around Farringdon Station. The Station is being rebuilt by the end of 2011 as part of the Thameslink programme, but also preparing for Crossrail.
When both of these transport programmes are complete by 2018, this will be one of the busiest stations in London and a very important interchange for people wanting to travel to all London airports and St Pancras International Station.
The Islington Gazette has an article on the excess fares charged to local passengers for "incomplete journeys" on Oyster - totalling £3m for stations in Islington and on its fringes.
And you can read the full data here on Caroline's site.
Passengers are being overcharged more than £1 million a week when using Oyster, with overcharging occurring at every tube and train station across the capital, new figures obtained by Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group leader, have revealed.
The top ten stations where passengers were ripped off last year were:
| Waterloo | National Rail | £2,452,000 |
| London Bridge | National Rail | £2,300,000 |
| Liverpool Street | National Rail | £1,615,000 |
Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group, commenting on the Mayor’s announcement today about crime statistics on public transport and his claim to be providing extra policing on to the transport network said:
“The Mayor should take great care when boasting about crime statistics on London’s transport network, especially as the overall fall in crime seems to hide some very disturbing rises in bus crime in about a third of London boroughs.