London News Review 2014 Infrastructure

In the third part of our round-up of London’s news in 2014, we’re taking a look at the capital’s infrastructure, from garden bridges to the Olympic Park, after Boris Johnson released his £1.3trn infrastructure plan in August.

Bridges and roads
With the news that the Garden Bridge got approval in December, we asked what it’s for. It’s been one of the biggest infrastructure stories of 2014, with opinion divided on how much Londoners will actually benefit from it (and end up paying for it). Some commenters on our article about moving the cable car suggested a combination garden bridge/cable car which is certainly an interesting prospect.

The question of river crossings in east London has reared its head yet again, with TfL opening a consultation on tolling the existing Blackwall Tunnel and its future neighbour, the Silvertown Tunnel. The proposed tunnel has drawn fierce criticism over congestion, air quality and road planning, with the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry on one side and local campaign groups on the other. We thought it was a bit unfair to impose tolls on just the east London crossings, so we speculated on how much money could be raised from tolling all of the capital’s crossings (a lot).

Other slightly odd transport proposals included plans for a 22-mile ring underground ring road, the ‘Bounceway’ (an urban trampoline), a flexi-lane using intelligent road studs and dynamic signs and turning parking spaces into mini parks.

Ever wondered why Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Bridge are the colours they are? Find out in our 60 second video. We also delved into some of the history behind famous London road junctions.

Cycling
Cycling infrastructure has become big news. We’re waiting with bated breath to find out who the new sponsor of the cycle hire scheme will be, after TfL announced in June that they were looking for someone to stump up some cash and have their logo splashed around. Meanwhile, new docking stations are opening up all over the place, including in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, bringing the number of bikes up to 10,000 at over 700 docking stations.

Much as the Tour de France brought crowds of people and good cheer to London, claims about TfL’s use of cycling infrastructure budget underspend to pay for it were met with criticism.

Back in September, routes for what’s been called ‘Crossrail for bikes’ were announced to bring long-campaigned-for segregated cycle lanes to London’s roads. And that’s not all, oh no. TfL also announced that the first two ‘Quietways’ — less busy routes to encourage the less confident onto bikes — would open in early 2015. Some of London’s most unpleasant and dangerous junctions are also in for an overhaul, with plans released for Vauxhall, Old Street and Stockwell Cross.

The winning bidders for the Mayor’s ‘Mini-Holland’ scheme were also announced, with each of the four boroughs to get £30m to improve cycling infrastructure. The plans for Waltham Forest’s were released in November.

Crossrail and Crossrail 2
Probably the biggest rail infrastructure project in London in modern times, Crossrail has turned parts of the city into a forest of hoardings, plant machinery and high vis jackets. It’s extending out towards Reading and possibly into Hertfordshire.

With focus on the accessibility (or lack of it) for disabled passengers on public transport, it was good to see TfL announce that all Crossrail stations would be step-free.

Londonist got a peek inside the hoardings at Tottenham Court Road station and made a video. We also hitched a ride through the tunnels —

A TfL consultation in 2013 showed that a Crossrail 2 route which extends into Hertfordshire and Surrey was overwhelmingly popular. Though as we noted at the time, when TfL start demolishing someone’s favourite pub to build it then we think opinion might shift. The route changed again in June, but Boris Johnson reckons it’ll be built by 2030.

Airports
Now known as the infrastructure proposal that refused to die, the Thames Estuary airport (or Boris Island as it’s been known) was put out of its misery in September by the Davies Commission. Given its previous zombie-like re-animations, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it back on the agenda when 

Boris Johnson gets back into Parliament.

Meanwhile, drawings for the proposed Heathrow City were released in July, giving us an idea of what it might look like if the existing airport was relocated. Which doesn’t look all that likely now that Boris Island’s been torpedoed. Not bad for £900,000 though.

City Airport caused all kinds of fuss in September after it was revealed that local residents had not been consulted over flight path changes. And in December, a technical glitch closed London’s airspace for several hours.

Olympic Park
The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park reopened in April after being closed for nearly two years. At the same time, the ArcelorMittal Orbit opened its viewing platform, prompting a rush for tickets to look across the park from the UK’s tallest sculpture. Here’s our video of some of the Olympic Park’s best bits, and a podcast from the top of the Orbit tower — which was to be turned gold if England won the World Cup. It would have come as no surprise to anyone that it stayed red. The Olympic Park will also form part of Boris Johnson’s proposed‘Olympicopolis’, a project to boost jobs and wring £5.2bn economic value from the local area.

In August, the park hosted part of the first Invictus Games. Championed by Prince Harry, the Games brought together 400 injured servicemen and women to compete in sporting events.

Great Scott! In July, the park nearly didn’t make it back to 1955 when the immensely-popular Secret Cinema Back to the Future event was postponed at short notice, prompting an international outcry and some rather extreme reactions. It got started again a week later and everyone calmed the fuck down.

London’s al fresco swimming community got some good news in February when the Mayor agreed to look at the feasibility of a Thames-based lido. Here are a couple of the designs which actually look rather tempting.

source-http://londonist.com/

London News Review 2014 Politics

Boris Johnson and the Parliamentary quest

The biggest story in London politics this year was, arguably, Boris Johnson finally admitting he wants to go back into Parliament. He denied it and denied it and, dear god, did he deny it, and then in August said ‘actually, yeah, I’m well up for that’ (we paraphrase).Uxbridge and South Ruislip is the constituency that gets the mop-headed one as its Conservative candidate and — given it’s a very safe Tory seat — doubtless its MP as well. Though we don’t expect Boris to be given an easy ride since one of his flagship Mayoral policies has been to close down Heathrow, a place that gives lots of new potential constituents jobs…

Johnson also claims that he’ll continue as Mayor until the May 2016 London elections, whatever happens in Uxbridge. There is precedent for the mayor being an MP at the same time — Ken Livingstone did it in 2000/2001. But, since nobody has any idea how the 2015 general election will pan out, if Johnson ends up with a cabinet role, ‘real’ or shadow, that might be a bit much for one person to handle. Luckily ol’ Boris has a team at City Hall who already do much of the mayoral admin for him and we don’t think we’ll much notice him being a part-time mayor. (For what it’s worth, we reckon Boris will hold both jobs until he can resign without triggering an automatic by-election — so, roughly November 2015 — and then his deputy Victoria Borwick will take over. But don’t tell anyone we said so.)
Council elections: goodbye Lib Dems, hello Greens

While parts of the country were welcoming UKIP with open arms, in the local and European elections this May London largely told the gaffe-prone, berk-laden party to take a hike. In the council elections, the Liberal Democrats took a severe beating, losing seats all over the place. Lynne Featherstone should be concerned about her parliamentary seat after the cudgeling the party took in Haringey; Simon Hughes may also look at the Lib Dems losing half their seats in Southwark and be worried. Sutton bucked the trend however, with the Lib Dems actually increasing their hold on the council. Expect Paul Burstow to be returned in Sutton and Cheam.

On two councils it’s actually the Greens who provide the official opposition in Islington (Caroline Russell) and Lewisham (John Coughlin) — though given we’re talking about just one councillor, the amount of opposition is minimal. These councils now join Barking and Dagenham and Newham as effective Labour one-party states. Bexley and Bromley have five UKIP councillors between them, while Havering elected seven UKIP-pers in what was a very confusing election. But the real shock of the night came in Hammersmith and Fulham, where the Tory council — much beloved of Number 10 — lost out to Labour.

And we finally said goodbye to Brian Coleman who, in losing his seat on Barnet council, has gone from being one of the most powerful men in London politics to a nobody. Well, that’s showbusiness.

The election in Tower Hamlets was subject to fraud accusations, but it was a “culture of cronyism” that caused the government to intervene in November.

Take a look at our full rundown of the council election results for more details. Or maybe ponder whether we even need all these councillors?
Politics and the people

But what of how politics affected us, not just politicians, in 2014? Ten London fire stations closed in January, victims of budget cuts imposed from City Hall. The effect of that has been to push up average fire engine response times across the whole city — yet more wards are now within the target response time.

Food banks have also been a major story this year. Whichever way you cut it, demand for help with basics like just eating has risen in the city. It’s such an emotive issue that austerity defenders have been saying they’re a self fulfilling prophecy, so we busted a few food bank myths back in February.

Something that’s going to run and run next year is the question of London getting more devolved powers so the city doesn’t have to keep going cap in hand to the Treasury to build things like Crossrail. If that happens, we can expect more exciting infrastructure projects as well as potentially more housing and City Hall input into health, education and training.

source-http://londonist.com/