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Mayor to spend £300m on first mainline rail service
Dick Murray, Transport Editor08.11.07
Ken Livingstone will launch his first venture under the control of London's mainline rail network next week.
At 2am on Sunday - the quietest time of the week - contracts will be signed by lawyers that mean the Mayor's Transport for London authority takes charge of Silverlink services from National Express.
The condition of the trains and infrastructure on the overcrowded line is so poor that Mr Livingstone appealed to long-suffering passengers: "Give us time to make this work."
By 2010, there will be eight trains an hour on parts of the service where there are four now and four trains an hour where just two run currently. Every station will be staffed all the time that trains are running - a major victory for the Evening Standard's Safer Stations campaign launched after the murder of City lawyer Tom ap Rhys Pryce near Kensal Green station in January last year.
The Mayor will control Silverlink Metro services - the North London Railway, which includes the North London line (Richmond to Stratford), the Euston to Watford Junction local line, the West London line (Willesden Junction to Clapham Junction via Kensington Olympia) and the Gospel Oak to Barking line.
The takeover will bring together the North London line and an East London line via Dalston Junction, where work will be completed in 2011.
Nearly £300million will be spent on new trains, including 24 three-carriage units for the North London line from 2009 and 20 four-carriage trains for the East London Railway - the old East London Tube line - when it reopens as part of the mainline network in 2010.
Mr Livingstone said: "By joining together the North and East London railways ahead of the 2012 Olympics we will create a new rail artery around the city, serving 20 London boroughs."
There will also be an extra 36 new carriages from 2011 to help ease overcrowding. More than 70,000 passengers a day currently use Silverlink Metro services but rail usage generally is expected to increase by around a quarter over the next decade. Trains will be run by a combination of Hong Kong-based MTR and British firm Laing under a holding company, London Overground Rail Operations. TfL will set service standards and be responsible for train frequency, safety and security. Oyster pay-as-you-go will be available.
TfL will take 90 per cent of the revenue from the "concession" - it refuses to use the word privatisation - leaving 10 per cent for MTR and Laing. But it will have to spend millions improving the stations as well as the infrastructure, which is in such a poor state it frequently results in disruption to services.
A major programme of station cleaning will begin from day one.
A TfL spokesman said: "Our message is that we are spending a lot [and] the service will improve, but it will take time."
The Mayor could also inherit a long-running industrial dispute over Silverlink staff pensions.
Aslef, the train drivers' union, has announced 24-hour strikes, the next on Friday, across Silverlink services. Further walkouts are planned for the following three Fridays. General secretary Keith Norman claimed agreements to make pay rises count towards pensions have not been honoured by National Express.
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It might be a good idea if the Mayor concentrated on the problems his constituants face catching a bus.
On Friday 7 December I went out at 2.15 pm to catch the 2.24pm bus at Homebase on Wheatley Hall Road. It was bitterly cold.
The bus actually arrived at 3.50 pm that is nearly an hour and a half standing at a bus stop with no shelter.
I was so cold I could hardly get the bus ticket out of my coat pocket.
This is totally unacceptable for the residents of Doncaster.
- Linda Fletcher, Hatfield, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England
