I've been out to visit some of the fantastic new transport upgrades in the London borough of Newham scheduled for completion in December.
This is the fantastic new Woolwich Ferry, which was due to reopen at the end of December 2018.
It has not yet reopened.
The new ferries, named Ben Woollacott and Dame Vera Lynn, arrived in November. Much work has been done on the two piers to ensure that the roadway links up correctly with the deck, but teething troubles have proved problematic and the automated magnetic connection system isn't sorted. Ferry staff are out on the water practising manoeuvres, and I've watched them crossing the river and sort-of docking and reversing back out to give it another go, but normal service has not yet resumed. Until yesterday the Woolwich Ferry website gave the amended reopening date as "early January 2019", but even that deadline has now been missed and the new one is "February 2019". So that's Embarrassing Delay Number One. For a sneak preview of what to expect, here's a video taken by a foot passenger who managed to sneak aboard one of a very limited number of trial sailings earlier in the month.
This is the fantastic new Custom House station, which was due to open on 9th December 2018.
It has not yet opened, for obvious reasons.
This new station ought to have been the easiest new Crossrail station to complete because it's all above ground. Instead there are still plastic barriers and workmen on the platforms, and more on the upper concourse, and several hi-vis chaps popping off to buy refreshments from the local shopping parade. That said, the current focus of activity appears to be digital, because if you stand on the main road alongside the platforms it's possible to watch the Next Train Indicators scrolling round. All the times shown are completely wrong, but a succession of eastbound trains are supposedly going to Abbey Wood while the westbound display promises Reading and a lot of Paddingtons. The ghost service being replicated is unlikely to be operating at this level for well over a year. A fuller sequence of departures is visible on the slanting screens facing what will be the main entrance, where the next ten westbound departures were listed as Paddington, Heathrow Terminal 5, Paddington, Reading, Heathrow Terminal 4, Paddington, Heathrow Terminal 5, Paddington, Reading and another Paddington.
This is the fantastic old Custom House station, which was due to reopen in December 2017.
It has still not fully reopened.
The DLR station was closed for the majority of 2017 so that it could be upgraded to cope with Crossrail interchange. It reopened later thanplanned, in the first weeks of January 2018, but still with a substantial portion of the station unfinished, sealed off and swathed in blue hoardings. Those hoardings are still present, the upper concourse remains mostly inaccessible and at least one staircase (not connected to Crossrail) remains unoperational. Perhaps reopening a minimally-functional DLR station meant all the impetus to complete the remainder of the work was lost, or perhaps TfL were always planning to leave the last bits of work until over a year later. Whatever, for anyone attending the adjacent exhibition centre, it looks a right mess.
This is the fantastic new footbridge at Manor Park station, which should have been ready on 9th December 2018.
It has not yet fully opened.
To be fair, the footbridge did open on 19th December, only ten days late, replacing the temporary footbridge passengers at the station have been clattering over for a couple of years. Unfortunately the new footbridge wasn't yet connected to the upgraded ticket hall, and still isn't, so passengers still have to depart the station via a completely different platform, then up some steps and along an alleyway which deposits them up a litter-strewn sideroad. It's by no means ideal, and for anyone expecting step-free access it's impossible. The latest notices around the station promise a full opening and lifts put into service "by the end of February 2019". In the meantime station staff get to stand in the ticket hall beside fully operational ticket gates leading nowhere, and it must be nice and warm in there.
These are the fantastic new Crossrail trains, all in service by December 2018.
They are not yet all in service.
Users of TfL Rail through Stratford have been able to ride shiny purple trains since June 2017, with their electronic displays, longitudinal seating and increased standing room. But it's not yet the case that all the old, grubby, outdated trains have been replaced, so there's still a very good chance that one of these will turn up instead. This seems odd, because by now the core section of Crossrail should have been operational and would have been thronging with purple trains, so there must be whole depots somewhere packed with unused units. But alas they're the wrong length for current operations, and some of the operational purple stock is needed on the Paddington branch instead, and basically east London's passengers are stuck with the crappy old trains for a while yet.
These are the fantastic new trains running on the 'Goblin', which were due to be in service in December 2018.
They are not yet in service.
Following the botched electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking line in 2016, and further extended closures since, a new fleet of four-carriage electric trains was scheduled to replace the existing two-car diesels by last month. Unfortunately the introduction of new Class 710 units has been held up because "the manufacturer needs more time for software development", which is increasingly the go-to excuse for any lengthy project delay these days. The old trains are pledged elsewhere, so have been dripping out of service, leaving a hole that TfL are filling as best they can with repurposedtrains, cancellations and weekend closures. A real risk exists that all the old units will have been whisked away before drivers are fully trained on the new, and the reintroduction of replacement buses remains an imminent possibility.
This is one of the fantastic new bus stops in the Olympic Park, in use since 29th December 2018.
It doesn't officially exist.
Carpenters Road is now closed alongside the Aquatics Centre, so bus route 339 has been permanently diverted round the south of the Olympic Stadium. Two pairs of new bus stops were proposed, one set by the Orbit and one outside the primary school, but all that's happened is that somebody's dumped four 'dolly stops' by the kerb in the hope that that'll do. Nobody's made an attempt to install permanent stops, nobody's painted anything on the road, no shelters have been relocated and no timetables are evident. Most worryingly the new stops don't exist online, and if you're sitting on board the bus they don't appear either. The next stop is not the Aquatics Centre or White Post Lane, whichever the electronic display might suggest, and basically this permanent re-routing has been introduced with absolutely minimal effort.
This is the fantastic Stratford bus station, last tweaked on 1st December 2018.
Its busiest bus stop is now being dug up.
Over the last year Stratford bus station has been shrunk to make way for a taxi rank and reworked to cope with the removal of the gyratory system. This has required the slight relocation of the drop-off stop outside the station, which doesn't appear to have been entirely successful because it's currently fenced off. A big trench has been carved into the roadway alongside Bus Stop AP where the kerb is being tweaked, presumably because something about the previous set-up wasn't quite right, which means buses unloading temporarily back on Great Eastern Road. Stratford bus station is now frequently a jam-packed maelstrom, not helped by the re-routing of all westbound services on 1st December which added an extra twenty vehicles an hour looping round its interior. It might have looked good on paper, but the reality is often a swirling red queue.
If nothing else, at least Newham still has lots of fantastic stuff to look forward to.
