Caroline's news

Replying to a question from Caroline Pidgeon AM, Lib Dem chair of the London Assembly's Transport Committee, Boris Johnson has refused to commit funds to fund a rail service from Victoria to Bellingham, which would ease the impact on South London Line passengers when their line is closed in 2012.

With the currenct economic situation, there is no way that funding could be allocated to the Victoria–Bellingham service without cutting back on services or projects elsewhere.

Read the Mayor's full letter here.

The London SE1 website reports on Transport for London's announcement that it will finally provide replacement bus services to Waterloo during weekends when the Jubilee line is closed.

Caroline Pidgeon, who raised this issue with the Mayor several months ago, commented:

I welcome TfL's long-awaited replacement bus service which includes Waterloo. Despite the Mayor's previous claims that this was not possible it clearly can be done.

It is just a pity that such poor excuses were previously made by the Mayor. It is local people who have continued to suffer unnecessary inconvenience.

The full story is here.

The Disability Now website has an article on the scrapping of plans to introduce step-free access at over 20 Tube stations.

The article quotes Caroline Pidgeon:

Transport for London, which the Mayor of London chairs, has shown incredible incompetence in starting work on step-free access at six Underground stations and then cancelling the work before completion.

The full article is here.

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.