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Andrew Gilligan: Progress Report

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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.

Sick Transit

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TFL’S plan for a new “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” sounds like it should be rather good. A tram, perhaps? A river service of some kind? Surely a guided busway, at least?

Actually, I’m afraid, it’s complete rubbish. Despite the name, intended to make it seem like something special, it is simply a normal bus service – using normal diesel buses – from North Greenwich Tube station, via Woolwich, to Thamesmead and Abbey Wood. It won’t even give us any more trips – it will simply replace the existing 472 route, at precisely the same frequency.

There’s no doubt that Woolwich and Thamesmead need new transport links. But the only new things this will bring are a short stretch – around half a mile – of bus-only road in Thamesmead and a little diversion away from the existing 472 route to serve the Royal Arsenal development at Woolwich. For the rest of its route, it will run on the same roads as the existing bus routes do now.

In fact, the only thing remotely special about the “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” is the price – an eye-watering £20 million for just over five miles, plus operating costs of around £1 million a year, making it probably the most expensive bus route in the history of the world.

Even one of the claimed benefits of the route, the Royal Arsenal diversion, is being fiercely resisted by some residents. The development’s main thoroughfare, Number One Street, currently an attractive, pedestrianised boulevard leading down from the Arsenal’s main gateway, past the Firepower museum and other heritage buildings, to the river and pier, will be ripped up and turned into part of the bus route.

Jamie Milton, one Royal Arsenal resident, has organised a campaign and a petition against the move: it and another petition currently have around 500 residents’ signatures, a very substantial proportion of the development. “Number One Street is the only full-time pedestrianised area in Woolwich and is home to two listed buildings, the Royal Brass Foundry and the first-ever Royal Military Academy,” he says. “We are understandably up in arms about this.”

TfL says the route along Number One Street was chosen after an “extensive public consultation,” three words to send a shiver down any spine. In fact, says Milton, the consultation, in 2005, attracted just 27 responses from the entire Royal Arsenal development (perhaps not surprising, since it was still being built at the time). Of those 27, just 11 supported the bus route going down Number One Street!

Even our local Labour MP, Nick Raynsford, not known for his opposition to costly vanity schemes (he’s a fervent supporter of the Greenwich Park Olympics) can’t see the point of this one.

“I supported the original transit scheme as it offered the prospect of a convenient and rapid transport system from Thamesmead and Woolwich to North Greenwich,” he says. “However, as the scheme has been progressively watered down to what is now little more than a glorified 472 bus, its benefits have been seriously eroded. Bearing in mind the opposition of many residents in the Royal Arsenal to the current route through the Arsenal, I no longer consider it justifying the substantial costs involved.”

It had been hoped that the GWT would be a candidate for Boris Johnson’s bonfire of the vanity projects, his new transport strategy. Well, some other worthless Greenwich-area extravagances, such as the new £500 million Thames Gateway bridge, were laid to rest when the strategy was published last week. Later, unfunded phases of the GWT have also been canned.

But although there could still be scope for some route changes and cost cutting – no planning application has yet been submitted, and by now it should have been – it is looking like the first phase, the North Greenwich- Thamesmead – Abbey Wood route I describe, will go ahead.

And that’s a shame, because the money that’s being spent on annoying residents in the Arsenal could have paid for five or six new bus routes in places where they actually would be new, and where they actually are wanted.