I must apologise for my long absence. After going on a much needed holiday in Germany, as well as planning an exciting tube-related event to be revealed later in the year, I am back! Despite an upsetting further Crossrail delay revealed last month, we are now gearing up for an Read more…
In addition to April Fool’s Day and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling’s birthday (coincidence?), today also marks the start of Network Rail’s latest 5-year funding period, Control Period 6 (CP6). Investment during these periods typically include various types of projects, such as new stations, electrification schemes, step-free access works, and maintenance/renewal Read more…
I apologise for my infrequent posts this month, as I have been mostly focusing on updating the station descriptions on the SfL map. So far, all of Zone 1 is complete, as well as the Jubilee, Victoria, and Piccadilly lines. It is a very slow process but I hope to Read more…
I am currently on holiday in Colombia this week, so I was not expecting to do a longer post until I got back to the UK. Unfortunately, these past few days have brought a barrage of extremely negative news regarding future step-free access schemes in London. At the centre of this disaster is the Crossrail project’s never-ending delays and rising costs. As TfL struggles to get the megaproject under control, everything else, including accessibility, is experiencing severe setbacks.
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A few months ago, the London Assembly Transport Committee held a consultation aimed at investigating ways to improve London’s railway network to make it more efficient, more accessible, and fit-for-purpose. Not counting organisations, I was one of 11 members of the public to submit a written response to the consultation, which you can read in my previous post located here. Yesterday, the final report was finally released. While it does contain good recommendations to achieve a network that is reliable, welcoming, and that has metro-like frequencies, I found the report to be lacking in detail and its proposals for accessibility were far below what I expected.
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Fitting quite nicely with recent posts and discussions I’ve had regarding level boarding and the rail industry’s overall lack of interest in making widespread full step-free access a priority, there is now some suboptimal news on Crossrail 2’s accessibility.
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Today the Department for Transport released a report detailing the future development of accessible transport, with the ambitious goal that the UK’s transport network will offer equal access to disabled people by 2030. It covers a very broad spectrum of topics, including staff training, passenger rights, and investment in infrastructure. The publication can be read in its entirety here. (more…)
London Reconnections has recently come out with a comprehensive article detailing the status of various TfL-run projects. I highly recommend reading it to get a sense of how things are progressing. (more…)
This is the final part of the level boarding series, which aims to summarise and offer context to the existence of level boarding on London’s railways, as well set the stage for further dialog with the rail industry to lobby for its expansion.
If you have not read the previous posts of this series, you can find them here:
Introduction, Mainline, Underground Sub-Surface, Underground Deep Tube. (more…)
