If you want a weekly summary of rail-related transport news, Ian Visits and London Reconnections have you covered every Friday. I'm here with a much less interesting Saturday round-up of London's less newsworthy dregs, some of them not even about trains.
🚡 The cablecar is celebrating National Loneliness Week by re-embracing the Chatty Cabins initiative, first attempted in the spring, every day next week between 10am and noon. You book a slot, get paired with someone else who's lonely and hopefully have a life-affirming chat during a 20 minute round trip, perhaps continued over a drink in the cafe. It's plainly a good idea but also a mere drop in the ocean and also an admission that the Dangleway is basically empty on weekday mornings. I'm also unnerved by the instruction to "arrive at least 10 minutes before your scheduled recording time". Also only nine of the 20 sessions have sold out but 'online sales have ended', hence there's no longer anything of interest here.
🚇 Cutty Sark station closed last Saturday so that its embarrassingly unreliable escalators can finally be replaced by four new ones. The closure is due to last until 'next spring', which is a very long time to close a station but you can always walk to Greenwich station 11 minutes away and that's not a grim concrete cavern. Trains now give a little honk as they hurtle through without stopping.
🚌 A consultation has been launched to divert bus route 287 along Goresbrook Road, not the A13, for a mile and a half in Dagenham. It's long been an aspiration of TfL's to run a bus along here, closer to where people live, plus everyone along the A13 still has the 173 to ride instead. The catch is that two sections of Goresbrook Road would have to be made busworthy first - an "emergency vehicles only" gate in the middle and a pedestrianised buffer zone at the eastern end - so the diversion won't be happening any time soon. Also the proposals require the loss of two dozen parking spaces and turning ten local roads into one-way streets, so I suspect local drivers may be mighty pissed off if they ever dig down far enough to spot they're being shafted so that bus passengers, pedestrians and cyclists can have a better life.
🚇 Even though a new tube map is now available online I haven't seen any paper copies in stations, and I've been looking hard all over.
🚌 TfL's latest drum-banging press release celebrates the fact there are now over 2000 zero-emission buses on London's streets, up from 30 in 2016. This is plainly a good thing, even if it's only 23% of the entire fleet so there's a very long way to go. However all new buses added to the fleet since 2021 have been zero-emission so 100% isn't merely an aspiration, it's just a matter of time. Also the 2000+ milestone was actually reached two weeks ago when route 337 gained new vehicles, but these days news has to await its appointed slot in the PR grid.
🚉 The footbridge at Chelsfield station closes today until 11th August for refurbishment. This shouldn't really inconvenience anyone because you can always walk up to Warren Road and cross the tracks there, but Southeastern have still smothered the station with red information notices so local residents don't need me to tell them any of this.
🚆 I was on the Lioness line reading a book when a family boarded at Harrow & Wealdstone and sat all around me. One leant across me and passed a key ring to his mother. I stayed put. She opened her phone and started playing videos out loud. I stayed put. She opened a tube of Pringles and passed it in front of me. I finally decided to move, feeling bad about it because surrendering always looks a bit haughty, but we all have limits. They didn't react other than to shuffle up and occupy my seat. Later on the return journey I spotted a tube of Pringles left on the floor and several crisps scattered all around, realising a) I'd unintentionally boarded the same carriage b) they were indeed a thoroughly thoughtless family c) I didn't feel bad about moving any more.
✉️ TfL sent me a personalised email this week with the title 'Explore the hidden gems in your city with TfL'. Their chief exhortation was 'Why not explore a fresh slice of the city and check out somewhere you haven't visited yet?', and my main thought was that they hadn't personalised my email very well.
🚇 Last weekend TfL switched on the latest section of improved signalling as part of their Four Lines Modernisation Programme. It's known as SMA8, the section of Metropolitan line between Preston Road and Finchley Road including the really long run south of Wembley Park. Trains are now running faster under automatic control with drivers taking over again north of Preston Road. It's also the most complicated section of all, thanks to Jubilee and Chiltern trains in the vicinity, which is why it's been over two years since the last switch-on (SMA7 in March 2023). I took a ride yesterday and can confirm it does feel a bit quicker, especially south of Neasden, although don't expect to be saving more than a minute on a journey.
⚫ The Silvertown Tunnel is closed overnight this weekend for snagging repairs. It means the SL4 will finally stop at North Greenwich, but not helpfully because it terminates there and won't be going under the river.
🚆 I saw the converted District line battery train being tested on the Greenford Shuttle yesterday. GWR have been testing it since last March and it still isn't ready. Other rolling stock taking a ridiculously long time to enter public service includes the new Piccadilly line trains (first arrived for testing October 2024) and the new DLR trains (first arrived for testing January 2023). According to the latest Board minutes, TfL expect to make further service reductions on the DLR this summer to manage the expiry of the existing trains.
🚌 If you like free rural Routemaster rides, tomorrow is Route 418 Heritage Day organised by the London Bus Museum. Loads of old buses will run from Kingston to Bookham via Tolworth, Epsom and Leatherhead. I enjoyed the very similar Route 406 Heritage Day last June but it was ridiculously busy, the buses were rammed and mine overheated.
🚌 Starting tomorrow the frequency of buses on route 106 is increasing to every 20 minutes before 7am on Sunday mornings. I did say this was dull transport news.
