Public transport
Londoners who travel on foot – that is, most of us – on our way to work, gigs, restaurants and the cinema need protection from cars, motorcycles and cyclists. We demand a pedestrian charter for the capital – the pavement and pedestrian crossings should be inviolate.
Ban bicycles from riverside walks, canals and park pavements outside the morning and evening rush hours.
PPF has been a fiasco: the Mayor must take the case for full public ownership of this vital asset to the government. Failing that, embrace private finance properly and ask every FTSE 100 Company with an office in London to sponsor a tube station. They can do what they like with it, as long as it works and is kept clean.
Congestion charging should be extended, but rationalised: those with particular needs (such as mothers with young children) should be charged less than the congenitally lazy.
The whole of London should be a congestion-charging zone; only then will we really begin to address the baleful effects of the motorcar on our city. This revolutionary policy would change the nature of our city forever and in adopting it London would truly show itself as a world leader.
Extended running hours on the tube, especially from Thursday to Sunday, will help improve the experience of socialising in the capital, boosting bar and club revenue and, most importantly, improving safety for women and men who are otherwise forced to wander around the capital late at night in various states of intoxication. We have one of the largest underground networks in Europe and we’re still one of the earliest to shut down.
Reduce fares on the tube and force the Oyster card on train companies so south Londoners are no longer excluded from cheaper travel.
Once inside London rail space there should be temporary decommissioning of first class to end the ridiculous spectacle of packed trains pulling into London stations with one empty carriage.
Travellers without train tickets are fined £10 on the spot: fair enough, but if a Londoner buys a ticket and the train company doesn’t supply a (reasonable) train service, then the company should also be find £10 on the spot for each passenger.
Throw money at the tube to fix all points once and for all. There should never be messages like ‘points failure’, the most common cause of tube delays.
One Sunday a month all London within the M25 should be an enforced no-car zone.
It is outrageous that London’s cyclists are regularly injured and even killed by drivers Build proper cycling lanes and install more places to park motorcycles.
Launch a bike hire service as in Barcelona and Paris.
Replace bendy buses with a mixture of single-decker and double-decker buses – failing that, prevent bendy buses from stopping across pedestrian crossingsChange all traffic light bulbs to new LED ones and make huge savings.
Stop taxis using bus lanes. This is dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians and it slows down buses.
More pedestrianisation in the city centre supported by better and cheaper public transport.
What do you think? Give us your feedback
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28 comments
Totally agree about the dog shit. I also live in N1 and you don't so much step in it as surf along on a tide of it. I use Shoreditch Park quite a lot which has the only beach volley ball court in London. Fantastic you would think, what a great facility for an inner city area. A slice of Venice Beach right here in the middle of London. Wrong wrong wrong. I was actually working out in the sand today when some grinning idiot''s dog came and pooped right next to me. I mean, for god's sake, what the f*** is going on these peoples' minds? The new mayor needs to do something.
At the risk of sounding like my mother, bring back bus conductors, at least on troublesome routes. Brian Paddick's notion that bus drivers should sort out trouble among their passengers as well as safely navigating London traffic shows he's never tried to drive a car with two squabbling kids in the back. Plus it would give TV producers scope for an updated comeback for 'On the Busses'.
The deadline for signatures to support the Early Day Motion on cutting the deposit and signature requirement for the London Mayoral Election has passed. I can't find the EDM on the parliamentary lists though. Can you give us more information?
Something has to be done about the amount of free papers in London. Firstly each one is exactly the same and offer no choice to those choosing to read one. The most irritating aspect of them is the 'paper boys / girls' who shove them into your face every 5 mins while walking down Oxford St. If we must have them then at least leave them for people to choose to take one if they wish like the Metro. They also create an massive amount of waste and create a mess of the tube stations. Surely this goes against London's campaign to become a greener city.
Congestion Charge:
Rather than trying to stop everyone driving in every day, why not try and make people drive in less often :-
Change the cost of driving in for each consecutive day - based around the average price for the vehicle ... eg for the current £8 per day vehicles ...
Day 1 : £0
Day 2 : £4
Day 3 : £8
Day 4 : £12
Day 5 : £16
You still raise the £40 per week if they drive every day, but my bet is they'd leave the car at home a couple of times a week!
Depends what you are trying to do of course, raise revenue or reduce congestion!
Regards
Andy
I just have two small things to throw in:
1. Pedestrianisation: I applaud what we've seen, but would like to see considerably more pedestrianisation in the city centre (though this needs to be supported by better and cheaper public transport).
2. Rant: I'll be honest, this is a moan, but I'd really like someone to re-look at TicketMaster. How their virtual monopoly on ticket distribution can be allowed to continue is beyond me. I'd favour Mayoral regulation of ticket distribution - ripping off locals and tourists is surely not a good thing.
Oyster card machines on south London trains NOW. Especially as the East London line is now down. I am offended at how much I have to pay to cross the river.
Pubs/bars in Soho open after 11pm so we're not wandering around considering paying £6 to get into some stinking salsa dive. This is LONDON for goodness sakes, it's embarrassing for us as a tourist magnet.
Public bins that are divided into recycled and non-recycles materials, like they do in cities in Germany.
Please turn the office lights off when you lock up! The whole of the City is ablaze with lights at all hours, and turning them off would probably improve the carbon footprint, non? I understand that the Gherkin and sim. could be partly lit from the inside to show it off but turn everything else OFF you wasteful fools!
Hodges for Mayor? The idiot who hates cyclists? Not for me thanks - saddens me to say this, but I'd rather have Boris, who's arguably a bit less boorish and more sensible.
Noticeably, the twonk hasn't got anything in his manifesto about cycling - because obviously he doesn't care.
So, just in case he does end up Mayor (shudder), here's my suggestions: sign up to the LCC manifesto for London; make it an assumption for all incidents in Greater London involving a cyclist that the cyclist is not at fault (as it is in most of Europe, for instance); make default speed 20mph on nearly all streets; give police clear priority and enforcement powers to deal with dangerous drivers; scrap segregated cycle lanes; make all road planners cycle the schemes they're working on and cycle to work!
All of this car-hating really annoys me..If TfL had better alternatives for the routes I take I wouldn't mind so much.
Public transport is over-priced -When I lived at London Bridge last year I had to pay £16 a week (discounted rate) just to make a five-seven minute train journey four days a week. Oyster cards were not accepted on the route. I'm now living in zone 4/5 and it's extremely difficult to get to uni without a car, particularly as I don't live near any underground stations. Furthermore, if I did choose to get a train, the closure of the East London Line means that the journey I make would be even more time consuming than before.
I do as much for the environment as can be reasonably expected of me, but I refuse to agree that public transport is suitable for everybody in London.
The idea od taxing richer areas to fund services in poorer areas of London seems poorly thought-out. Most areas of London contain a mix of rich and poor and social housing is often found next door to expensive private properties. Much of Covent Garden and Islington consists of social housing: to tax people living in council or housing trust homes in these areas extra would be unfair. Council tax already takes a disproportionate amount from people in council homes who are often on lower incomes as it does not discriminate by income but by area. My home belongs to a housing trust and can (rightfully) never be bought under right-to-buy, yet my council tax is the same as private properties worth £800,000 nearby. Surely redistribution of taxes based on income rather than where someone happens to have been born and bred would be fairer?
Something has to be done about the horrific pollution from transport in London. Most Londoners I know would not drive even if they could afford to because they are considerate people who do not want to add to the illnesses and deaths caused by transport emissions and road accidents, nor to contribute further to global warming, but the smell, noise and congestion on our streets continues. We need an affordable tube service (£2 for one stop!!!), low-emission buses, much, much higher congestion charges (perhaps with grants for people who need their cars/vans for business to switch to LPG vehicles), and a change in attitude so that people no longer think it is acceptable to drive to London to do their shopping or theatre visits.
We need to do more to preserve famous london shopping streets and areas, to prevent them from being cloned by westernised capitalist retailers....kings road for example used to be great now it's full of the same crap shops u find everywhere....starbucks, boots, pret, marks and spencer, bla bla bla. As soon as the cool people find somewhere new to hang out they move in...look what they did to spitalfields market...it's nice but it isn't what it was. how long b4 they move in to brick lane...
Councils must empty recyling stations more often. they are overspilling in hackney. more cycle lanes are needed and then they can launch a bike hire service like in barcelona & paris etc.
I agree with the dog mess thing...i live in N1 and there is dog crap everywhere it's a joke. If people have dogs they should pick up after them. otherwise why don't they just crap on the streets themselves if it's okay!
Also, please ban cyclists from the canals and do more to prevent traffic (particularly buses) from stopping on pedestrian crossings.