Transport matters.
It is by road, river and rail that we get to work and get back home again. It’s by those same means that we get to school when we’re young, to hospital when we’re sick and to the pub when we fancy a pint. It’s not just people that need moving around either – almost everything we consume in life has covered some distance before it reaches us.
Transport matters even more in London. Londoners use public transport more frequently than anyone else in the country – which is not really surprising as we have more of it than practically anyone else. Transport issues either passively or actively affect every Londoner on a daily basis.
Yet despite this it can sometimes be surprisingly difficult to find good, accurate information about what’s going on in the world of London Transport. Certainly, the headline-making issues will make the front pages of the London dailies, but it’s rare that they have the column inches or time to go into the depth that the topic really deserves. They also naturally tend to skip over more local issues.
Transport can also be a rather emotive topic, so whilst it can often be easy to find plenty of coverage on a particular issue online, it can sometimes be hard getting through the opinion to the underlying facts.
So that is why we write here at LR – continuing the tradition that Mr Thant started on the original London Connections blog a fair few years ago now.
We write to try and provide a bit of depth where sometimes it is lacking. To cover topics that maybe haven’t got the level of attention yet that they may deserve. To lay out and explain the facts when we know and understand them, and to provide a framework within which our excellent commentors can when we can’t. We also write to highlight some of the history and hidden areas of interest to be found in London’s transport infrastructure as well.
Most of all though, we write because we all enjoy it. We hope you enjoy reading it as well.
September 2011
If the report concerning Twickenham station on page 2 of http://twickenhamtribune.com/PDF/Twickenham%20Tribune%200173.pdf is to be believed, then the reference to “our agency team” seems to imply station staff being outsourced. This may be interesting (or not) to LR.
Hello, just reread your 2018 article about the Island Line. In view of the advent of the 484 class do you know how they are faring with the tunnels at Ryde? Your article seems pretty definitive to me! If you have the strength to reply thank you for your time. Best regards,Peter
Hi Peter,
We will be writing a Part 2 to the Island Line train upgrade in the new year. Stay tuned.
In 2017, you wrote on the subject of transport on the River Thames, and referred to history of the Riverbus. I only came across this article recently. Your account contained significant errors in referring to “the previous Riverbus service” There is no reference to a competition organised by the London authority which was won by Thames Line plc., who raised £5m via a BES funding to build 6 catamarans, and also 2 water taxis. The Thames Line service started with a charter for staff of the Daily Telegraph who had moved from Fleet Street to Canary Wharf. The public service failed principally because the Board doubled its ticket price and within the first year limited the service to weekdays. It suffered reliability issues, and not being integrated. It was sold to Olympia & York for £1.
I know, I was responsible for the original project, managed the construction of the catamarans, launched and operated the service, and was a Director of Thames Line plc.
@Roger Mabbott
Thank you for this information. Indeed, my research had not uncovered the competition, nor the details of the Thames Line service, which are interesting. Accordingly I shall update the article with your information, at some point soon. LBM
Hello,
You may consider this relevant to TfL services:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liq3FzrwuYw
Regards
Hi Mike, I’ve been researching on the disappearing and unused railway linkage and goods depot under smithfield market. I found this article from a decade ago extremely interesting and helpful! However, all of the photos are invalid in both part 1 and part 2. Can you please check on them and update the links? It would be amazing to see all of the details! Thanks a lot.
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2012/london-terminals-fullsome-farringdon-part-1/
Its hard to keep web pages/blogs intact after a while (as I find with my own blog.) It takes a lot of work to keep things updated and ensure pictures are intact the more time goes on, because sites close down or domain names are changed and updates done which change all the links (including media) on a particular site one’s linked their blog and pages to. In most cases one can find archived copies at the Internet Archive which is where I go in order to find missing stuff. Complete versions of the pages you require can be found there:
Farringdon 1:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150629111715/https://www.londonreconnections.com/2012/london-terminals-fullsome-farringdon-part-1/
Farringdon 2:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150617041243/https://www.londonreconnections.com/2012/london-terminals-fighting-over-farringdon-part-2/
Thanks Rog. Cicylia Fan, should the Web Archive not have the images saved, let me know at Mike @ LondonReconnections dot com.