THIS COLUMN has been going for just under six months, and there’s already been a bit of progress on some of the topics I’ve been banging on about in that time. I definitely wouldn’t claim credit – but perhaps in one or two cases, the publicity helped push things along a little.
One of my very first pieces, in October, in Greenwich’s flagship shopping street, Nelson Road, with four shops empty and a general air of neglect. Three of the empty shops have now been filled, and not with chains either – not bad going in a recession – and the street has a perkier feel.
In February we pointed out the equally recession-salient fact that the , and offerered better quality food, than our main supermarket, Somerfield.
Now Dring’s the butchers in Royal Hill, one of the shops I mentioned, tells me that it has been shortlisted as “Best Local Shop” in the ITV London/ Smooth Radio Love London Awards. Congratulations, guys: thoroughly well deserved – I bought some chicken from Dring’s the other day and it was ace. Best of luck for the awards ceremony at the Cafe de Paris on 24 April.
Earlier this week, Boris Johnson announced that the Thames Clipper river service would take Oyster pay-as-you-go from November, something for which I campaigned in this space in February. Later this year, this column, my newspaper the Standard, a major think-tank and a number of key political figures in London will be making a great deal more noise about how to improve the riverbus: watch this space.
The biggest result against the forces of folly, though, has been in helping get TfL’s grotesque “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” completely cancelled, something which happened last week. As I wrote in November, this scheme sounded impressive – but was in fact nothing more than the world’s most expensive bus route.
It would simply have replaced the existing 472 service from North Greenwich to Thamesmead, using the same sort of rubber-tyred diesel buses, running at the exactly same frequency, and along almost exactly the same route and roads. (There would have been a tiny amount of new bus-only road in the Woolwich Arsenal development and in Western Way, near Belmarsh.)
It was the rest of us who would have noticed the difference. The GWT was expected to cost £20 million – absurd enough for a scheme offering no real new benefits beyond a fancy name. By this year, however, the cost had risen to £46 million – more than the entire annual bus subsidy for the whole of Wales!
The cancellation caused some predictable gibbering from the kind of people who still can’t accept that they no longer live in the golden days of economic boom and Ken Livingstone, with great tides of dosh lapping around to be flung at any pointless vanity project that shines in the light.
GWT’s demise left the people of the east of the borough “again bereft of an adequate transport network,” stormed Chris Roberts, Labour leader of Greenwich Council. “At a time when the Government is quite rightly looking for infrastructure projects to support the economy and keep people in work, the Mayor of London is cancelling them.”
One person Roberts’ furious denunciations understandably neglected to mention was the local MP, Nick Raynsford – also Labour – who said last year that he was dropping his support for the scheme because “I no longer consider it justifying the substantial costs involved.”
Raynsford is right. The GWT was in fact a conscious and gigantic con-trick on the long-suffering people of Thamesmead – deceiving them that they were getting, in Roberts’ words, a new “transport network” or “infrastructure project” when in fact they were getting neither of those things.
It would actually have reduced the chances of Thamesmead getting the real transport “infrastructure project” it needs, a tram or rail link, because the bureaucrats would have been able to wave the existence of GWT in the faces of anyone who asked.
So for the sake not just of taxpayer value but of the transport needs of the east of the borough, we should celebrate GWT’s demise this week.
Let’s hope the people of Thamesmead get the transport links they really need without the need to sacrifice the quality of life in another community because TFL has not the imagination or bureacratic processes to adjust to changes in environment.
GWT had several major flaws: The cost; the choice of route; and the benefits delivered. The benefits case had been watered down to improving the commuting times of passengers from Thamesmead – not providing a service they don’t have today. The cost in £s was enormous and the cost in terms of impact on the environment at the Royal Arsenal was immense (loss of community space by taking over a pedestrianised road; degraded air quality inside bordering homes; and introduction of buses every 2 minutes down peaceful residential streets where currently there are none).
The initiative was further being propped up by attatching it to the delivery of the Olympics when it actually delivered no Olympic benefit especially now the DLR is at Woolwich. Worse the attachment to the Olympics was blocking positive changes to the scheme which would have removed the routing objections above.
No solution meant for the long term should be so short sighted as to deliver contorted paper based benefits (improved commuting times along roads you can not guarantee the traffic flow on) at the expense of the quality of people’s lives. One community should not benefit while another pays the price. This is especially ridiculous when perfectly good alternatives exist.
I hope next time they get it right!
Leg of lamb from Drings, roasted in a Remoska, mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Wonderful smell while cooking, tender, flavoursome – unlike the tired old joints you get at the supermarkets.
I was just reading a story on the Bexley Times website with the headline “New railway plan axed”.
Hilariously, they seem to think the GWT was a “new railway” !!!