Journeys are brighter, connections are brighter, networks are brighter, everything's getting brighter.
And all because, apparently, TfL are "helping to make greener** journeys in London brighter for everyone".
Join me on a walk along the tube platform at King's Cross St Pancras station and let's see if we can work out what brighter actually means.
Ahhh, tube improvements. Many such improvements exist but this poster is celebrating the Four Lines Modernisation programme and its new signalling system. This is the programme Ken Livingstone launched in December 2006 to replace all the trains on four tube lines and upgrade archaic signalling systems. His successor introduced the first new train in 2010 and his successor finally saw the fleet replaced in 2017. As for signalling it's now 10 years since TfL had to replace the original supplier, totally delaying things, and the rollout of the new system isn't due to be completed until the start of 2025. Essentially this is a poster that could have appeared on a tube platform at any time between 2006 and 2025. An improved, more frequent, 'brighter' timetable remains tantalisingly far away.
Ahhh, Crossrail. You'd expect TfL to go big on all things purple and indeed they have, and rightly so. 10 minutes from Paddington to Liverpool Street is brilliant, I did it myself yesterday and praised the gods of rail improvement. You'd think therefore that the claim "making journeys through central London faster than ever before*" was watertight but apparently not because they've had to asterisk it. You may have noticed that all three posters in my first photo also had asterisks, indeed this advertising campaign could be the most asterisked of all time. The caveat in this case is
* faster than previous TfL journeys on a single train
I'm trying to imagine how anyone would have got from Paddington to Liverpool Street faster than 10 minutes previously, even with their foot down in a sports car or on a motorbike. It's still 18 minutes on the Circle Line, best case scenario, and I can't see any reason why this asterisk is needed unless TfL has an asterisk pedant whose job is to sit in meetings and say "no, you have to be specific what it's faster than."
And that's not the only asterisk on the poster because there's a double asterisk on "That is how we're helping to make greener** journeys in London brighter for everyone". The asterisk pedant has additionally insisted that TfL explain what they mean by "greener", and this time it's...
** compared against average car emissions LEGGI 2020 and LAEI 2019
It turns out TfL are comparing their operations to car emissions and saying they're greener than that, which perhaps doesn't come as much of a surprise. Also LEGGI is the London Energy and Greenhouse Gas Inventory and LAEI is the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory, in case you were wondering. However the LEGGI documentation specifically states "2020 statistics should therefore be cited with caution, and we expect to see an increase in emissions in 2021." so this may not be the most helpful or meaningful benchmark.
Ahhh, buses. Here's the much quoted environmental claim that the TfL bus fleet is "100% low or zero-emission*" which is clearly excellent. Officially this means all 9000 buses operating across London meet or exceed Euro VI emission standards, i.e. the same emissions standard as the Ultra Low Emission Zone, so no vehicle's going to have to stop running when the zone expands. But this is not exactly new news, it's been the case since January 2021, and a more important thing would be how fast the fleet is moving from low to zero emission. Also note the asterisk because "emission*" too needs clarifying...
* at the tailpipe
This tailpipe thing's always coming up, as if the asterisk pedant's been employed for years, because with buses it seems you have to be really specific which orifice you're claiming to be low-emission. I'd like to remind the asterisk pedant that electric buses don't have tailpipes so they can't be zero-emission at the tailpipe because they don't have one QED.
If you're wondering where the Superloop is, because the Superloop's at the top of the publicity volcano these days, it's in the video. Yes of course TfL have made a 40 second video for the 'brighter' campaign, in which they dutifully claim "we've made all our buses low or zero emission at the tailpipe, including those for our proposed Superloop routes". I'd like to remind the asterisk pedant that if all your buses are low or zero-emission then obviously a subset of those buses will also be low or zero-emission because that's how logic works, so maybe you didn't need to clarify that one.
Ahhh, cycling. Trebling the amount of Cycleway since 2016 is a good statistic, although I'm not sure how much of the increase is rebranded cycle lanes and how much is genuine improvement. Also according to the online Cycleways map there are still zero kilometres of Cycleway in Bromley, Croydon, Sutton, Harrow and Havering, and derisory coverage in Barnet, Hounslow, Richmond and Bexley. Let's hope these "plans with the London boroughs to expand it further" have teeth otherwise this isn't genuinely brighter for outer London at all. Also please hurry up, because if bike-hating Susan Hall gets into City Hall next year all cycle improvements will be off the table.
Ahh, step free stations. According to the poster "now over 200 have step free access", which sounds great but masks several wide discrepancies. The total includes "DLR stations and all tram stops", both of which have been in existence since the 20th century, and they contribute over 80 to the "over 200" total. Crossrail contributes at least 40 more, whereas the number of tube stations with step-free access has yet to hit 100 (i.e. still below 40% coverage). I don't know if you saw last week's press release showcasing the next 10 tube stations to get step-free access but that was literally just a shortlist, there's no current funding, none are getting built yet, so hold your dreams of brighter journeys for the time being.
I suspect there are more posters than this - for example for the DLR, the Overground and for road safety - but that's where this particular Northern line platform ran out of wall. I suspect the existence of additional posters because the 'brighter' campaign has a call to action which is to "search TfL improvement plan", and all those projects are on the longlist bundled in with everything positive the campaign team could think of.
According to the accompanying video, "At TfL we start every day with the same ambition. To make your journeys with us brighter*". The asterisk there is my own addition because brighter is a silly word to use, a meaningless adjective in the circumstances, glibly smothering an appropriately upbeat aspiration. So next time you see stuff about "brighter* journeys" being bandied about, remember what the asterisk pedant really means and nod along.
