Category Archives: Blog

West London Tram – again!

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Off to Uxbridge to meet other members of the London Assembly’s Transport Committee where I am taking them along the entire route of the proposed West London Tram.

The project director from Transport for London and other officers join us too.

Two hours to get to Uxbridge station where we are meeting – but the sun is shining.

I’m not giving a blow by blow account of our four and a half hour exploration by foot and mini-bus of the route – suffice to say a tram would be a wonderful addition and benefit to some areas and some parts of the route. But there are real problems elsewhere with the proposed route.

The real hot spots were plain to see as we stood in Acton High Street – which would be closed to traffic and where the side roads, which would take the displaced traffic, were too tiny really. Along the route there are also questions of the roads being too narrow and the damage to businesses. In total, around 27,000 cars travel the route and would get displaced by the tram.

It’s a very tricky issue – a scheme can be a good idea in general, but if the particular route selected doesn’t work, then that’s that – it shouldn’t go ahead.

Good news is that we have Professor Goodwin – a renowned expert on traffic dispersal – coming to the Transport Committee to give us his views. I hope we can get some real answers to help with judging this balancing act.

The answer to London's bus problems?

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Very bizarre experience. I had a meeting arranged with a woman who had emailed me. She had discovered, she said, the solution to all the problems of London’s buses. She had been unable to get through to the Mayor or Peter Hendy (Director of Surface Transport, Transport for London) – so asked if I would see her and perhaps support her ideas.

I get a fair number of contacts from people who say they have a great transport idea which they can’t get people interested in. I try to see people whenever possible – but they usually give me an idea of their idea – so to speak. She wouldn’t. It was a secret.

She had said that she was wary of telling anyone her idea in case they ‘stole’ it and she wanted to own the commercial rights to her idea. In the end I agreed to a meeting and she came into City Hall to my office.

When we met, the first thing she said was that she had brought along a ‘non-disclosure agreement’ for me to sign. Whilst I am perfectly happy to keep a confidence if someone in that situation wants to be assured that I won’t pass on an idea – I certainly don’t believe in elected politicians signing anything that might prevent openness and accountability.

She said that she couldn’t tell me her idea without my signing this document. I said that I was sorry that it would seem, therefore, to be a wasted journey on her part. I had been quite clear about this before the meeting was arranged.

It was all quite pleasant and well-behaved – but certainly bizarre. I explained to her that she really did need to see Peter Hendy or Livingstone if she wanted to ‘sell’ her idea to them and wished her well.

Of course, I am still curious about what the idea is!

Development in Hornsey

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Rush back to Haringey for the hearing into an appeal over a controversial backlands development in Hornsey. The developers are appealing over the rejection of their plans. In my view, their plans are a dreadful proposal, which would stuff huge houses on a bit of land that falls between the back gardens of a triangle of houses.

The permission was refused – but as ever – developers don’t give up – so the appeal was this morning.

I’ve got a busy diary today so Benji – one of the key organisers of the protesters, kindly says he will try and get me in early so I can give my evidence.

I had been to Mayor Livingstone on this and got his agreement that this was the type of development which he doesn’t approve of as it doesn’t provide affordable housing nor is the sort of sustainable development which we need.

But it looks like a no-show all round with neither the Planning Inspector nor council officers turning up on time. I hang around for a fair while, but with no sight of them – have to make my move to next meeting. Think the inspector was ill in the end – though would have been good if information had got to everyone waiting sooner!

West London Tram update

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The GLA Transport Committee’s meeting about the West London Tram commences and I welcome the groups – some from Southall, Acton, Ealing, Shepherds Bush as well as some general contributors from organisations like GLAD, Transport for All and the London Civic Forum.

Have to say it was one of the most fascinating meetings I have chaired. The groups were there to inform the members of the committee of their concerns so that when we sit in formal committee on 16th September, we will be able to question Transport for London who are coming before us and put to them all the key issues raised.

I gave each speaker five minutes and then the committee asked that person questions. The really key issue is fears from residents about traffic displacement if a new tram gets the go ahead.

In the case of the original Central London congestion charge – Transport for London’s traffic forecasts only showed a very small percentage increase in traffic in the areas surrounding the charging zone. There was a lot of scepticism at the time – even some scare stories that the world as we know it would end in gridlock on 17th February 2002. But, once Congestion Charging started, it turned out that TfL’s model was right.

For the tram, TfL’s models show that where the tram displaces traffic, it could result in increases of traffic of up to 25% in places – so this time the fears of residents may well be right. Even if there is an overall reduction in traffic caused by the tram (which would be good), this level of displacement could cause really serious problems in those areas.

Obviously we will look at the modelling and there will undoubtedly be robust questioning on this issue. But what the 25% increase – if it happens – really means. An increase from one car an hour on average down a road to one and a quarter would mean fears are misplaced. But an increase from a much higher level could cause real problems of bottle-necks, stationary traffic etc.

Clarification on this is absolutely vital, but the information we’ve had so far isn’t clear. Something to pursue in our questioning!

There are also big issues over how the consultation has been carried out, how the tram would integrate with other forms of transport and the impact in particular areas; e.g. the plans currently would involve the closure Acton High Street.

Later this week we are going to examine the Croydon tram and walk/ride the proposed route – from Shepherds Bush right along to Uxbridge.

West London Tram

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I am chairing a meeting tonight – an informal meeting of the Transport Committee. We are hearing from numerous groups representing a range of views on the Mayor’s proposals for the West London Tram (WLT). This is causing huge controversy in West London and the Transport Committee is trying to ensure that all the concerns are heard and addressed by Transport for London who are consulting on the proposed routes.

Back in the office

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Back in the office. Having spent the previous four days answering holiday mail and emails from my home address – log on with dread. Spend the day responding to any outstanding correspondence and attempting to reduce size of inbox.

Holidays

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Finish off as much of my work as possible – emails and paperwork. Signing off now until September. Have a good August. Blogged off until September!

Highgate Tube Works

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I chair a meeting at Jacksons Lane Community Centre, Highgate on the furore around the solid wooden fence that is proposed to run along the Tube cutting by Highgate Tube station.

Although I’d previously persuaded London Underground to take part in two consultative meetings with people in the area, more information has come to light – particularly about the possible acoustic impact of the fence they are planning to put in. The proposed fence would deliver 5 decibels of improvement to those living in the dip behind the cutting but up to 1 decibel of worsening noise to those on the Archway Road. This meeting in particular gave a chance for Archway Road residents who either didn’t attend or did not get invited to the first meeting to have their say.

The meeting put forward three alternative proposals to London Underground. The key issue is that we need a balance of the noise advantage from whatever fence is built – but one that ensures that the people in the dip end up no worse off than they were before the original fence was removed. Also, people on Archway Road want sight of the greenery – which would be lost with the proposed solid fence. A solid fence might also lock the pollution from the road into the road area. I hope London Underground will amend their plans to be as fair to everyone as possible.

MPA

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Last meeting before the summer break of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Deputy Commissioner Blair comes up for a chat with me beforehand to thank me for understanding the ‘agonising’ decisions the police have to make to catch a rapist in South London by making black men between 25 and 40 ‘voluntarily’ give a DNA sample. That will go on as an issue way beyond Operation Minstead – the issues around DNA databases and discrimination are going to get more frequent and more difficult in my view. How much information should the government or its agencies be able to force people to hand over, and what should be permissible to do with that information and by who?

There is a long debate at the meeting about the use of police cells to hold illegal immigrants. This causes huge problems as there are too few cells and if they are full of immigrants rather than criminals – there is nowhere for criminals to go.

The MPA (or rather Labour) have avoided coming to a decision so far on who should be their “link member” for Haringey. To recap – for the first four years, I had been exiled from Haringey because Labour (who chair the MPA) wanted to keep me out of Haringey in case it was to their political disadvantage for me to be on my home patch. All the other members are enabled to link with their home patch – partly for their convenience but also because of local knowledge. For the first term of office there was a valid reason why Nicky Gavron (who was the Enfield Haringey London Assembly member and lives in Haringey herself) had as good a claim to Haringey as I. But she’s no longer the Enfield Haringey member, and her replacement doesn’t live in Haringey.

But of course just because Labour insists on its own members having their own local patch, doesn’t mean they won’t try to impose different standards on other people! It’s just this sort of silly pettiness that turns people off politics.

Alexandra Palace

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A flurry of emails from Labour admirers indignant that I dared to voice concerns about Alexandra Palace (where Labour managed to run up bills of over £60 million in a series of bungled rebuilding escapades) in my blog last week.

Shame they don’t show the same enthusiasm for answering questions or providing information about Ally Pally! (Haringey Council even previously tried to claim it was “illegal” to include information about the bills run up at Alexandra Palace in the information sent out with Council Tax bills. Only when I confronted the Chief Executive and asked him to quote the bit of law which made it illegal did he admit that after all information could be included).