A quick check with the ONS confirms there were 4.1 million jobs in London in 2006. The report expected 5 million by 2025, whereas London actually passed that milestone in 2015 so the threatened congestion arrived much quicker than anticipated. As for London's population it was 7,550,000 in 2006 and now it's 8,860,000, so that's well over a million more people rather than just 800,000. It turns out the capital grew far faster than anyone in 2006 imagined because nobody foresaw the effect of immigration... but equally nobody foresaw the pandemic and working from home either.
According to TfL's 2024 Travel In London report, 23.6m daily trips were made in London in 2006 and the latest total is 26.1m. That's only 2½m extra journeys, not 4m, although it was 3½m when the pandemic struck suggesting the 2006 prediction was still on track.
What actually happened, according to a table in the 2024 Travel in London report, is that private transport dropped 7% (not 9%), public transport rose 3% (not 4%), walking journeys increased 2% (not 1%) and cycle trips increased 2% (not 4%), Comparing now with then is difficult because it depends on precisely which historic dataset you pick but the direction of travel seems good, if not quite good enough.
November 2006 was a febrile time in transport planning with the Overground just announced and all sorts of plans for extensions and light transit schemes in play. But what Ken Livingstone really needed to enhance London's transport capacity was the completion of a series of big ticket projects.
PPP consortia were upgrading trains and stations across the tube network, not always optimally, and one of them would enter administration the following year. Crossrail did indeed get built, perhaps against all the odds, four years later than was intended. Bus expansion continued apace under Ken's leadership, then very much didn't afterwards.
The 2006 report alas didn't have one of those diagrams showing what the tube map might look like in 2025, not this time. But it did have a summary timeline of hoped-for projects, an 'indicative programme', like so.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Piccadilly line extension to Terminal 5 were already under construction so a done deal. DLR extensions to Woolwich and Stratford International were indeed on their way, as were what are now the Windrush, Mildmay and Suffragette lines on the Overground.
But the Thames Gateway Bridge, which was destined to cross the river between Gallions Reach and Thamesmead, would be scrapped by Boris two years later. The East London and Greenwich Waterfront Transits were ditched too, which was doubly bad news for estuarine residents.
As for tube line upgrades the top five happened, and the report even correctly stated 2017 as the year the last old District line train would operate. But new Piccadilly line rolling stock is only due to enter service in 2025, not 2014, and new Bakerloo rolling stock pencilled in for 2020 isn't yet in anyone's budget so even 2030 is implausibly optimistic.
Rail upgrades weren't necessarily in the hands of the Mayor but most if not all of these happened, for example the massive Thameslink programme that transformed north-south connections. But towards the bottom of the list we have a litany of big projects that all too swiftly hit the buffers.
The DLR never extended to Dagenham Dock, although the Overground would eventually reach Barking Riverside. The West London Tram was scrapped within months and is now served by a single Superloop route. Trams have never reached Crystal Palace, indeed the tram network hasn't been extended since 2000. The Cross River Tram is another lost project with no hope of resuscitation. And although there were still high hopes for Crossrail to be followed by Crossrail 2, completed in 2025, London never managed to shake the magic money tree twice. At least the list ends up with the Silvertown Link, target 2022, which as we've just learned will be opening in three months' time.
The report contains tons more which I won't burrow into further, but if you're interested you can read a copy here. It took forever to find because of course the TfL website no longer hosts it, nor any of the other sites that referenced it 19 years ago, so thank goodness for the deepest recesses of the Wayback Machine.
But if nothing else the T2025 document demonstrates three things. Firstly you need a big bold plan for the future otherwise nothing ever gets better. Secondly predicting decades into the future is nigh impossible, but often you get stuff right and the future thanks you for it. And thirdly if anybody wrote a similar document now - call it T2044 - it would be miserably less optimistic with a few high hopes and a lot of tinkering round the edges because there is no money. 2025 is no 2006, so T2025 was as good as it gets.
