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Tags: haringey living streets
The problem - transport in the covid world - is a real one, which the options offered fall somewhat short of addressing.
The school streets might help a tiny bit with traffic, having a single LTN in Tottenham won't at all, and the extra cycling routes? Well, to come to the aid of the ex-public transport users you'd have to increase cycling by three orders of magnitude. Won't happen overnight chums.
Meanwhile, London traffic, according to the report I read the other day, is already peaking at 150% on Sept 2019 numbers, with worse to come.
There are only 3 answers. 1. Shutdown the traffic (road pricing?), 2. Increase public transport closer to normal (despite covid), 3. Tell everyone to stay at home.
I'm beginning to wonder if TfL's current service levels are as good as they are ever going to get.
TfL's total 20/21 budget is £9.7bn. Strip out capital costs and capital spend and the operating costs come out at £6.6bn. This is nicely and nearly balanced by the money we spend on fares (£5.1bn) added to "other income" - rents, advertising etc (£1.2bn)
COVID has massively reduced the number of journeys in London and hence TfL's income.
A few months ago a grudging Grant Shapps bailed out TfL and applied some pretty tough conditions to allow TfL to run the current level of service.
It is clear that any move back to work will be slow and a lot of London workers will never return - either because they will continue to work at home or, sadly, will have no job to go back to. From what I am seeing on the roads at peak times, more and more people will be driving/car sharing for their journey to work and back home. All of this adds up to a pretty heavy hit on TfLs income.
Unless the government acknowledges the environmental threats of a significantly reduce level of bus and tube services and sticks its hand in its pocket, all the cycle lanes in the world will do little to ward of a significant increase in private car journeys and the concomitant environmental impact.
Shapps's TfL support package runs out on Oct 17th. Not long. The official review of TfL's finances by KPMG should have concluded by now. I guess we're about to find out what comes next. Perhaps we'll begin again with Andrew Gilligan? Aslef is already balloting its members, but what effect a rail strike in a pandemic? In space no one can hear you steam.
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