There is nothing about how the Mayor will encourage people onto public transport, but plenty about giving back road space and speeding up traffic lights in favour of the 'oppressed' motorist," said Labour's transport spokeswoman Val Shawcross
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Boris the Ripper?
Seems like London might soon regret tossing out Red Ken. £3.5 Billion of transit expansion projects have been scrapped. The New Mayor says that this is funding needed for Crossrail, a huge cross city subway line, but many aren't happy with the loss of local projects and say he is just encouraging autocentricity.
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To be fair, he axed a major road bridge which was probably a bad idea. And a bunch of the expansions he axed were rather questionable service for "developing" areas.
But some of the cuts are disgraceful: the Tramlink expansion to Crystal Palace was already designed and would have been very successful.
The other tram schemes, also, although expensive and of questionable popularity, were pretty much the only affordable way of adding extra passenger capacity into Central London; cancelling them will stifle the area's economic growth. The advertised alternative of increased Underground capacity is simply technically impossible. This shows what happens when you let a know-nothing take charge; you get dumb ideas.
Man! That sounds like Mary Peters thinking not enough money is being spent on highways, and highways are being strapped of cash!
Oh, and Crossrail is a rail tunnel which is to be used by electric commuter trains, like the tunnel in Philadelphia, the S-Bahn tunnels in certain places across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and the RER in Paris.
I'm pissed Boris Johnson, who was born in New York City, by the way, has axed certain tram projects. I thought they'd make good sense in London.
The Problem is all these cancelled projects did not have any budgeted funds. Central government controls the purse strings here. The previous 5 year budget is going seriously adrift.
The collapse of the Metronet public private partnership has left a £2 billion shortfall in the tube modernisation project. Cost over runs on the other partnership are also starting to mount.
To keep the tube modernisation on track the Mayor has to get them increase funding.
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