If you want a weekly summary of rail-related transport news, Ian Visits and London Reconnections have you covered every Friday. I'm here again with a round-up of briefer transport dregs, bringing you the general gist without the need to click elsewhere.
🥐 TfL have consented to the sponsored renaming of another zone 1 station. I know I generally hate these things but this one's particularly poor. I say this having been to the station in question, rather than dutifully cutting and pasting from the press release like most of the lickspittle media. Nobody who'd been to the relevant platform would have described it as a "joyful activation", let alone "a feast for the ears" or "a recipe for a memorable day!" The grocery company in question have chosen to spaff their cash by adding a single letter to the name of the station for a couple of days. They've emblazoned just one of its platforms with adverts and added a few modified roundels. And they've hired a Hollywood actor to record some announcements. It's very weak.
"Welcome to Modified Station Name", says the actor, the trouble being that when spoken out loud it's indistinguishable from the usual name. "Yes it really is me," he says, except the sound quality's not great and his voice isn't as recognisable as you'd expect so you'd probably have no idea who he was. "Mind the bap," he says, except again the sound's poor so it sounds like the normal "mind the gap" and the joke is lost. It's also hard to get excited about the modified roundel because slapping a blue rectangle across a circular object no longer smacks of any originality. But of course it doesn't matter how lacklustre the actual activation is, it's all about the write-up elsewhere, so expect a lot more piss-poor creative ideas falling flat for money.
🚊 Cutty Sark DLR station reopens on Monday. It's been closed for 10 months while all four miserably unreliable escalators were replaced. Apparently it's reopening early, although publicly TfL only ever said 'spring 2026'. Travel between Island Gardens and Cutty Sark will again be free as part of the Mayor's Silvertown Tunnel concessions, but only until 26 May.
🚊 Expect more DLR service cuts soon as a result of the delayed introduction of new rolling stock. The new trains are intended to replace near-life-expired older units, and these continue to be withdrawn from service. According to an FoI request "by undertaking some further mileage running restrictions, we can maintain the current timetable at least until the end of March 2026." That's barely a fortnight away. However no new trains will be in passenger service before "late summer", so several months of further cutbacks seem inevitable.
🚌 Last year TfL ran a consultation proposing changes to routes 209, 378, 485 and 533 in the Barnes area. This was an attempt to rationalise 'temporary' changes introduced when Hammersmith Bridge was closed in 2019. The consultation report has just been published and it's fair to say local residents don't like the changes, especially the mucked-about connections and the reduced number of buses to Castelnau. It's also true to say that TfL are going ahead anyway so the changes will be introduced on 15th August. And that'll be the last of London's 500-and-something buses dead and buried.
🚶 For years I've been urging you to walk Footpath 47 at Barking Riverside before they redevelop it. You have one week left. From 27th March the footpath will be "formally diverted to a temporary route", a distant pavement slog nowhere near the river. It'll be diverted back when phase 1 of the foreshore works are complete, maybe in autumn 2027, but along new walkways and not the unspoilt foreshore it still nearly is.
🚡 The cablecar had 32154 passengers in half term week, down from 45188 in half term week last year.
🚌 London's fifth busiest bus route is getting its frequency cut. The 207 currently operates every 6-7 minutes between Southall and White City but from 4th April that's being cut to every 7-8. To balance things the parallel Superloop route SL8 will be increasing its frequency from every 10 minutes to every 8. Good news for those travelling longer distances, bad news for those who want any of the stops inbetween.
🎫 From 1st April the rules for getting refunds on rail tickets are changing. You'll only be able to get your money back up to 23:59 the night before, not up to 28 days later as at present. This is to reduce fraud, not to assist passengers, so good luck if you need to explain in future that "exceptional circumstances" apply.
🚗 From 10pm tonight until late April the A40 will beentirely closed between the Westway roundabout and Marylebone Flyover while engineers replace safety-critical joints. That's going to snarl up large chunks of West London, indeed the traffic impact map suggests that roads will be "busier than usual" across a huge zone stretching from Hillingdon to King's Cross and from Hounslow to Neasden. 14 bus routes are having their frequency widened for the duration.
🚶 The King Charles III England Coast Path was officially opened yesterday by its namesake monarch. He walked part of the very best section by the Cuckmere estuary, even though this path was open long before the project began in 2009. In Greater London the KC3ECP follows the south bank of the Thames between the Woolwich Foot Tunnel and Erith. But on the north bank the path only starts at Tilbury, which is annoyingly impractical given that the passenger ferry service here was cancelled in March 2024.
🛫 Now that contactless can be used as far as Stansted Airport, Greater Anglia have taken down all the red warning signs at Tottenham Hale and are urging passengers to 'Tap, Tap & Away'. The fact that Oyster cards don't work is only in the smallprint so expect a continuing dribble of penalty fares, just nowhere near as many.
🛫 The drop-off fee at Stansted Airport was increased from £7 to £10 yesterday. Linger for more than 15 minutes and it's now a whopping £28. This is to encourage passengers to arrive by public transport, although the train fare's not exactly cheap either.
⛽ Diesel now costs 20p a litre more than 3 weeks ago, and unleaded 10p more, thanks to the war in Iran.
🚗 Waymo are out on the streets of London testing their self-driving vehicles because I saw one on Edgware Road yesterday. However they're not yet in fully autonomous driverless mode because (under the provisions of the Automated Vehicles Act 2024) TfL have to give permission for that and they haven't yet.
🚉 Three new stations are opening in the West Midlands on 7th April: Moseley Village, Kings Heath and Pineapple Road. Trains on the Camp Hill line between Birmingham New Street and Kings Norton will operate half-hourly. Geoff went on the press tour and his video is here.
🚉 Two new stations opened in the West Midlands yesterday at Willenhall and Darlaston. They're only getting an hourly service, but because it's on an existing route between Birmingham and Shrewsbury I can show you an exclusive photo of Willenhall taken out of a train window. Don't come for great architecture.
🚌 Bus drivers at Bow Garage are on strike until Monday morning so there's 'little or no service' on bus routes 8, 25, 205, 425, N8, N25 and N205. This is dreadful news for passengers at Bus Stop M where these routes comprise over half of the usual complement, so expect single deckers 108 and 276 to be heaving with Stratford-goers.
🤫 Expect a flurry of TfL announcements over the next three weeks because the 'purdah' period before the local elections starts on 8th April and they have to shut up for a month.
