London-wide + Southwark stories

In an article for the Lib Dem Voice website, Caroline Pidgeon describes how anomalies in the Oyster card system result in Londoners being overcharged by £500,000 a month when they travel on National Rail services:

This week at City Hall I was accused by Boris Johnson of being a “negative Liberal Democrat” when I dared to question him over some of the problems that have happened as a result of the extension of Oyster Pay as You Go to national rail services across London.

Well I stand by my questioning of the Mayor as there is no doubt that a huge number of Londoners are not getting the best deal that Oyster could deliver. There are serious anomalies in how the system operates, and the full benefits of the technology are simply not being delivered. Most significantly many people using Oyster on the trains, whether they are Londoners or visitors, are being overcharged, sometimes by quite large amounts. This January alone it is estimated that 32,000 passengers were overcharged a total of half a million pounds.

Read the full article here.

Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly transport spokesperson, has revealed that each and every Londoner is now owed £5 by embassies that evade paying the Congestion Charge. For the first time ever the total unpaid bill for non-payment of Congestion Charge and Penalty Charge Notices now exceeds £40 million.

Through repeated questioning, Caroline Pidgeon has obtained figures from the Mayor showing that the amount owed by embassies soared during 2009 by more than 40%, with the unpaid bill rising by £1 million every month. At the very start of the 2010 the total unpaid bill from embassies stood at £39 million, compared to an unpaid bill of £26 million at the same time last year.

Commenting on these new figures, Caroline Pidgeon said:
"It is shameful that a minority of embassies continue to evade paying the Congestion Charge. British diplomats respect the law of other countries and it is only right that diplomats do the same in this country.

For many years, Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes and Lib Dem Councillors have been campaigning for improvements in the Kennington area, particularly around the tube station.

This area can all too often seem forgotten as it sits on the boundary between Lambeth and Southwark, with Transport for London in charge of Kennington Park Road.

For many people this area is the gateway to Southwark, and yet the environment around the tube station is not welcoming enough.

Your Lib Dem Team have launched a five point action plan calling for:

1. Improvements to the pavements;
2. More secure cycle parking
3. Better street lights
4. Improvements to the road surface for all road users particularly cyclists; and
5. Kennington Tube Station to be re-zoned from Zone 2 to a boundary 1/2 station.

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.