Earlier I posted saying Boris had been noticeably quiet about plans to spend over a billion quid rebuilding a major transport interchange, adding an entirely new one and linking them to the rest of the country at 250mph.  The Standard, with due regard for accuracy and so on, suggests the reason is that Boris is out of step with David Cameron on this one:

Ms Villiers dismissed the Old Oak Common site as “Wormwood Scrubs International”, saying it was 10 miles from the airport, was not linked to the Tube, and passengers going to Heathrow would have to change trains.

But Mr Johnson pointedly declined to endorse this criticism, instead saying more research needs to be done. “We must give the utmost consideration to the exact route and where it will stop,” he said. “A central London terminal is essential as well as an interchange with Crossrail to the west of London in order to whisk people to and from Heathrow as speedily as possible.”

In other words, Boris backs Labour’s Transport Secretary over his own party, since Lord A is proposing, er, a central London terminal as well as an interchange with Crossrail to the west of London.  The tube thing is a red herring, since the point of a London interchange station is precisely to take the load off the tube at Euston by linking to Crossrail and, arguably, the West and North London Lines, while the Heathrow point was shot down in flames by Adonis, who smoothly pointed out that a station near Iver isn’t ‘at Heathrow’ any more than Old Oak Common is – you’d still have to change, but Old Oak already has the link in place via the existing Heathrow Express.

Even Cameron’s chums at loony right Hammersmith and Fulham council agree with Adonis on this one:

Cllr Mark Loveday, H&F Cabinet Member for Strategy, said the council had been lobbying for the station for two years: “Old Oak Common is unrivalled as a site for west London’s High Speed 2 interchange. The site is perfectly placed to connect the rest of the country with Heathrow and will deliver tens of thousands of new jobs and homes to one of the most deprived communities in the country,” he said.

Well, we all know Theresa Villiers is a lightweight, but really, this level of misalignment is just bonkers – clue: when the Labour left wing, right wing and London’s senior Tories are in agreement, you’re probably wrong.  Apart from anything else, as the Fact Compiler points out, the real aviation winner is Birmingham International, which suddenly starts to look like a serious alternative to a Third Runway, let alone Boris’s Magic Sinking Airport.

Apologies for hiatus, I’ve been on holiday and missed a whole chunk – if I ever get round to writing it up, there are lot of unwritten posts about airports, potholes, sleaze, Brian Coleman, Ealing Council and so on and so on out there.

Anyway, today’s news is the London end terminal of High Speed 2 and what this means for the Euston area.  I’d done my own rough sketch out of Euston thus:

but then found Londonist had gone rather further with theirs.  It takes out two streets on the western side of the station plus social housing north of there, and moves the concourse much further south, nearly to Euston Road.  This removes one of the big problems with the current Euston – it’s great to get to by Tube, but a bit of a pig by any other means.  There ought also to be a proper link to Euston Square station, too, if they’re going to do it properly, and that tram Boris cancelled would make a useful basis for a rapid transit system across to St. Pancras, as well as taking load off the Underground.

If people are interested, the full route through London looks like this (the yellow house thing is the eastern portal of the six mile Chiltern tunnel).

Reaction has been a bit slow, owing to not everyone being a geek and plotting out the consequences, but Frank Dobson has weighed in:

Seven blocks of flats and one park are threatened with demolition to make way for the £30billion high speed link which would see trains travelling at up to 250mph.

Transport secretary Lord Andrew Adonis unveiled the plans in Parliament for the route which will also cut through the scenic Chiltern Hills.

MP Frank Dobson said: “It is wrong to knock down all these houses and concrete over a park.

“The engineers have looked at these blocks as if they were a greenfield site which they are not – people live here.

Dobson is the local MP and a former Mayoral candidate.  Lord Adonis is actually Baron Adonis of Camden Town, and someone I’ve occasionally wondered about as a future Mayoral candidate.  The current incumbent has been remarkably silent, although his Transport Strategy acknowledges the prospect of HSR without being too specific.  This rather reinforces the impression he’s not bothered about rail, despite having what his Twitter feed described as a ’surreal’ evening walking through Brunel’s Thames Tunnel last night.

It’s lovely when Boris goes into bat on behalf of London with his own party’s cost-slashing fringe, but I’m not entirely sure his new tactic’s going to win many friends.  The New Statesman (an odd enough place for Boris to be holding court, and indicative of a change in the PR weather over City Hall lately) reports:

We are going through a neo-Victorian age of transport investment – the Tube upgrades, the Thames Tideway tunnel – and my job as mayor is to keep blapping ministers between the eyes until they understand that it would be utter madness to cut infrastructure projects that will increase com­petitiveness

‘neo-Victorian’ is pushing it – the Tube was mostly Edwardian, extended by Keynesian counter-recessionary spending in the 30s, while the Tideway Tunnel is a giant sewer, as we pointed out when he mistakenly included it in his list of transport projects at State of London last year.  However Twitter being what it is, the use of the word ‘blapping’ was what caught the public mind.  From the Urban Dictionary:

Blap : The act of slapping someone across the face with your penis. They then become your property

I’m not sure that’ll convince George Osborne not to scrap Crossrail.  Whipping the Mayoral member out and slapping the Chancellor with it until he surrenders isn’t generally recognised as sound municipal advocacy, but perhaps hanging around with Ian Clement poisoned the poor fellow’s mind.

Update: Dave has a similar post.

Update II: For some reason the image of Boris beating up the Shadow Cabinet with what he no doubt calls his membrum virile amuses Liberal Conspiracy, too

As we reported last week, the Mayor’s website has had a make-over. The new, purged website  now has a crazy, Commie-style flickr group which apparently is an “opportunity for Londoners to get involved in government and own London.gov.uk in a way that’s open and accessible to almost everyone.”

It wasn’t long before Dan Ritterband was forced to respond to disgruntled professional photographers who objected to the heavy-handed security guards around City Hall and the soliciting of free images. Even Boris’s own supplier of chicken-feed has noted the inadvisability of this project.

If any readers have photos of London life, maybe featuring public employees asleep at their desks, we encourage you to contribute to the Mayor’s marvellous new era of public participation.

I went shopping in Covent Garden today (thermal underwear, if you’re asking).  As is the way of these things, I went from Chiswick to Waterloo on South West Trains which, owing to the train being late, skipped every stop after Barnes and arrived in 16 minutes.  So far so good – off-peak Z3-Z1 Oyster NR/TfL farescale is £3.10, which was duly deducted on emerging at Leicester Square.

On the return journey things weren’t quite so smooth.  I walked back to Waterloo for the exercise and the view down the river, arriving at 17:35 for the 17:37 train, which is a bit tight.  Racing through the barriers (touching in, of course), the train left as I got up to it, clearly early.  Hugely aggravating, of course, and since there’s a 15 minute interval service I could either kick my heels on the platform for quarter of an hour or go back through the barriers and take the tube.  The latter being the quickest option, I touched out again (noting that the gate display showed £5.00) and went through the Underground barriers, caught the Bakerloo to Piccadilly Circus, Piccadilly to Hammersmith (rammed with Arsenal fans, had to wait for the second train) and District to Turnham Green.  On touching out, I was then charged £3.20 for this.

I checked the Oyster journey history, which confirmed that I’d been charged £3.20 for a ‘Waterloo Pl12-19 – Turnham Green’ NR/TfL fare, then went to the ticket office, where the bemused chap informed me that he couldn’t refund me the difference as, so far as he could tell, I’d been *undercharged* £1.10.  He also mentioned ‘pink validators’, although I hadn’t been near one (nearest would be Richmond).  I left, and caught a bus home – the overcharging having put me over my cap this was at least free.

Now, what on earth had gone on here?  Here’s the journey history printout as handed to me by the ticket clerk:

• 14:31 Chiswick – Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00
• 14:40 Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
• 17:36 Pre Pay Exit Waterloo NR12-19 £0.00 < proving that SWT left early, as it had gone by the time I got back to the barrier and touched out
• 18:18 Waterloo NR12-19 – Turnham Grn £3.20
• 18:18 *** cap applied ***

The relevant fares here are:

• Chiswick – Leicester Square : £3.10 (NR/TfL off-peak Z3-Z1, correct)
• Waterloo [underground] – Turnham Green : £1.80 (TfL off-peak Z1-Z2)
• Waterloo [NR] – Turnham Green : No fares were found for that journey (!)
• Z3-Z1 daily off-peak cap  : £6.30

So where on earth did £3.20 come from?  I reckon I was actually charged the full £5 deduction for going in and out at Waterloo, and this triggered the remaining-to-cap amount of £3.20 at Turnham Green on touch-out there – the £1.10 the clerk mentioned is baffling, though, it’s not what I would have been charged extra for going Waterloo NR – Richmond [touch pink] – Turnham Green, if such a thing existed (should be £3.40, I reckon).

To find out how much TfL owe me, it should have worked thus:

• Chiswick – Leicester Square £3.10
• Waterloo – Turnham Green £1.80
• Bus home £1.20
• Total 6.10

so I’m 20p down.  It does show that the apparent idiocy of having multiple farescales for the same journey has tangible, real world consequences which make the system look arbitrary and unhelpful.  I think I’ll ring the helpline and see what they make of it.

We’ve usually put the end-2011 bendy replacement deadline down to political expediency (before the May election) and cost (before the TfL cut-off after which all buses have to be hybrids) but a third, rather delicious option has emerged from the Olympic Delivery Authority.  Basically the ODA have just announced that First Group are the winning bidder for the stupendously large spectator movement contract for the Olympics, which Omnibuses blog highlights as having:

* Around 500 buses and coaches for venue shuttle services and venue park and ride
* Around 90 buses and coaches for park and ride services, aimed to connect parking sites on the periphery of the M25 with the Olympic Park and Ebbsfleet
* Around 300 coaches (sub contracted from fleets up and down the country) to operate a network of express coach services to the Olympic Park and Weymouth and Portland
* Management of the Direct Coach operations
* A bus and coach services reservations and ticketing system
* Operational support staff at all bus and coach locations to manage the fleet.

Now, leaving aside that First also run the pisspoor First Capital Connect service, on which Boris has been asked a couple of recent questions (it’s nothing to do with him, however, being a DfT-awarded franchise).  Sample answers:

I have written to the Secretary of State for Transport to make clear that the level of service provided by First Capital Connect over this period has been unacceptable. First Group, the parent company of First Capital Connect, will be attending my Rail Summit in February.

…

I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport, on 13 November 2009 to raise this issue. I agree with you that the cancellation of First Capital Connect services is unacceptable. I am awaiting a response from the Secretary of State on the matter, and will consider this before deciding whether to raise the matter further.

Well, that’s fairly clear then.

Anyway, what’s really going to put the cat among the Caroline Pidgeons here is that First will be looking for a large fleet of buses for a short-term contract in London, around eight months after the last bendies have left service.  Are you thinking what we’re thinking?

The Mayor of London’s website, www.london.gov.uk has recently undergone a make-over. It was due to be up and running by the end of 2009 but has finally made an appearance today. However, it’s littered with lorem ipsum which should all have been replaced with the correct text before the website went live.

There are no links to the GLA Acts of 1999 and 2007 in case you might want to check that the Mayor is complying with his statutory obligations. The search facility gives every document the date of 1 January 1970,  all the links are broken and lead to “Page not found”.

Still, never mind, why not send your photos in to Boris’s Flickr group? You won’t find any photos of disgruntled firefighters or appalling turnouts for Boris’s events as this crazy, commie-style photo album is moderated and only features photos of happy citizens celebrating our glorious leader’s triumphs; usually Ken Livingstone or maybe Val Shawcross’s triumphs or sometimes nothing whatsoever to do with the GLA, but who likes to shun a good photo op, eh?.

Don’t normally do churnalism, but this press release from the Lib Dems is 100% right, so why bother rewriting it?  You got a long piece about Kit and the Cops last night, so what more do you want?  Blood?

“It says everything about the Mayor’s real concern over improving rail services fact that it has taken the Mayor more than 22 months to even get round to holding this summit when he specifically promised to hold one in his first few weeks in City Hall.  Boris Johnson’s record of delivering a summit has proved to be as unreliable as the recent record of First Capital Connect and Southeastern!”

“However the Mayor’s is further insulting the hundreds of thousands of Londoners who are not getting the train service they deserve if he really thinks it is sufficient to merely hold a one hour meeting with ten separate items on the agenda.   No serious progress can be made in improving the frequency of train services or simplifying fares after just six minutes worth of discussion.

“And why is the Mayor silencing myself and other London Assembly Members?  The Mayor promised this would be a public summit, but he is not even allowing London’s elected representatives to speak.”

An hour with ten items on the agenda?  6 minutes per item.  Pathetic.  Let’s remind ourselves of the original hype, first from the manifesto [PDF]:

I will fight for rail commuters, and call an emergency summit with Train Operating Companies to demand longer trains, manned stations at night, more frequent services and lower fares.

Demand?  Fight?  Says nothing about ‘unless it takes more than six minutes and delays the next photo-op’, does it?  Finally there’s that old Standard article from May 2008:

The Mayor announced that he would hold a “summit meeting” with the train operating companies “before the summer”. “Completing the roll-out of Oyster, improvements to services, station security and passenger safety will all be on the agenda,” he said.

It’s rather lucky that they got that botched roll out of Oyster out of the way beforehand, really.  Bet that took more than six minutes.

Firstly, can I say I welcome Kit Malthouse using Twitter more often, which is a good thing.  Having said that, I’m now going to get up his nose a bit.  The most recent tweet from the man Adam Bienkov refers to as:

Deputy Mayor for Policing, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Departmental Lead Advisor for Communities and Intelligence, Director of the Association of Police Authorities, Chair of the London Hydrogen Partnership, Executive Director of Alpha Strategic Plc, Majority Shareholder of County Holding Limited and Director of two subsidiaries, County Asset Finance Ltd and County Plant and Equipment Sales Ltd, Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Member of the Leaders Committee of Association of London Government, Member of the Thames Estuary Airport Steering Group, Member of the Poetry Society, Sadler’s Wells, the Passage Day Centre, the Art Fund, the Old Lerpoolian Society, Occasional writer and broadcaster, and current London Assembly Member for West Central

gives some indication of the exasperation at City Hall that us low-lifes in the media and the non-media keep harping on about this little matter of 455 policemen being cut in Boris’s budget:

On LBC tomorrow at 7.05am to talk about cop numbers. Surely people are turned off by this stale argument? Isn’t productivity more important?

I’ll defer to Kit on the subject of productivity, since he manages to combine about three hundred jobs into one not-particularly-svelte body, but this isn’t a stale issue but a high-profile problem for Team Boris.  As for Kit, lest we forget, he’s a bean counter and a bit of a top-down managerialist, a combination which is not necessarily the best way to run things.  From bitter experience I can tell you that that type are experts in identifying waste where there isn’t any while creating plenty of their own through ill-considered ‘reforms’.  His defence of the police cuts is that Joe Public should:

Trust your own eyes, Boris will make sure London has more cops on the streets

and the line being taken appears to be that that Boris is increasing police numbers while reducing them.  I hope His Deputiness will forgive me for concluding that the whole thing is beginning to smell a bit like the old Tommy Cooper ‘bottle, glass’ routine or even something out of the Marx Brothers (‘who are you going to trust, the Mayor’s budget or the evidence of your own eyes?’).  10,000 Specials, sitting on a wall?

Now, we all know data is not the plural of anecdote and therefore that imploring people to trust the unreliable evidence of their own eyes should automatically make one suspicious of the implorer.  Police numbers are reducing, and this will have an effect on the police.  The question is, what effect?  Does Kit know, or is he investing undue Dunning-Kruger type confidence in the ability of his own hand on the tiller to manage the Met to higher productivity from fewer staff?  What, indeed, *is* productivity for a policeman and why is it OK to import the language of business into public service in this way?  I suspect from the language alone that Kit will take a reductionist bean-counter view (hours on the beat increased, miles covered, hours of paperwork reduced) which sounds suspiciously like New Labour managerialism with a different rosette on, and we know managerialism rots professional organisations from the top down, like a fish.

So, given that they’re cutting police numbers and are clearly worried about the public relations angle, Boris and Kit have a credibility gap on crime, and given that it’s hitherto been a strength for them it must be a self-inflicted one.  There’s a reason for this – like all Conservatives they’ve happily ridden the tabloid tiger line that Labour was fiddling the crime figures and there was a wave of violence and disorder in the UK caused by soft liberal attitudes and that only firm action and lots of policemen out cracking heads would solve it.

Of course, there wasn’t a wave of violence, but it got them elected, at which point it was only a matter of time before they had to get off the tiger.  The point at which they did this was when the crime mapping Boris promised launched, since this instantly tied their reputation into the credibility of the crime figure collection methods introduced by New Labour and removed the ability to blame the Home Office for anything that went wrong (plus allowing opportunist Labour MPs such as Virendra Sharma there to leap unopposed on the figures as proof of their greater devotion to crime-fighting).

Then we had the sacking of Ian Blair for being left over from the previous reign, another public relations driven event designed to send a message that Kit and Boris were in charge now while giving us the clue that we were dealing with Year Zero merchants as far as the Met is concerned.  Then we got the high-profile anti-knife crime initiatives, more bus police squads etc.  Finally, having set up this bold public image of strong, clear-eyed men of business in charge and getting things done, it was all punctured by Boris suddenly giving up the chair of the MPA to Kit, which given the high profile of Boris’s crime policy has resulted in EDMs, Labour MPs queueing up in the House to bash Boris and Malthouse being forced onto the defensive on the radio.  That this is not an ideal situation was proved by Kit agreeing with Ken Livingstone on LBC a couple of weeks ago that the figures were basically trustworthy and crime had indeed fallen.  For a team used to setting the news agenda, this is an unusual situation of being caught on the back foot and means Boris and Kit have to try and find a form of words that reassures the public over ‘cuts’ at the same time as the balloon of credibility is deflating rapidly in the background.

This task is of course complicated by the national political scene, where the tabloids are still running ‘OMG Rising Crime’ stories while Chris Grayling is trying to win the General Election on the hoary old ‘New Labour violent crime figure fiddling’ crap to please the Sun.  This restricts Boris’s scope for creative PR as no one’s going to listen to the truth, which is that you quite possibly can cut police numbers *if you accept that we’re a less criminal society*.  It doesn’t help that the foremost voice pushing this line is Sir Ian Blair.  If they do go down this road it would mean confronting the national party’s election campaign and jettisoning one of the most powerful weapons in the Conservative armoury – that the socialists will be soft on crime and give your taxes to loony left councils who take feral kids for two weeks in Bali, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

So, will Boris and Kit take that brave step, which will also mean challenging the police themselves, who are behind a lot of the bloodcurdling stories in the tabloids for power and budget reasons.  Any eagle eyed economising bean-counter would have a field day if tasked with culling senior officers who have cosy relationships with tabloid hacks.  Get in there, Kit.  On that, if nothing else, I’ll be right there with you.

Time to get creative again:

or this

or this

or this:

or this:

or this:

or this:

Go here and here for more, then here to make your own.  Good hunting.