As reported by Adam Bienkov last week, Boris Johnson has broken his promise to keep all London Underground ticket offices staffed. However, the Mayor continues to insist, as he did during this morning’s  Mayor’s Question Time:

The first and most important point to make is no ticket office will be closed. They are not going to be closed.

The full schedule of current and proposed London Underground ticket office opening times, produced by LUL on 10 March, reveals a very different story. It is currently proposing to close the following ticket offices:

• Jubilee line

• Canary Wharf (East), Waterloo (Main – Excess), Waterloo (Shell), Wembley Park (Bridge Road)

• District line

• Earl’s Court (Warwick Road),  Aldgate East (East), Cannon Street

• Central line

• Monument, Chancery Lane (Saturday), South Woodford (West), Woodford (West)

• Bakerloo line

• Charing Cross (Trafalgar)

The schedule of swingeing cuts to the opening hours of remaining ticket offices reveals drastic reductions in opening hours to stations which are also major transport hubs and therefore process  huge numbers of visitors, who are most likely to be in need of ticket office assistance.

King’s Cross St Pancras’s Tube-side ticket office will not open until 06:15, rather than 05:00, and its Western ticket office will not open until 06:45 instead of 06:00 on weekdays. Victoria’s Main ticket office will open half-an-hour later and close half-an-hour earlier on weekdays. Instead of opening at 06:00 and closing at 00:00 on weekdays, Euston’s ticket office will open at 06:45 and close at 23:00.

The most inexplicable cuts, however, are reserved for those Piccadilly line stations which service London Heathrow Airport. Hatton Cross, used by many airport workers as well as travellers, will have its ticket office opening hours cut by 1.5 hours on weekdays, 4.75 hours on Saturdays and 4.25 hours on Sundays.

Heathrow T4, a 24-hour terminal which sees long-haul flights arriving from 04:30, will see its ticket office opening hours cut from 17.5 hours on a weekday to 10.75 hours (plus it will be closed entirely between 16:45 and 19:15), and will lose 2 hours on a Saturday and 2.75 hours on a Sunday. Heathrow T123 will open an hour later and close half-an-hour earlier on weekdays, an hour later and an hour earlier on Saturdays and close 15 minutes earlier on a Sunday.

The Mayor’s current chickenfeed column reveals his violent intentions towards Schools’ Secretary Ed Balls,  whom he declares he would like to head-butt for daring to state the fact that very few parents are pushing for the teaching of Latin in state schools. As is well-known, Boris Johnson likes to pepper his public addresses with tedious Classical references  (whilst also promising to “Use clear English that is as easy as possible for everyone to understand and free of unnecessary jargon”). This Wednesday, the Mayor will be launching something called Latin In London, an attempt to introduce the capital’s teachers to various organisations — all committed to the cause — who can help them with the classics.

I’m especially interested in Boris’s notion that some of the greatest socialists of the past 100 years were classicists as surely the most renowned parliamentary Classicist of the last century was former Classics Professor Enoch Powell, whose “Rivers Of Blood” speech drew directly on Virgil’s Aeneid.

The Guardian’s Hélène Mulholland quotes London MP Emily Thornberry:

Perhaps if Boris Johnson cared as much the pressing needs of London as he does about Latin there would be lower bus fares, no cuts to police numbers, no cuts to tube ticket office staff and a much smaller list of broken manifesto commitments.

We can take solace in the fact that, instead of taking part in yesterday’s St Patrick’s Day Parade in London, Boris was giving his attention to his Ed Balls Voodoo Doll. Poor Boris also has to fly to Cannes today to address a Property conference; I’m sure the French are looking forward to some hilarious Latin quotes and maybe a reprise of Boris’s 2009 St George’s Day address at Leadenhall Market, during which he roused huge cheers from the assembled throng of Conservative Future when he indulged in a spot of verbal Frog-bashing.

I never covered Andrew Gilligan’s latest contribution to screwing up London’s transport system, in the form of the Policy Exchange report ‘At A Rate Of Knots’, which basically advocated transferring subsidy from buses used by everyone to boats used by, er, Andrew Gilligan. TfL’s Surface Transport Panel has considered it, however, and to say they’re cool is a bit of an understatement – indeed, it’s rather unclear how responding to a right wing wank tank report co-written by a notoriously unreliable journalist could be considered important enough to be on the agenda, but I presume it’s different when said journalist is a personal friend of the boss.

Anyway, the River Thames Improvement item is a bit of a masterpiece at telling Policy Exchange to f*** off and leave it to the professionals. In particular the plus points of river services are nicely itemised:

• River journey times are comparable with tube and rail in inner London
• Cross river journey times are generally quicker than by other modes
• Niche markets can be developed where the river has a journey time advantage e.g. Bankside to Millbank [Tate Modern to Tate Britain, in fact]

As are the drawbacks:

• The curving nature of the river and the availability of parallel rail routes make it difficult for the river to compete on journey time on long journeys to the east of London
• River journey times to the west are constrained by the need to operate a reduced speed where the river is shallower and is used for recreation.
• In cities such as Sydney and Vancouver, waterborne transport is successful as journey times across harbours are quicker than by land based modes which travel around the edge
• On rivers with parallel rail routes, the development of transport services is more challenging

In other words, TfL’s view *from their own river service people* is that river transport would be great if London was a different shape, but since it isn’t it’s only going to be a niche service in a few areas, as beyond that rail is going to beat it. To which I’d add that very few of the river piers have a direct interchange with rail, which naturally limits things (Embankment being the honourable exception, and even there you have to cross a road) and this, in consequence, limits the amount of money that can reasonably be spent on it.

What of ‘At A Rate Of Knots’? Well, a mere paragraph is devoted to summarising the report, which mentions a subsidy shift (from buses), £15-30m spent on pier extensions and TfL having ‘air traffic control’ over river services. The Mayor is reported as ‘welcoming’ this (but then again he did launch it). TfL then skilfully pour cold water on the idea of radical change along the Gilligan model:

• A toolkit of low cost extension options and plans to extend other key central London piers is being developed. [translation: £15-30m, you're having a laugh, matey - we've got £500k out of the Olympics for a shelter at Greenwich, so be grateful for small mercies, eh?]
• [Boris] also made it clear that he thought that there was no short term solution to high carbon diesel boats and further thought needed to be given to how river boats can be made more environmental friendly. [translation: if you think running 200 person capacity high speed catamarans with powerful diesels starting and stopping all the way down the river is going to make sense against our air pollution and climate change targets, you're having a laugh, matey]
• The report recommends a level of capital and operating expenditure which is not provided for within the current TfL Business Plan. [translation: f*** off, your maths doesn't add up]

So, like the mutant multi-doored multi-staired Son-Of-Routemaster* what starts off as a precious bit of Gilligan reshaping the world according to his personal tics and inherent unhappiness becomes, in the hands of evil David Brown and the human-hating Satanists at TfL an exercise in doing enough to keep the Mayor stocked with PR opportunities without screwing things up too badly. Which leaves Mr. Sock up shit creek without a paddle, where he can stay, as far as I’m concerned, he’s wasted enough of everyone’s time.

* Apparently Wrightbus ‘is now making progress with the underlying engineering design of the major structural frame and has entered into negotiations with the principal component suppliers. Work is progressing on an engineering mock-up which is expected to be available for functional and geometric testing in March.’ so where’s the pictures, then? Must have some idea what it looks like, chaps.

Continuing my trawl through TfL documents, I come across the results of the annual employee survey [PDF], which show a general picture of a workforce less happy than last year, due to ‘efficiency’ (i.e. redundancy) programmes and, more pertinently, a loss of confidence in management:

There is less confidence about the leadership and direction of LU this year than there has been over the past few years.  There have been large reductions in the proportions satisfied with the leadership of LU (down 9 points to 63 per cent) and that agree there is clear direction for the organisation in the future (down 12 points to 61 per cent).  Perceptions of leadership and direction have fallen
across all types of employees, not just those affected by the OCP.  This suggests that it is also changes to the leadership team and the funding cuts impacting on employees during the past year that are making them less clear about LU’s future.

…

Only two fifths of employees agree that there is a good level of trust between senior managers and employees and senior managers communicate openly and honestly with employees.  Agreement with these statements is historically low but has fallen this year (down 6 points).  With a heavily unionised workforce, it is unsurprising that these scores remain low, however the OCP and changes to senior leadership teams must also have had an impact this year.  It is important that LU retains the positive impressions employees have of their immediate managers and that leaders are seen to communicate clearly and honestly throughout any further period of change.

I’d say the loss of Tim O’Toole sent out a fairly clear message to staff that the days of good, listening management might be in the past (corroborated by a historic low being reported on staff thinking that the job selection process is fair and a pure HR bullshit line that declares that ‘LU is refreshing its people strategy’ which in my business would be a cue to start job hunting elsewhere).  It’s interesting that Tim is being touted in some quarters as a candidate to take on Tube Lines,  whose relationship with TfL and Boris in particular is understood to be rather (OK, ‘very’) acrimonious at present.  Multi-million pound court cases will do that:

Tim O’Toole has held preliminary discussions with Tube Lines about the possibility of becoming its chief executive. It is less than a year since he left London Underground after six years as managing director.

Mr O’Toole, a former chief executive of Conrail, a US Class I railroad, was one of the most respected figures in the capital’s transport system.

His appointment would be aimed partly at improving relations between the private contractor and London Underground after acrimonious disputes over the contractor’s funding and delays to Jubilee line work.

Since it’s in no one’s interest for Tube Lines to spend the next 7.5 years rowing with TfL in court, an O’Toole appointment could be seen to be good news.  On the other hand, I thought from various Tory talking points, that paying Americans large sums of money was profligacy and what was needed was a good hard cut, followed by more cuts, followed by being beastly to Bob Crow for a bit.  LU staff appear to disagree with this.  Personally, I’ll only believe it when I see O’Toole rock up at Tube Lines HQ, but the sense of drift is palpable at the Underground.

It’s rather gratifying to see that the Evening Standard’s Ross Lydall is doing what journalists should do when blogging; go back to sources and link to them. He also spots a classic bit of evasion:

A press release accompanying the cycle safety plan quoted 2008 figures – when in fact 2009 data (up to November 2009) was included in the plan itself.

In this case he’s talking about cycle casualties (of which more later) but there’s another worrying nugget of information in the document he links to (TfL’s Quarterly HSE report from March 2010 [PDF]):

Two passengers and nine third parties were fatally injured on the bus network during Quarter 3, higher than previous quarters (see 6.1). There were no discernible reasons for the increase

Now, Q3 is the first quarter with three of the twelve bendy bus routes operated by normal buses, but only an idiot would try and twist facts to claim that was responsible.  What actually happened is explained in section 6.1:

There were 11 fatalities on the bus network during the quarter. These included a passenger who died following a fall on the stairs of a stationary Route 254 bus and an elderly passenger who died two weeks after he was taken to hospital following a fall from a seat onboard a Route 353 bus. Seven pedestrians, a cyclist and the driver of a private hire vehicle were also fatally injured as a result of road traffic collisions with buses. The incidents are currently under investigation.

Obviously falling down stairs is one of the double decker only modes of killing people, just as falling off the rear platform is a Routemaster speciality.  The incident is reported here, the unfortunate victim being a 46 year old man.  The 353 is likewise a double decker, but all this proves is that in a fleet where double deckers are the commonest vehicle, they’re going to be involved in more accidents.

As for pedestrians, this could be a worrying signifier or a statistical outlier.  Worth keeping an eye on:

In the first six months of 2009, 100 people were killed on London’s roads, eight per cent more than in the first six months of 2008. “Killed and seriously injured” fell to 1,484 in the same period,15 per cent fewer than in 2008. ‘All casualties’ were 13,118, 3.9 per cent lower than the first six months of 2008

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.