Tube stations will likely be closed during the strikes. Image: CGP Grey from London, United Kingdom, Creative Commons

Eight days of Tube strikes between November 2026 and February 2027 have been announced.

Tube drivers belonging to the RMT union will carry out 24-hour strikes on the following dates:

🚇 Thursday 26 November 2026

🚇 Thursday 17 December 2026

🚇 Saturday 19 December 2026

🚇 Monday 4 January 2027

🚇 Wednesday 6 January 2027

🚇 Wednesday 17 February 2027

🚇 Tuesday 23 February 2027

🚇 Thursday 25 February 2027

Image: wellybob_dont_jump, Creative Commons

These dates fall within the busy run-up to the festive period, when many visitors come to London, as well as what will be the first working day of 2027 for a lot of people. 17 February falls within the half term school holiday for many London and UK schools.

The action is due to a dispute about plans to shorten drivers' working weeks from five days to four. While the change is being presented as voluntary, with drivers choosing whether to move over to the new working pattern, the RMT claims drivers will face "increased time spent driving trains, longer duties, earlier starts and later finishes, short-notice changes to shifts and attacks on existing transfer rights and annual leave arrangements".

The RMT says it has "consistently demanded guarantees that no driver choosing to remain on existing agreements would suffer any detriment, but London Underground management has failed to provide those assurances."

However, the Tube union Aslef is all for the four-day week, and has expressed its surprise at RMT's strike action, which is a continuation of strikes that took place in spring 2026.

TfL has not yet said how the strikes are expected to impact services. Keep an eye on this page closer to the time for updates.

City Thameslink closes completely from May. Image: Thomas Nugent, Creative Commons

Early 2027: Pedestrianisation is all the (road) rage right now. With a chunk of Oxford Street having just gone wheel-less, Camden High Street has followed in its tracks: following an 18-month trial, the stretch between Britannia Junction and the junction with Jamestown Road and Hawley Crescent will now be indefinitely pedestrianised, and early in 2027 temporary barriers will be replaced with permanent ones. In the future, an extension of the pedestrianised area could be on the cards too.

Also early 2027: Roll-out of the new DLR trains picks up in 2027, as they take over the Stratford International and Woolwich Arsenal branch from 10 January, then begin to populate the Bank and Lewisham branch on the same day, before being rolled out between Stratford International and Lewisham, and Canning Town and Beckton from February. It won't, however, be until spring 2028 that the entire DLR network is served exclusively by the new trains. At which point, are they even new anymore?

2 January: Angel Tube station goes exit-only at weekends/bank holidays until further notice. It's so that TfL can take care of its lengthy escalators (some of which are the longest on the network, no less), which haven't enjoyed much TLC since opening in 1992, poor blighters.

The 109 bus route goes all-electric in January. Image: Southsea_Matt, Creative Commons

30 January: The 109/N109 route between Croydon and Brixton becomes the latest route to get new electric double-deckers — 25 of them.

March: That time of the year which makes London's commuters grind their teeth in grim anticipation. At time of writing, 2027's price hikes haven't been announced, but Tube and rail fares within London rose by a huge 5.8% in 2026, while bus and tram fares snuck up by 10p per adult fare.

17 May: More escalator-induced closures! City Thameslink — a station which already takes Sundays off — comprehensively shuts from 17 May-late December 2027, so that 10 escalators can be replaced.

By June 2027? The new Piccadilly line trains were first due to be rolled out by the end of 2025, but due to "a rigorous programme of testing the interactions with the infrastructure and systems" that date's been shoved back. TfL says it is now working to a window between December 2026 and June 2027.

5 July: Happy tram-iversary! 75 years ago on this day, London's last tram ran, as part of London's last tram week. Of course, since then, trams have returned to a small portion of south London. If only it were possible to run vintage trams on the current tracks, what a tribute that would be!

July 2027 marks 75 years since London bid farewell to trams. (It's since said hello again.) Image: mark's vintage topographical postcards, Creative Commons

31 August: It's 40 years since the Docklands Light Railway opened, and to celebrate they're going to take the roof off and run it at triple speed for thrillseekers. Well, that's what we'd suggest, anyway.

16 December: Exactly half a century since the Piccadilly line extension was opened to Heathrow Airport, providing passengers with a new, if somewhat trundling, way to get to their plane. The extension also prompted this plane/roundel mash-up logo from Willian Fenton, which admittedly looks a bit like a 'no planes' sign.

Late 2027: Buses for London takes over the number 6 route, becoming TfL's first publicly operated route since 2009. It marks the beginning of a wider roll out in 2028. What's the benefit for passengers? TfL says "to boost reliability and safety while crucially reinvesting profits to further improve the capital's transport network."

Sometime in 2027? TfL hopes to introduce three more Superloop routes across 2027: the SL13 between Ealing Broadway and Hendon War Memorial; the SL14 between Stratford Bus Station and Hatch Lane; and the SL15 between Clapham Junction and Eltham stations.

See how many of these roundels you can spot in the next couple of weeks. Image: TfL

A number of poppy roundels can be found on platforms at Tube and Overground stations across London, for Poppy Day (29 October) Remembrance Sunday (8 November) and Armistice Day (11 November).

Poppy roundels first appeared in November 2018, and have since become a fixture of this time of year. They're not specially-made roundels as such; the poppy design is a vinyl that's stuck onto existing roundels.

As well as the roundels, you'll see TfL tubes, trains, trams and buses 'wearing' poppies over the next couple of weeks. As with the last couple of years, The IFS Cloud Cable Car once again features commemorative design poppy illustrations too.

Look out for the Poppy buses again this year. Image: TfL

On Poppy Day (that's 29 October this year, not to be confused with Armistice Day itself) some 2,500 personnel, veterans and volunteers are at stations across the network collecting donations for the Poppy Appeal, which raises money to support former service personnel and their families. They'll accept contactless as well as cash. 2026 marks 20 years of London Poppy Day, with volunteers at the stations from 7am-7pm, and Royal British Legion bands performing at stations including Battersea Power Station, Blackfriars, Canary Wharf, Stratford and Westminster.

Here's a full list of where you'll find the poppy roundels in 2026:

Underground stations with poppy roundels

• Baker Street
• Balham
• Bethnal Green
• Bounds Green
• Canary Wharf
• King's Cross St Pancras
• London Bridge
• Tower Hill
• Westminster

Image: TfL

Overground stations with poppy roundels

• Hackney Downs
• Hatch End
• Hoxton,
• Shepherd's Bush
• South Tottenham

Additionally, poppy roundels can be seen at Hammersmith, Harrow, Kingston, Turnpike Lane and Vauxhall bus stations, and Victoria Coach Station.

Poppy buses

Buses decorated with poppies (pictured above) will also run on certain TfL routes.

A special announcement...

Image: TfL

... about a special announcement. On 29 October 2026, listen out for the voice of singer and actor Dame Elaine Paige. She's recorded a special message that will play over London station tannoys, encouraging people to donate.

Millions of paper poppies are crafted by hand at a factory in Richmond, and they often have public open days, where you can make your own poppy.

Angel will be exit-only on weekends from the start of 2027. Image: Londonist

From 2027, Angel Tube station will be exit-only on weekends, as refurbishments are made to its escalators.

The Northern line station has two banks of escalators — one of these featuring the longest escalators on the entire network — but they haven't undergone any major maintenance since being installed in 1992, something which TfL has squarely blamed on "the legacy of historic shortfalls in Government funding".

Such is the iffy state of these old escalators, one has been out of service since April 2026, leaving only two escalators currently operating on that bank. TfL fears that if another broke, this would have major implications for the station; at over 60 metres long, the escalators aren't viable for use as a staircase.

From 2 January 2027, Angel's escalators will undergo life-extending maintenance — but as every Londoner knows, such repairs take a long time. For the foreseeable future then, Angel will be exit-only every weekend and Bank Holiday.

The lack of forecast end date may have something to do with the fact that TfL is ultimately planning to replace the escalators altogether. Says Richard Jones, Director of Asset Performance Delivery for London Underground: "Their size means renewal or replacement is a challenging, expensive project and we are currently exploring all options possible to extend their working life.

"Making the station exit-only during specific periods will allow us to extend the working life of the escalators and give us more time to plan our next steps, with design work on replacing the escalators to begin this autumn."

Recent repairs on Kentish Town Underground's escalators — also on the Northern line — massively overran, lasting 18 months.

Angel Tube station will operate as normal on weekdays.

For an excellent documentary on Angel in its pre-escalator days, check out the Heart of the Angel on BBC iPlayer.

There's no shortage of fireworks in November — here's our roundup.

The first batch of tickets for London's NYE fireworks goes on sale on 23 October. Image: Kevin Hackert via Unsplash

The first batch of tickets for London's New Year's Eve fireworks goes on sale this Friday.

Since 2014, the festive spectacular of fireworks, music — and latterly, drone displays — has been a ticketed event. Playing out on the South Bank, and centred on the London Eye, 100,000 people will watch the 12-minute show. It's always a sell-out.

Tickets will be available from 12pm on Friday 23 October 2026, exclusively through Ticketmaster.

2026 tickets have been frozen at last year's prices, and will cost up to £55 per person. However, Londoners enjoy a generous discount, meaning they'll pay £20-£35, depending on the viewing area:

🎆 Blue: Victoria Embankment from Westminster Bridge to Golden Jubilee Footbridge (£35 Londoners/£55 others)
🎆 Pink: Waterloo Bridge (£35 Londoners/£55 others)
🎆 White: Westminster Bridge (£35 Londoners/£55 others)
🎆 Red: Victoria Embankment from Golden Jubilee Footbridge to Temple Avenue (£20 Londoners/£40 others)
🎆 Green: the area behind the London Eye (£20 Londoners/£40 others)
🎆 Orange (accessible viewing area): Albert Embankment, river side of St Thomas’s Hospital (£20 Londoners/£40 others)

Says the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan: "Nowhere in the world brings in the new year like London. Every year our unique display of fireworks, lighting and music shows off the very best of London, as around 100,000 Londoners and visitors line the banks of the River Thames and millions watch on around the world."

City Hall has warned that Ticketmaster is the only authorised vendor; in the last few years there's been an uptick in people buying fake tickets, resulting in them being turned away on the night.

A second, smaller batch of tickets will go on sale in November.

Read more on the Mayor of London's website.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in October 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Somewhere out there, in the infinite folds of the multiverse, is a London where you can zip along from Charing Cross to London Bridge on an elevated, Thames-side railway.

The Victorians (and predecessors) drew up numerous schemes to embank the river and build roads, railways and promenades on top. It did eventually happen, of course, but had history shifted differently then we might have got an elevated rail system — not dissimilar to the Docklands Light Railway — as far back as the 1840s. Here it is:

Lithograph by W. Richardson, 1841. Image: Matt Brown

At first glance, it’s a standard portrait of St Paul’s, sketched with the smoking chimneys and attendant steeples that still defined the City skyline when the print was made in 1841. Look closer, though, for there’s much of interest in the foreground.

The first novelty is the walkway. The Thames lacked proper embankments in 1841. With the exception of occasional terraces, such as that of Somerset House, the river could only be accessed from industrial wharves and jetties. Yet here we see fashionable ladies and gents promenading beside, and indeed over, the murky, cack-ridden Thames.

The whiffy walkway is secondary, though, to what’s going on above. Here, six carriages, joined together into two trains, pass along a viaduct. We’re looking at an elevated railway — over the Thames — in the early years of Victoria’s reign. (It’s not technically a monorail, but fans of The Simpson’s are welcome to sing at this point.)

The legend beneath the image gives further information. “View of the proposed line of railroad along the banks of the Thames from Hungerford Market to London Bridge.” (Hungerford Market was where Charing Cross station stands today.) I measured the proposed route it in Google Maps. We’re effectively looking at a 1.5-mile (2.5km) bridge, built over the water and tracking the north bank.

This might seem like a fanciful way to get people across town — especially in 1841, when railways were still in their infancy. But the scheme has the significant advantage of bypassing all the buildings. No compulsory purchase and demolition needed, except, perhaps at the termini.

The Thames railroad was the brainchild of Colonel Frederick William Trench (?1777-1859), a former army officer turned MP. He sounds like quite the character. The History of Parliament described him as “a verbose and egregious Irishman”, while author Felix Barker paints him as “an irrepressible busybody”. Here’s our man, in all his bright-eyed pomp.

Colonel Frederick William Trench, painted in 1827. It looks like he was working on one of his embankment schemes just as the artist arrived. Image: public domain

Trench was indeed irrepressible. He’d first proposed a Thames embankment scheme as early as 1824 and never let go of the idea. In his era, the river washed up against the land in a confusing morass of wharves, jetties and inlets. An embankment would effectively declutter the riverside, aiding navigation and commerce. It would also reclaim land from the Thames, to provide a new vehicle and pedestrian route above, and thereby relieve the Strand. Such things had been proposed before. Christopher Wren, for example, had wanted to consolidate the quayside during rebuilding after the Great Fire. John Nash had a go, too. But Trench went further in planning and publicising his ‘Thames Quay’.

The charismatic man, often described as a dandy, was able to drum up considerable support. Numerous wealthy bigwigs, including the Duke of York, the Duchess of Rutland, the Lord Mayor, and the future PM Lord Palmerston, were all keen. They even joined Trench on a jolly down the Thames — in the state barge of the Merchant Taylors’ company, no less — where the plans were first discussed. Following the riverine conference, a working committee was established to take the scheme forward.

Not everyone was delighted at the idea, however. The barristers of the Temple complained that the viaduct would spoil their view of the Thames. The Dukes of Northumberland and Norfolk, whose houses fronted the river, objected for similar reasons. Meanwhile, the shopkeepers of the Strand feared that their trade would diminish if everyone was down by the river. No small number of wharf proprietors also feared loudly for their livelihoods.

The plans were delicately poised, then, with strong voices for and against. Sadly, two of the key backers died with unfortunate timing and, amid growing opposition, Trench’s scheme was retired. There would be no embankment for the time being.

Trench’s other tricks

Trench was very much an ideas man. Throughout his parliamentary career, he put forward various grand schemes for the capital. His most famous, coming in 1815, would have seen a colossal pyramid constructed on the site of Trafalgar Square, a memorial to victories over the French. Imagine stepping out of the National Gallery and seeing this, rather than Nelson’s Column:

Image: public domain

Actually, you wouldn’t have been stepping out of the National Gallery in the first place. The proposed pyramid would have been the length and height of St Paul’s Cathedral, and would have eaten up most of the land later used for the gallery. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

Trench’s grands projets also included an optimistic pitch to King George IV. In 1825, just a year after the embankment idea, Trench set out his ambitions to build a monumental royal palace in Hyde Park. This would have been accessed via a two-mile long, 200-foot-wide grand avenue direct from St Paul’s. Trench’s trench would have ploughed through the Temple, Covent Garden, Soho and Mayfair on very similar dimensions to a Heathrow runway. The idea seems far-fetched today (and even Trench admitted it was ambitious), but London had recently seen the construction of the canyon-like Regent Street on a north-south axis. Happily, this horizontal sequel never gained momentum.

Dry me a river

Meanwhile, the idea of embanking the Thames would not go away, and other people took up the cause. One well known advocate was John Martin, the painter of dramatic landscapes and glorious apocalypses. Between bouts of doomdaubing, Martin worked on embankment plans even more elaborate than those of Trench. His 1832 proposal would see the Thames lined with a grand terrace. It would encrapsulate an enormous sewer, which would prevent the fouling of the river and carry ready-made fertiliser east towards the fields of Essex.

It was a simple but expensive idea, which sadly failed to gain traction. Martin was despondent, but he was able to realise part of his scheme on canvas. The 1841 eye-popper called Pandemonium features a hellish simulacrum of London, complete with a colonnaded embankment transposed from the artist’s stillborn blueprints.

The architecture here might be classical rather than gothic, but the mass of the buildings is clearly suggestive of the Houses of Parliament. Image: public domain

As Martin was adding the final brimstone flourishes to his painting, Frederick Trench popped up again. It had been 17 years since the now-ageing visionary had first proposed an embankment carriageway. A lot had happened in those years. Notably, London was now in thrall to the railways, with lines running into London Bridge, Euston, Paddington, Nine Elms and Bishopsgate, and more on the way. Trench sensed a bandwagon. He dusted off his embankment plans and reworked them to include an elevated railway.

His trains would not be drawn by steam engines but would instead be pulled along by a cable. This technology was fairly common during the early years of the railways. Trains out of Euston, for example, were pulled by a cable, which helped them master the incline to Camden Town. Trench also incorporated another emerging technology of the age: the electric telegraph. Cooke and Wheatstone’s pioneering message-sending kit had been successfully trialed along the Euston line four years earlier. The Thames-side railway would support a conduit for an Admiralty telegraph.

Once again, though, our man was rebuffed. His plans were rapidly shouted down as financially unworkable. Trench could not retrench and the scheme was once again retired.

Others would make further proposals in the coming years, among them WH Smith of newsagent fame, and another scheme of 1852 to run a viaduct railway along the midline of the Thames. Nothing of the sort was ever constructed.

It took the singular genius of Joseph Bazalgette, with the clout of the Metropolitan Board of Works behind him, to finally build an extensive Thames Embankment. It would be realised in the 1860s and 70s, half a century after Trench’s first stab at the problem. Bazalgette’s embankment was a triumphant compromise of the previous plans. Martin’s sewer was down there, intercepting the combined turds of north London. A wide carriageway and promenade, easing the traffic of the Strand, was built above. And just below trundled the underground railway — now the Circle line. Its stations at Embankment and Monument almost mirror those proposed by Trench, albeit beneath the carriageway rather than propped up on stilts. Sadly, neither Trench nor Martin lived to see this transformative development.

Yet another aspect of Trench’s 1841 scheme would see fruition in our own age. Look again at the original image and you’ll notice that the viaduct railway stands out in the water, rather than hugging the banks. Behind can be seen a further expanse of water, leading to a pair of staircases. These sweep up to a grand avenue bound for St Paul’s. Meanwhile, an ornamental fountain gushes high into the air.

On this precise spot today is the northern bridgehead of the Millennium Bridge. It’s an entirely pedestrian walkway, just like the promenade in Trench’s plan, and its construction knocked through an avenue connecting the river and St Paul’s. Beneath the bridge, twin staircase splay out towards the Thames — not as elegant as Trench’s, but at least they have handrails.

Image: Google street view

The bridgehead even came with its own cable-pulled railway, albeit on a different axis and scale to the Trench plan. Look to the right of the steps in the image above and you’ll see a tall glass partition. Behind it ran a species of funicular railway known grandiloquently as the ‘Millennium Inclinator’. This was, basically, a diagonal lift, to help those with mobility needs get up to bridge level. Sadly, it was recently removed following a catalogue of breakdowns.

The Millennium Inclinator… a cable-pulled railway beside the Thames, now dismantled. Image: Matt Brown

All the essentials of Trench’s scheme did eventually get built, then, albeit in different configuration. And though it was never a direct inspiration, we today enjoy many miles of elevated, waterside transit in the form of the Docklands Light Railway.

And so, as the Rolling Stones shrewdly observed, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get a reshuffled, reworked version of your initial vision. With a sewer.”

TfL wants to make Monument Junction safer. Image: TfL

TfL has announced plans to make Monument Junction safer for cyclists and pedestrians, launching a public consultation to let Londoners have a say on the proposed changes.

Located at the north end of London Bridge (overlooked by the former House of Fraser building), Monument Junction encompasses parts of Gracechurch Street, Eastcheap, Cannon Street, King William Street and surrounding roads — make it extremely busy. According to TfL, there were 18 collisions in the area between February 2023 and February 2026.

The plans include:

🚦 Changing the crossing which spans Gracechurch Street so that pedestrians can cross in one go, rather than staggered.

🚶  Widening crossings and central reservations at the junctions of King William Street South and Eastcheap, and removing the street-level access to the defunct public toilets, creating more space for pedestrians on the pavement. (The gates and railings of these toilets are rather ornate, and you'd hope they'd wind up on public display elsewhere; who knows, perhaps the new London Museum?)

🚇 Pedestrianising Fish Street Hill, which has an entrance/exit to Monument Tube station.

🚲 New cycling lanes, separated from vehicle traffic with wands.

A full map of the plans can be viewed here.

TfL's website has further details on the plans. The public consultation is open until 24 November 2026.

Forget scones; London's latest National Trust property does a mean rump steak. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

A Covent Garden building home to London's oldest restaurant has been donated to the National Trust.

Rules has operated at 34-35 Maiden Lane since 1798, originally opening as an oyster house. During its 228-year history, it has served famous faces including King Edward VII, Laurence Olivier, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, Dame Vera Lynn, Liza Minnelli, Madonna and David Bowie. These days it focuses on hearty British food, specialising in game.

Paintings, drawings and caricatures adorn the walls. Image: National Trust/Megan Taylor

The building and restaurant came under threat in 1971 when the Greater London Council announced plans to turn Strand into a dual carriageway, and was saved thanks to a campaign spearheaded by John Betjeman, who then had a room in the restaurant named in his honour. Its interiors include dark wood panelling, and walls covered in portraits of former patrons, vintage mirrors and busts. It has been used as a filming location for productions including Downton Abbey, and the 2015 James Bond film Spectre.

Now, J-P Mayhew, who has owned the building which houses Rules for 40 years, has donated it to the National Trust, in a gift valued at more than £11m. The building is seen as "a site of exceptional national and international significance" due to it being a "rare example of living heritage where both the historic structure and its original use remain intact".

The John Betjeman Room. Image: National Trust Images/Megan Taylor

Mayhew said:

There are few restaurants in the world that have endured the test of time like Rules. With many years of hard work, and some extraordinary strokes of luck, it has survived everything from redevelopment plans and changing tastes to the Blitz.

In addition to the building itself, historic items including menus, photographs, signs and visitor books are also included in the gift to the National Trust, allowing the restaurant's heritage to be preserved.

Rules will continue to operate as usual, and is now a commercial tenant of the National Trust, meaning that the rent it pays will provide income for the heritage charity.

Stained glass detail. Image: National Trust/Megan Taylor

Ricky McMenemy, business owner of Rules, said:

We are delighted the National Trust has taken ownership of 34-35 Maiden Lane, home to Rules Restaurant for over two centuries. As an independent business, it gives us both the security and peace of mind that our home will be in very good hands and be protected and secure going forward. Having already established a very amicable working relationship with the Trust, we look forward to another two centuries in this, our home.

Rules isn't the only building cared for by the National Trust which still operates as a business; The Trust cares for 39 historic pubs, including the George Inn in Borough — though 34-35 Maiden Lane is the first building in the Trust's care to house an historic restaurant still serving customers.

Find out more on the National Trust website.

South Tottenham station is in the running for the World Cup of Stations, but faces stiff competition. Image: Irid Escent, Creative Commons

Two London stations are finalists in the annual World Cup of Stations competition — and they could hardly be more different.

The competition — organised annually by the Rail Delivery Group — invites the public to vote on a shortlist of stations, chosen as the creme de la creme under a given theme; in 2026, that theme is "creating connections that matter."

Azaz Khan working in the garden he helped create. Image: Arriva

Since it began in 2019, no London station has won the award; most winners have been located further north, in the likes of Glasgow, Huddersfield and Liverpool. Last year's World Cup victor was in the former mining village of Ashington in Northumberland.

Maybe this is the year that changes. Among the 20 finalists in 2026 are St Pancras International, and the rather less grand South Tottenham Overground station. On the surface, St Pancras has it all: shops, restaurants, continental connections. But this competition will be judged on that theme of connections, and here, South Tottenham has a story to tell, thanks to the plight of station assistants Ray McDonagh and Azaz Khan, who have planted a sensory garden, where local pupils with special educational needs, and people living with dementia, can spend time.

Ray McDonagh, co-creator of South Tottenham station's garden. Image: Arriva

A particularly heartwarming moment occurred in the garden when, during a visit from a special educational needs school, a young boy asked Raymond and Azaz whether he could have a flower for his mother. To the boy's joy, Azaz grew a flower especially for him. It was only later that Azaz was told the boy's mother had recently died, and that the flower was for her grave.

St Pancras is grand alright, but does it have the chops to win this community-minded cup? Image: willnoble13, All Rights Reserved

Among other stations in the running for this year's World Cup is Saltcoats in Scotland, where unused space has been transformed into a home for a local karate club; and Crediton near Exeter, where former station buildings have become a community café and a home for music and the arts.

Voting for the World Cup of Stations 2026 is now open, with the shortlist of 20 whittled down on Wednesday 14 October, before the ultimate victor is crowned on Sunday 18 October.

See the shortlist of 20 and cast your vote on the Rail Delivery Group website.

For free things to do in London this week, check out our roundup.

The free round trips on the London Cable Car would usually cost £13.50. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

Free trips on the London Cable Car are up for grabs this November.

To mark Befriending Week, TfL is offering journeys on the east London attraction/dangly transport line, on Monday 2, Wednesday 4 and Friday 6 November 2026, with the entire fee waived.

The idea of the round trips — usually worth £13.50 — is to encourage Londoners "who may be feeling lonely" a chance to strike up conversation with fellow denizens, while drinking in views of the skyline and sipping a cuppa. The trips are bookable now.

"Transport for London plays a vital role in keeping Londoners connected to the places and people they love," says Danny Price, Director of Sponsored Services at TfL. "By bringing people together 90 metres above the Thames for Befriending Week, we hope to show how simple it can be to start a conversation and turn a daily journey into a meaningful connection."

Who knows; it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Unless you hit on some fundamental political difference, in which case it might be a long trip across the water.

Free Befriending Week London Cable Car journeys (2, 4 and 6 November 2026) are available to book now.

Image: TfL

There is "strong support" for the DLR to be extended to Beckton Riverside and Thamesmead, according to the results of a public consultation.

More than 550 people and organisations responded to TfL's plans in a consultation which ran in June and July 2026, many giving positive feedback on the improved transport links and better access to jobs which the extension would bring.

The planned extension would see two brand new stations built, as well as a new tunnel under the Thames, and would increase connectivity to Thamesmead, an area which has long been under-served by public transport options.

The recent consultation specifically focused on designs for the new stations, with many respondents highlighting the importance of accessibility, safe walking and cycling routes, good bus connections and potential future DLR extensions beyond Thamesmead.

After a glitch, the new trains are now operating on the DLR. Image: TfL

Some respondents also highlight concerns around issues including the traffic, noise and environmental effects of construction.

So what next? The extension is still a few years away: construction could begin in 2029, with a projected opening date of early 2030s (though these things have a tendency to get delayed). The next step will see the plans refined based on the feedback received during the consultation.

Alex Williams, TfL’s Chief Customer and Strategy Officer, said:

The responses we received show continued strong support for the scheme and recognise the important role it could play in improving public transport connections, supporting new homes and jobs, and unlocking growth on both sides of the River Thames. We have carefully considered the feedback received and will use it to help develop the proposals further as we continue working towards submitting an application for permission to build and operate the scheme.

TfL intends to submit a Transport and Works Act Order application in 2027, and will continue working with partners including the Mayor of London, the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Newham to get the project off the ground.

The full results of the 2026 public consultation can be viewed online. And in other DLR glow-up news: its shiny new trains were finally put back into service in September 2026, after being pulled just a few weeks post-launch in autumn 2025 due to an issue with the brakes.

The huge Palm House is undergoing a major refurb. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

Kew Gardens has launched a fundraising appeal to restore its historic Palm House, with the aim of raising £1m with help from the public.

The Grade-I listed Victorian glasshouse, which has been in situ since 1848, is in urgent need of repairs to keep it going for future generations. As reported last summer, the Palm House will close for five years from 2027 to allow the restoration to take place. The project will include new glazing for all 16,000 panes of glass, and the installation of renewable heating systems and rainwater harvesting tanks, making it the first carbon neutral glasshouse of its kind.

Image: Andy Li, Creative Commons

All this doesn't come cheap, the project expected to cost an eye-watering £66m. Kew has already raised around half of that, and it's now asking the public to get involved with raising the next £1m.

There are several ways to help, from making a simple donation, to sponsoring a pane of glass (£25 for a small pane; £100 for a large pane), or even a species of plant (from £25 for a traveller's palm, up to £500 for the critically endangered Clay's hibiscus from Hawaii) within the restored Palm House. Your name won't appear at Kew, but you'll receive a personalised digital certificate. And even if it's not for you, what about that awkward-to-buy-for, already-has-everything friend or family member for Christmas?

Why is the Palm House so important? In addition to being an historic structure, it's scientifically crucial — housing a living collection of tropical plants from around the world, many of which are rare, threatened or even extinct in the wild. As well as protecting them, Kew scientists use them for research into preventing biodiversity loss, conservation, food security and how to protect the future of our planet. Two new glasshouses, one temporary and one permanent, have been built at Kew to house the plants while the Palm House is out of action. Sadly, some of the trees were too tall to move and had to be felled.

Until recent years, the Palm House was the backdrop of the Christmas at Kew finale. Image: Londonist

Many of Kew's structures date back to the Victorian period, meaning they now require restorative intervention. The Palm House renovation follows the Temperate House — the largest Victorian glasshouse in the world — reopening in 2018, following a similar five-year refurbishment. The same year, the Great Pagoda was restored and reopened.

Find out more about the Palm House project, and make a donation, on the Kew appeal page.

In reality, this line already exists. TfL just needs to convert it into an Overground. Image: TfL

TfL wants your thoughts on a new Overground line.

You've possibly heard of the West London Orbital. The proposed line — which could be operating as early as the mid 2030s — would run from Hendon down to Hounslow, passing through the future HS2 and Elizabeth line hub of Old Oak Common. We've written an explainer on it here.

Today (23 September) TfL has opened an eight-week public consultation, inviting the public to learn more about the plans, and provide initial feedback.

Probably coming to you soon(ish). Image: TfL

10 years or fewer does not sound long to build an 18.5km Overground line from scratch, but much of the route is already in place. The rails themselves exist as sections of various freight/passenger lines, meaning the project wouldn't be as labour intensive as some. New stations would, however, be needed at Neasden, Harlesden, and Old Oak Common, as well as at Lionel Road, next to Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium (a boon for travelling fans, no doubt).

TfL says that the line would "fill a key missing link" in London's rail network, as well as "unlocking" all the usual jobs and homes. Trains would run up to every 10 minutes, and as well as linking Hendon with Hounslow, the line would join with the Jubilee line (at Neasden), the Central line (at North Acton), the Elizabeth line (at the yet-to-open Old Oak Common), as well as various National Rail and other sections of the Overground.

You can take part in the consultation here. It closes on Wednesday 18 November.

View along Thurloe Place. Image: TfL

Plans to bring step-free access and other improvements to South Kensington look set to move forward.

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that Costain will be the design-and-build partner for the project. It's a major milestone for plans that have been rumbling on for years, and a strong indication that change might finally be coming to the west London station.

A revamped/enlarged ticket hall. Image: TfL

If there's one station anywhere on the Tube network that desperately needs improving, it's South Ken. Around 30 million people flood in and out each year, yet it has no step-free access. That not only rules out wheelchair users and others who can't manage stairs, it's also a pain for the many museum-bound families with buggies. Bottlenecks are a constant feature of the station, particularly at the Circle/District stairs.

TfL won planning approval for upgrades in 2023, and has taken another two years to get its funding in place. The awarding of this contract is a signal that enabling works should soon begin. Indeed, TfL states that it will have the scheme fully delivered by 2031, the 150th anniversary of the Natural History Museum (though two years later than initially announced).

Platform 1, back in use for eastbound trains. Image: TfL

Among the changes coming to the station:

• Step-free access to all platforms on all lines (Circle/District and Piccadilly)
• A new (well, restored) eastbound Circle/District platform to increase capacity
• Increased ticket hall size, with more gates.
• A new station entrance on Thurloe Street to 'enable much-needed step-free access to the ticket hall, subway and platforms'
• In a separate but coordinated development, by Native Land and Places for London, the curvy 'bullnose' at the front of the station will be rebuilt to four storeys, providing new food outlets and office space. Units on Thurloe Street and the arcade will also be updated, and 50 new homes will be built on Pelham Street.

Overhead view, showing the rebuilt 'bullnose', housing on Pelham Street, and the reworked buildings of Thurloe Place.

It's the last parts of the plans that have proved most controversial. The redevelopment would oust existing businesses and greatly alter the outside appearance of the station. However, planning permission is now in place, it looks like the argument has been won.

A map showing new housing projects with over 2,000 new homes. Image: Londonist, with background from OpenStreetMap. © OpenStreetMap contributors.

London needs more homes; on this most people agree. But where to put them all?

The new Draft London plan proposes that the capital gains 558,000 new homes by 2037, or around 50-60,000 per year. It's an ambitious target, even with the raft of new measures to speed up home building.

We'll leave the 'how' and 'why' to others. Here we want to take stock of all the large housing projects in the pipeline. This includes schemes that are still at proposal stage, through to those which are already under way. To keep things manageable, we've restricted entries to those with 2,000 new homes or more. We've probably missed a few, so let us know in the comments if you know of others we should add.

Aylesbury Estate

The Aylesbury Estate in 2021. Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Southwark
Developers: Southwark Council and Notting Hill Genesis
Homes: 4,200
Completion: ~2035

Work to regenerate the estate has been rumbling on for years, with all kinds of complications and and delays. About a quarter of the new homes have been completed, as Southwark seek a new development partner to replace Notting Hill Genesis.

Barking Riverside

Barking Riverside in 2015. Things can only get better. Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Barking & Dagenham
Developers: Barking Riverside Ltd, comprising L&Q and GLA Land and Property
Homes: 20,000
Completion: 2046

London's single biggest housing development, Barking Riverside is now set to include some 20,000 new homes, around 4,000 of which will be designated as 'affordable'. The mega-project began a few years ago on land once occupied by Barking Power Station. It was spurred on by completion of the Overground extension to the new Barking Riverside station. Outline planning permission was recently granted for the full 20,000, in what was the largest planning application for housing in the UK. It will take around two decades to complete, though phased occupation will roll out much sooner. More info: Barking Riverside website.

Beam Park

Borough: Barking and Dagenham, and Havering
Developers: London and Quadrant and Countryside Properties
Homes: ~4,000
Completion: 2030-2035

Taking advantage of land formerly occupied by the Ford motor works, this major development is already under way and aims to include 50% affordable housing and 25% suitable for families. The scheme will include a new railway station called Beam Park on the C2C line. More info: Beam Park website

Beckton Riverside

The Phase 1 development. Image: JTP

Borough: Newham
Developers: St William/Berkeley
Homes: ~10,000
Completion: ~2056

Outline planning consent was recently given for phase 1 of this major development, which will see almost 3,000 homes built on the former gasworks site. A second phase would bring 3,000 more homes, with the remaining 4,000 dependent on a new DLR station. More info: Architects' Journal.

Brent Cross Town

Borough: Barnet
Developers: Related Argent/Barnet Council
Homes: 6,700
Completion: 2035

Image courtesy of Brent Cross Town.

Anyone who's traversed the northern suburbs on the Thameslink Bedford/St Albans line can't have missed the huge construction works under way around Brent Cross. The numerous residential blocks are served by a new station, Brent Cross West, which opened in 2023. Besides thousands of homes, the scheme will deliver new office space, three new schools, eight public squares, sports facilities and 50 acres of green space. More info: Brent Cross Town website.

Billingsgate

Borough: Tower Hamlets
Developer: tbc
Homes: 10,000
Completion: tbc

After Billingsgate fish market moves out to the Royal Docks, Tower Hamlets council intends to redevelop the land for housing. With nearby plots at Poplar DLR depot and the New City College campus, some 10,000 new homes could be unlocked. This one is at a very early stage, with no planning permission or private sector partners.

Canada Water

Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Southwark
Developer: British Land, AustralianSuper and Southwark Council
Homes: 4,184
Completion: ~2035

This huge redevelopment of former docklands into residential is already in motion, with the landmark 39-storey tower The Founding already complete. In a familiar story, the promised 35% affordable housing has been 'revised' to 9% in the latest tweaks to the masterplan. Among other amenities, the development also includes that bright red bridge everyone got excited about a couple of years ago. More info: Canada Water website.

Charlton Riverside

Borough: Greenwich
Developer: Greenwich Council, TfL, GLA
Homes: 8,000
Completion: Unknown

Long earmarked for redevelopment, the former industrial lands between Greenwich Peninsula and Woolwich moved a step closer toward reality recently with the announcement of this public-sector-led partnership. This scheme is at the earliest of stages, with no start or completion date. More info.

Colindale/Burnt Oak

Colindale has been a major building site for years, as pictured here from Hendon in 2019. Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Barnet/Brent
Developer: Various
Homes: 12,500
Completion: Unknown

The Colindale masterplan has been rumbling on for two decades, with numerous independent projects under one grand area plan. Much has already been built, turning the area into a forest of medium-rise blocks. The Tube station has been remodelled to cope with the increased footfall. More info.

Earls Court

Image: Earls Court Development Company

Boroughs: Kensington & Chelsea, and Hammersmith & Fulham
Developer: Earls Court Development Company (Delancey/APG/TfL)
Homes: ~4,000
Completion: 2041

This complex brownfield development on the site of the old exhibition centres straddles rail lines and two boroughs. Planning permission has been approved, and the first construction work should begin in 2027. Besides around 4,000 homes, the car-free neighbourhood will see cultural venues, office space and new pedestrian connections between three Tube stations (West Brompton, West Kensington and Earl's Court). In case you're wondering, the development lacks an apostrophe (like Earls Court Road) while the Tube station has one. No idea why. More info: Earls Court Development Company, and our own explainer.

Grand Union, Alperton

Image: Berkeley

Borough: Brent
Developer: Berkeley
Homes: 3,350
Completion: 2029

The first phase of the redevelopment of former industrial land along the Grand Union Canal is already complete, with a second in advanced progress. The development includes 1,000 affordable homes, including 115 council homes. More info: Berkeley website.

Greenwich Peninsula

Greenwich Peninsula already sports a number of tower blocks, but many more are still to rise. Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Greenwich
Developer: Knight Dragon/various
Homes: ~25,500
Completion: ~2043

Every time we head to North Greenwich, there's a new housing block under construction. It's a mega-masterplan, which will take about a third of a century to complete. Our total includes many blocks that have already been delivered, though many sites have yet to begin construction. The excellent From the Murky Depths has a detailed breakdown of the different developments within the masterplan. More info: Greenwich Peninsula website.

Heron Wharf

Borough: Tower Hamlets
Developers: Berkeley
Homes: 2,900
Completion: 2029

The redevelopment of an old gasworks site is already happening. The project will include 223 new council homes, after Tower Hamlets bought some of the plots from Berkeley. More info: Berkeley website

Kensal Canalside

Image: Ballymore

Borough: Kensington & Chelsea
Developers: Ballymore and Sainsbury's
Homes: 2,500
Completion: Unknown

The former gasworks site will be heavily redeveloped in one of the borough's largest housing projects in living memory. The scheme recently won council approval and now awaits a mayoral decision before going ahead.

Kidbrooke Village

Borough: Greenwich
Developers: Berkeley
Homes: 5,500
Completion: 2030s

Built initially to replace the Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke Village is fast nearing completion with the fifth of six phases now under way. Smaller developments nearby will raise the total number of local homes beyond the total shown here.

Meridian Water

Borough: Enfield
Developers: Enfield Council
Homes: 10,000
Completion: ~2040

Work has commenced on this four-phase development alongside the Lea Valley. Led by the local council, the project has a high proportion of affordable homes. The development also hopes to nurture small and creative businesses at the site, which is served by the new-ish Meridian Water railway station. More info: Meridian Water website.

New Bermondsey

Image: Renewal

Borough: Lewisham
Developers: Renewal
Homes: 3,500
Completion: Unknown

Former industrial land around Millwall's stadium will be transformed into a residential-led neighbourhood through a series of distinctive tower blocks. The plans will also see a new Windrush line station called Surrey Canal, serving the area and football ground. Planning permission is granted for the initial stages and work should begin in 2027. More info: New Bermondsey website.

Old Kent Road

The masterplan includes some pretty tall towers. Image: Farrells.

Borough: Southwark
Developers: Various, with Southwark Council and the GLA
Homes: 20,000
Completion: ~2041

Old Kent Road is notoriously a cheap place to build houses, at least on the Monopoly board. That's only part of the reason why this mega-housing project is going ahead, however. It hopes to tap into significant brownfield sites, and spur on construction of the Bakerloo line extension, which would run through the heart of the development with three new halts. The aim is to make about 35% of the new homes 'affordable', with some 5,000 homes on social rent. Work is now under way at several sites, with more in for planning. More info: Old Kent Road development site.

Old Oak and Park Royal

Image: OPDC

Boroughs: Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham
Developers: Mayor of London’s statutory Mayoral Development Corporation (private sector partners yet to be appointed)
Homes: 8,000
Completion: ~2050

This complicated project will see thousands of homes built in phases across brownfield land. The development is anchored on the new Old Oak Common station, currently under construction for HS2 and the Elizabeth line. The £10 billion scheme was kickstarted in 2015 by Mayor Boris Johnson. More than a decade on, and the private sector partners are yet to be appointed (though tendering is under way). More info: Old Oak Common website.

Royal Arsenal Riverside

Royal Arsenal Riverside, seen from across the Thames. Image: Matt Brown

Borough: Greenwich
Developer: Berkeley
Homes: 5,000
Completion: 2032

At time of writing, some four-fifths of these new homes have been completed, on historic dockyard land close to the Elizabeth line. Although many of the apartments are new-build, the development also converted many Grade I and Grade-I-listed buildings for residential use. More info: Berkeley Homes website.

Silvertown

Image: Silvertown Partnership

Borough: Newham
Developers: Silvertown Partnership (GLA Land and Property/Lendlease)
Homes: 7,000
Completion: ~2030s

This part of the Royal Docks has remained derelict for decades, used only for photo shoots and Hollywood movies. At its heart is the Millennium Mills building, a vast flour mill that has stood empty since the 1980s, but which would make a striking centrepiece for any regeneration. Now it looks like happening, with a Mayor-backed 'Singapore style' development that will see the first 1,000 homes under construction by 2028. The scheme will also see a new curvy bridge across the dock to Excel. More info: Silvertown website

Stratford Cross

Borough: Newham
Developers: Lendlease/The Crown Estate
Homes: 2,000
Completion: ~2031

Another major housing development on the edge of the Olympic Park. This one mixes affordable and market-rate homes with student accommodation and co-living flats in the land between Westfield and the Olympic Park (and therefore beside the East Bank cultural hub). Planning permission is pending. It's part of a wider, national effort by Lendlease and Crown Estates to develop 9,000 new homes. More info: Stratford Cross website.

Thameside West

Image: Foster + Partners

Borough: Newham
Developers: Regal
Homes: 5,000+
Completion: 2037

Master-plannned by Foster + Partners, this huge development will fill a large section of riverside opposite the O2, and close to the Dangleway station and City Hall. This was the former site of the Carlsberg and Tetley brewery, though it's long been vacant. The project received planning permission as far back as 2021, but now looks set to start after a Dubai cash injection. A new DLR station will also be part of the mix. More info: Thameside West website.

Thamesmead Waterfront

Image: Thamesmead Waterfront

Borough: Greenwich
Developers: Peabody/Lendlease
Homes: ~15,000
Completion: Post-2040

First conceived in 2019, this huge development has since been cast as one of the Government's 'new towns' (and the only one in London, now that the Crews Hill site has withdrawn). The land has been earmarked for housing for years, always let down by a lack of public transport. The recent approval of the new DLR link to Thamesmead will now help unlock this housing project. More info: Thamesmead Waterfront website.

TwelveTrees Park, West Ham

Borough: Newham
Developers: Berkeley
Homes: ~4,700
Completion: ~2045

This major development could scarcely be more convenient for the Tube, with a new entrance direct into West Ham station. Construction on the first phase is already complete, with more to begin soon. A new school will be part of the development, on brownfield land that previously held a Parcelforce depot. More info: Berkeley website.

Wembley Park

Image: Quintain

Borough: Brent
Developers: Quintain
Homes: 8,500
Completion: 2027

Wembley Park has been under development for two decades now, and Quintain has already delivered around 6,000 of the promised 8,500 new homes on this site. Around a third of these properties are deemed affordable, and the wider development will be the UK's largest single-site Build to Rent development when it completes.

South Wimbledon station looking all shiny and new in 1926 © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection

"LONDON'S FREEDOM FOR THE S.W SUBURBS."

So screams Charles Paine's retina-scorching 1926 poster, heralding the brand new extension of the Northern line* — back then, making it the longest railway tunnel anywhere.

This weekend marks 100 years since seven genre-shatteringly handsome Charles Holden stations** made their debut, as London's south-western suburbs were firmly plugged into the network.

Charles Paine’s 1926 poster for the opening. © LTM

People are (rightly) excited about this anniversary. Someone's even baked a Tooting Bec station cake. But if you can't wangle a slice of that, there's plenty of action to be had on the Northern line itself this Saturday (12 September), where TfL has organised a free Northern Line Morden Extension Centenary Treasure Hunt, as part of Open House festivities.

Picking up a clue pack at Morden station, you'll need to work your way through questions, and hop between the seven Holden stations, with TfL Ambassadors waiting at each, to check your answers and stamp the clue pack before you move on.

Junior Transport Secretary J T C Moore-Brabazon riding the first train to arrive at Morden. Fun fact: he was also an aviator who once took a pig in a basket on his plane, to prove pigs could fly.  © LTM.jpg

The hunt — which is not a race; you've got four hours to complete it — concludes at Clapham South station, where there's a chance to win a prize, although only if you've answered all the clues correctly!

Northern Line Morden Extension Centenary Treasure Hunt, starts at Morden station, 12 September 2026, 11am-3pm, free

*Or at least, the line that would become known as the Northern line.

**Pedants' note: Balham didn't open till that December

A guide to the London 2028 Mayoral elections.

The race for City Hall will soon hot up. Image: Matt Brown

When are the next London Mayoral Elections?

4 May 2028. Cue lots of tired jokes about it coinciding with Star Wars Day.

Who are the main candidates?

Labour: Sir Sadiq Khan has made noises about once again entering the race. Khan will have served 12 years as Mayor of London by this point, four more than any previous incumbent. However, he was recently appointed a Lord, and may well decide to move on to pastures new (or old and erminey).

Were Khan to drop out, we'd probably see quite a few names put themselves forward. Brent East MP Dawn Butler has already indicated that she would stand if Khan were to step aside (slogan: "a new Dawn for London"). Others would no doubt follow. David Lammy MP might be among them.

Dawn Butler MP. Image: Richard Townshend, Creative Commons

Conservative: Here, the most high-profile contender is Sir James Cleverly MP, who recently quit the Shadow Cabinet to build support for a Mayoral bid. Cleverly knows the territory well, having served as an Assembly Member for eight years (2008-2016). His time as both Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary make him a formidable figure, though his background as a staunch Brexiter won't help endear him to the London electorate.

Westminster councillor Festus Akinbusoye, who was also Britain's first black police commissioner, has also indicated his intention to stand. Alex Challoner, who made a bid at the last election, is back for more. His leading pledge is to put uniformed police officers in train stations to deter fare dodging.

Other candidates will no doubt emerge soon. Justine Greening and Nickie Aiken are often touted, as is Seb Coe, the former athlete and London Olympics supremo who certainly has plenty of recognition among the wider public.

James Cleverly while Home Secretary. Image: UK Home Office, Creative Commons

Reform UK: In a decisive move in January 2026, the party put forward Westminster councillor Laila Cunningham as their candidate, without any internal election.

Lib Dems: Richmond MP Sarah Olney has thrown her hat into the ring. Her early policy suggestions include a Deputy Mayor elected by businesses, and a renewed focus on policing.

Greens: No one has formally put themselves forward.

Independents: Respected architectural journalist and former chair of the London Society Peter Murray has opened an independent campaign. Numerous other independents will likely follow suit, with comedian James Corden an unlikely possibility, and disgraced egoist Russell Brand an even more unlikely prospect.

Is this just a mayoral election?

Importantly, the election day is not just to determine the new Mayor. Londoners will also vote for London Assembly members — 25 in total.

What does each major party candidate stand for?

Unknown. We're still to far away from the election for any candidate to set out detailed plans. That said, both Cleverly and Cunningham have spoken out about the capital's increasing unaffordability, particularly around home ownership.

Quick reminder: Who were the previous Mayors of London?

Only three people have served as Mayor of London since the role was created at the turn of the millennium. The election takes place every four years (with one anomaly caused by Covid).

• Ken Livingstone ruled the roost from 2000 until 2008, having performed a similar role as head of the Greater London Council in the 1980s.
• Boris Johnson succeeded him in 2008, and remained in post for two full terms until 2016. (Although some would say his attentions had wandered elsewhere in the final years.)
• Sadiq Khan took on the mantle in 2016. He was re-elected in 2021 in an election delayed for a year because of Covid-19. He was once again returned to City Hall in the 2024 election.

Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

What powers does the Mayor of London actually have?

For such a high-profile position, the Mayor of London has surprisingly limited direct authority — and most of this power is concentrated in a few pockets: transport, policing and housing.

And they can't just do as they please. The Mayor's initiatives are scrutinised and held to account by the London Assembly. Mayor and Assembly together form the Greater London Authority (GLA), which works closely with local councils and is required to follow central government guidance.

So while a Mayor has the power to, say, develop planning strategy, it's down to local councils to approve this — and, in turn, central government is in control of how these councils are allowed to raise the requisite funds.

This could change significantly in coming months. Prime Minister Andy Burnham (former Mayor of Manchester) wants to give city mayors greater powers over planning decisions, in addition to enjoying more 'fiscal devolution' (more cash from income tax, tourist tax and local other revenues).

An outline of the Mayor of London role can be found here.

How does Mayoral voting work?

Image: Matt Brown

We're back to the Supplementary Vote system. Voters will be asked to indicate a first and second preference for Mayor. If no candidate wins an absolute majority (i.e. more than 50%) of first choice votes, all but the top two candidates are eliminated, and votes for eliminated candidates are redistributed according to the voters' second-choice candidates.

Most London Mayoral elections have been contested this way. The 2024 election, however, was decided on a first-past-the-post system.

How does the London Assembly vote work?

You'll vote for your Assembly members at the same time as casting a Mayoral vote. Here, you get to vote twice:

1) Vote for a constituency member. London is divided into 14 constituencies, which are typically pairings of neighbouring boroughs, like Greenwich and Lewisham, or Croydon and Sutton. A number of candidates will stand in each constituency, and you select the one you'd most like to represent you. Again, first-past-the-post wins.

2) You also get a say in who gets to be London-wide Assembly Members. Here, however, you vote for a party rather than an individual. Once votes are counted, 11 London-wide Assembly Members are appointed based on party share of vote, with individuals drawn from pre-published lists.

Who can vote?

If you're over 18, registered to vote and live within one of London's 33 local authorities, then you're good. The ballot box beckons for all registered electors who meet those criteria, be they British, Irish, Commonwealth or European Union citizens (with caveats). Find out more about registering here.

Will I need ID to vote?

Yes, voter ID will be required, along similar lines to other recent elections.

Who's the favourite to win?

We're so far off that current polls are almost meaningless. That said, recent polls asking for voting intention along party lines show Labour to have up to a 15-point lead over rivals.

When will we know the result

Barring any mishaps, the votes should be counted and results announced the day after the election, 5 May.

They're back, baby! Image: TfL

In October 2025 — a year and a half later than initially anticipated — the new DLR trains finally started being rolled out. A few weeks later, they disappeared again.

Last month, blogger Diamond Geezer had a sighting en route to Pamplona. Now, we learn, they're finally being dribbled back out onto the DLR network.

With their walk-through carriages, real time travel information, air conditioning and phone charging points, the 54 state-of-the-art trains, designed by Spanish company, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A. should have been a golden moment for TfL.

Instead, the launched proved a damp squib; poor braking performance during wet weather on one train forced the entire fleet to be hoicked from service. That was in November. Now, following the completion of modifications and "a comprehensive programme of testing and assurance", the trains are gradually being reintroduced — with TfL monitoring their performance closely.

Did you manage to ride one of the new trains last autumn before they were unceremoniously pulled from service? Image: TfL

Keen for a ride? To begin with, you're most likely to catch one of the new trains on the Stratford International to Woolwich Arsenal route.

Says Stuart Harvey, TfL’s Chief Capital Officer, "Safety is always our top priority, and we took the decision to remove the trains from service as a precaution while we worked with CAF to investigate the issue and implement a solution.

"I apologise for the delay in reintroducing the trains but am pleased this marks an important milestone in delivering a modern new fleet for the DLR."

Hopefully, in a future not too far removed, we'll be riding these trains on a freshly-built DLR extension, and then, oh how we'll all laugh.

Will Heathrow's third runway ever happen? And what will be lost if it does?

Plans to expand Heathrow Airport have been taxi-ing around for years without ever taking off. Heathrow is traditionally the busiest airport in Europe and the fourth busiest in the world by passenger numbers (2023 figures). Yet it only has two runways, and it was recently overtaken by Istanbul for number of passengers.

Airport bosses have long wanted to up capacity with a third runway, and business groups have been broadly supportive. Pitched against them are numerous campaign groups who oppose the expansion on environmental grounds, and for the damage it would do to neighbouring villages.

Recently, the saga took a swing towards the pro-runway camp, when erstwhile Chancellor Rachel Reeves indicated that the Labour government was supportive of a third runway. Yet momentum now seems to be building in the opposite direction, with the Mayor of London, Transport for London and several local councils declaring their formal opposition, while Prime Minister Andy Burnham remains firmly agnostic on the issue.

Here, we take a brief look at the current status of the plans, as well as the pros and cons of Heathrow expansion.

Where would the runway go?

It would be slotted in north and somewhat west of the current airport footprint, covering much of the villages of Harmondsworth, Sipson and Longford. We've annotated the official graphic to help set the scene.

As well as a third runway, the expansion would also include a new terminal and (presumably) a rail link. A new tunnel would carry the M25 orbital motorway beneath the runway.

Heathrow's official expansion pages can be found here.

Why is it needed?

In two words: economic growth. In slightly more words, a bigger airport means more flights, means more connectivity, means more trade and more jobs, means economic growth. A third runway would also improve the airport's resilience to disruption. Without the third runway, argue business leaders, London could fall behind other large cities in Europe, as has now happened in the case of Istanbul.

What's the latest on the plans? Will this actually go ahead?

The airport bounced back strongly from Covid. The summer of 2024 saw record numbers of passengers using the airport (thanks Taylor Swift), and it is once again operating very close to capacity.

Meanwhile, the political stars seemed to be aligning. Labour were always stronger advocates of the third runway. When the party returned to power in 2024 with an urgent need to grow the economy, talk of expansion immediately bubbled up, with support from then-Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Yet Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is not so keen. Tackling air pollution through policies like ULEZ is at the centre of his mayoralty, and he has been firmly against the expansion of Heathrow. The recent Draft London Plan (2026) maintains this stance: "Proposals for expansion at Heathrow and other airports should be refused unless no unacceptable environmental, transport, and congestion impacts are demonstrated." Even major airlines have voiced concerns that the project is too costly to be viable.

The airport, meanwhile, continues to make the economic case, saying that the project would create over 100,000 jobs across the country, and that it could be built with 100% private funding.

What are the downsides?

A covid-era protest banner in Harmondsworth. Image: Matt Brown

Heathrow will not find it easy to push through its plans. Numerous campaign groups and high-profile figures are opposed to any kind of expansion. The reasons are many.

• Hundreds of extra flights a day come with pretty obvious downsides. Noise pollution and fill-the-air-with-greenhouse-gas pollution would significantly increase.
• The construction phase will itself be environmentally damaging in terms of both emissions and loss of local wild habitat.
• The village of Longford would be totally destroyed. It contains seven listed buildings.
• About half of the village of Harmondsworth would be destroyed. Its magnificent Great Barn (described by Sir John Betjeman as the "Cathedral of Middlesex") and ancient church would be saved, but would be close up to the perimeter fence.
• Much of the village of Sipson would be destroyed by expansion, and the rest would be at the end of the runway.
• The village of Colnbrook to the west of the scheme would not be demolished, but it would find itself at the other end of the runway, with all the noise, pollution and safety fears that entails. This village contains around 30 listed buildings.
• In addition, five rivers would need to be concreted/bridged over and the Colne Valley Regional Park would be compromised.

A map from Historic England's database of listed/protected buildings. Every blue pin is an architecturally important structure. Most of these would be wiped out (central pins) or right next to the new perimeter.

• Harmondsworth Moor would be lost. As well as a valuable open space and nature refuge, the moor also contains dozens of fragments from the Old Waterloo Bridge, making it a unique historical curiosity.
• British Airways, obviously a key stakeholder in all this, would themselves be inconvenienced. Their huge Waterside office facility would have to be demolished. Two large immigration removal centres next door would also have to go.

Waterside: BA's headquarters are smack, bang in the middle of the proposed runway. Image: Matt Brown

Heathrow Airport's plans are keen to point out that "Significant community compensation schemes and impact mitigation measures" will be rolled out. But clearly, we're talking about smashing a medieval barn's-worth of eggs to make this particular omelette.

What are the alternatives?

Various alternatives to expansion have been mooted.

• Just don't do it, say opponents. Take the economic hit (the numbers are disputed anyway), because the price to the environment and the disruption to lives is not worth paying. We should be encouraging everyone to fly less, not more.
• Expand Heathrow's existing two runways to the west, then lop them in half to create four runways. This still has big down-sides, and does nothing to address environmental concerns, but it would at least save Longford, Harmondsworth and Sipson.
• Expand other airports, such as Gatwick, which would not require demolition of listed buildings and hundreds of homes, nor a costly tunnel for the M25. Plans are afoot to do this.
• Find other ways to expand capacity, such as bigger planes, increased efficiency or more night flights (itself controversial).
• Build a new airport in the Thames Estuary. A roundly mocked idea touted by Boris Johnson a decade ago.
• The giant aircraft carrier approach. Put all the infrastructure except for runways underground, freeing up room for two new runways parallel to the existing ones. Nobody has seriously suggested this... it is a madcap gedankenexperiment I put together back in 2013.

Going underground. Londonist's slightly mad idea of putting all terminals and services underground, freeing surface space for two (or more) runways.

How did we get here? 12 key dates

2003: Publication of a White Paper recommending a third runway for Heathrow.
Nov 2007: Public consultation over plans for a third runway.
Jan 2009: Labour government announces support for expansion, with a tentative opening date of 2015.
May 2010: Expansion plans cancelled by the new Coalition government.
July 2015: The Airports Commission publishes a report calling for a new runway north-west of Heathrow.
Oct 2016: The Conservative government say that Heathrow will now be allowed to expand.
Jun 2018: The House of Commons votes overwhelmingly in favour of the third runway, with cross-party support.
Feb 2020: The Court of Appeal finds the plans to be illegal on environmental grounds. However, this is later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Jun 2019: The airport sets out its latest expansion plans for public consultation. Expansion would happen incrementally, cost £14 billion and take until 2050 to complete.
Mar 2020-2021: The Covid pandemic stalls the plans following the huge drop in passenger numbers. The recovery since has been swift and the stalled plans are now back on the table.
Jan 2025: Chancellor Rachel Reeves backs expansion, saying a third runway is "badly needed" and could create 100,000 jobs. She calls for proposals to be brought forward to summer 2025.
Jun 2026: The Government publishes the Draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement, setting out the latest thinking and seeking views on the proposals. City Hall, Transport for London and many local councils responded in opposition to the plan.
Sep 2026: Prime Minister Andy Burnham refuses to back (or criticise) the Third Runway, saying it's a matter for Londoners to decide. Meanwhile, the airport anticipates a four-year delay because of planning difficulties, pushing completion to 2039.

The newest Superloop route is nigh! Image: TfL

The latest Superloop bus route launches in September.

The SL12 — running between Gants Hill and Rainham — becomes part of London's network of express bus routes on Saturday 5 September, marking the Superloop's expansion into the borough of Havering.

The full SL12 route is:

🚌 Gants Hill
🚌 Newbury Park
🚌 King George Hospital
🚌 East Road
🚌 Romford
🚌 Queen's Hospital
🚌 Elm Park
🚌 Rainham Ferry Lane

Currently, the journey time on a bus between Gants Hill and Rainham is slightly over an hour. On the SL12, this will be shaved down to around 40-45 minutes. The route also takes in two hospitals; Central, District, Overground and Elizabeth line stations; and links up with the SL2 Superloop at Gants Hills. (Gants Hill itself, of course, is home to a resplendent Tube station).

The SL12 will operate between 5.30am and 12.30am daily — every 12 minutes during the day on Mondays to Saturdays, and every 15 minutes every evening and all day on Sundays.

As an added bonus for passengers, the first week of travel will be on the house. Image: TfL

SL12 buses are brand-new electric, zero-emission vehicles with air con and device-charging points. As an added bonus for passengers, the first week of travel on the SL12 is free (you'll still need to touch in).

Since launching in July 2023, the Superloop bus has accommodated some 81 million trips — although many of the routes are tweaked versions of existing ones.

St Pancras: London's gateeay to Europe. Image: Daniela Paola Alchapar, Unsplash License

Eurostar trains have been running between London St Pancras and mainland Europe since 2007 (and before that, from Waterloo to the continent since 1994). But there could be plenty of changes to those services in the next few years...

When is Eurostar getting double-decker trains?

Image: ©ALSTOM SA ©SPEEDINNOV SAS 2025. Advanced & Creative Design | Avelia Horizon™.

Aside from new routes (details below), the biggest change coming to Eurostar in the next few years is the addition of double-decker trains.

It was announced in autumn 2025 that Eurostar had ordered 30 of the new trains, known as 'Celestia', with the potential for a further 20 to be added to its fleet at a later date. Each all-electric train is 200 metres long with 540 seats, which means that in its usual 400-metre formation, each Eurostar service will have around 1,080 seats — around a 20% increase on the capacity of current Eurostar services.

They'll be the first double-decker trains to operate through the Channel Tunnel  — though not the first on UK rails: double-decker trains were in operation between Charing Cross and Dartford from 1949.

Expect to see the double-decker trains in service from May 2031 — though as we've seen with the new Piccadilly line and DLR trains, and other transport infrastructure projects, these things have a habit of being delayed. Once in service, they're expected to serve all Eurorstar destinations, bringing the company's total fleet up to 67 trains.

Which new Eurostar routes are opening, and when?

Paris is one of Eurostar's destinations direct from London. Image: Alejandro Aznar, Pexels License

At time of writing, Eurostar operates direct trains from London St Pancras to Paris, Lille, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, with connecting Eurostar services available to Antwerp, Dusseldorf and Dortmund. Previous direct routes to Lyon, Marseille and Avignon have been dropped due to a lack of demand in recent years.

Of course, once you've reached any of these stations in mainland Europe, connections to train services operated by other carriers are available, to destinations including Strasbourg, Zurich and Nice. An additional Eurostar ski service to certain mountain resorts runs in the winter months, though it's been pared back in recent years. See the Eurostar route map for current available routes.

More direct routes from London St Pancras will soon be added to Eurostar's offerings:

Eurostar services from London to Antwerp: From December 2026

Starting from 13 December 2026, direct Eurostar trains will run between London and Antwerp, taking around two hours 41 minutes: compared with the 3.5 hours the journey currently takes when involving a change of train at Brussels.

There's a big caveat here: Though trains from London-Antwerp will run direct, services in the opposite direction are not able to run direct, due to a border quirk. Antwerpen-Centraal station has no UK border service, so passengers travelling to London from Antwerp have to change at Brussels to go through border checks there instead. There are no plans for this to change in the near future.

Tickets for this route in both directions are now available on the Eurostar website.

Eurostar services from London to Frankfurt: early 2030s

In summer 2025, Eurostar announced a new direct route between London and Frankfurt, the first time it has offered a direct route to Germany.  No further details have been confirmed yet, so we don't know if these services will stop anywhere else along the route, though the journey is expected to take around five hours. A projected launch date of the early-2030s has been given, coinciding with new Celestia trains (above) joining the network.

Eurostar services from London to Switzerland (Geneva and Zurich): 2030s

London-Geneva by direct train? Yes please! Image: christine roy, Pexels License

At the same time as the Frankfurt route was announced, Eurostar dangled plans for a direct route between London and Geneva in Switzerland too. Direct links between London and Zurich, and London and Basel, have also been touted as future possibilities. London-Basel is expected to have a journey time of about five hours; London-Geneva around five and a half hours; and London-Zurich around six hours, though nothing has yet been confirmed.

As of May 2026, SBB, the Swiss national railway operator, SNCF Voyageurs, the French passenger rail operator, and Eurostar are all working together to make the London-Switzerland link happen. Eurostar said of these routes: "Implementation would be feasible at the earliest sometime in the course of the 2030s."

Will the closed Eurostar stations reopen?

International in name only. Image: Richard Humphrey, Creative Commons

St Pancras (and Waterloo before that) wasn't always the only option for getting a train from the UK to mainland Europe. Eurostar used to operate from Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International stations in Kent too, though they closed in 2020 due to the pandemic. There was talk of them reopening in 2022, but as of summer 2026, no moves to do so have been made (though both stations still offer a domestic train service). The cost of reinstating international border checks at these stations has been cited as a reason for keeping them closed.

Then there's Stratford International which, despite its name, has never had an international train service. Initially, Eurostar trains were due to stop there when the Eurostar terminus moved from Waterloo to St Pancras in 2007, but it never happened, and to this day, trains on the St Pancras route simply whizz straight through its platforms.

When will Virgin Trains start running between London and Europe?

Previously a UK train operator, Virgin Trains looks set to go international. Image: The Carlisle Kid, Creative Commons

In August 2026, Virgin Trains made headlines when it was granted access to use the UK tracks to start operating rival routes to Eurostar between London and mainland Europe.

However, at the moment Virgin Trains has only got approval for routes running from St Pancras to the entrance to the Channel Tunnel — it still needs the appropriate permissions to run in mainland Europe, as well as to use the Tunnel itself. If all goes to plan, we should see Virgin Trains plying the route by 2030: the agreement which allows it to use existing UK rail infrastructure is valid for the period between 1 October 2030 and 31 December 2040.

Where will Virgin Trains' channel routes go?

Virgin Trains proposes to operate 20 daily return services between London St Pancras and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam to begin with. Could it expand if all goes well? No further plans have been revealed yet, but who knows.

Will Virgin Trains replace Eurostar?

Eurostar's monopoly will soon be over. Image: willnoble13, All Rights Reserved

No, Virgin Trains will be a competitor to Eurostar — an interesting twist in the story of cross-channel train services, as Eurostar has held the monopoly on passenger services from London since the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994.

What exactly that means for passengers remains to be seen, but we can only hope that the competition leads to lower fares as the different operators vie for passengers. And Richard Branson isn't the only one hoping to muscle in on the route...

Why are these changes happening now?

Eurostar trains at Temple Mills depot. Image: Robert Lamb, Creative Commons

After 30 years with Eurostar as the sole operator, why are other companies suddenly talking about running passenger services through the Channel Tunnel?

It all centres around the Temple Mills depot, a train maintenance depot in Leyton which is the only one in Britain able to handle cross-channel trains (specifically, it's the only one able to accommodate trains with the larger continental European loading gauge). Capacity at the depot is limited, and with Eurostar looking to expand its own fleet significantly, there isn't all that much space for other operators to base their trains there.

In March 2025, the ORR (Office of Rail and Road — the UK rail regulator) agreed that extra capacity at the depot could be made available. In October 2025, it granted Virgin Trains the appropriate permissions to access Temple Mills. This was a huge step forward in Virgin Trains' attempts at running cross-channel services, but it's still not a done deal.

Will any other operators run train services to mainland Europe?

Image: Christian Lue, Unsplash License

With Virgin Trains looking increasingly likely to get a share in the route, could other operators get involved too?

Currently, around 400 trains — both Eurostar passenger trains and Le Shuttle vehicle trains operating from Folkestone — use the Channel Tunnel each day, though it has capacity for around 1000 trains daily, so the potential for expansion is there. The capacity issues don't lie on the route itself, but with the Temple Mills depot, as mentioned above. So while it's not a hard 'no' to other operators plying the cross-channel route, it's logistically complex. That hasn't stopped a few companies from putting plans forward.

Trenitalia France — a subsidiary of Italy's state-run transport operator — said in April 2025 that it wants to run a high-speed service between London and Paris, and hopes to begin operating 10 daily return journeys on the route in 2029. In August 2026 it ordered 19 new high-speed trains, some of which it intends to use on the cross-channel route. It appears to be circumventing the capacity issue with plans to build its own depot near Paris, removing the need for it to use Temple Mills.

Image: train_photos, Creative Commons

In August 2026, Transport Scotland announced that it's looking into the possibility of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services between Scotland (most likely either Glasgow or Edinburgh) and mainland Europe, via the Channel Tunnel. Further details, such as the specific route, haven't yet been announced, but a feasibility study is being undertaken — though a similar idea, the Nightstar, failed in the 1990s. Presumably such services would be based in Scotland so wouldn't need to trouble the Temple Mills depot.

Dutch company Heuro and Spanish operator Evolyn have also expressed an interest in running services on the St Pancras route. When the ORR approved plans by Virgin Trains to use the Temple Mills depot in October 2025, it rejected applications from Evolyn, Gemini and Trenitalia. While Trenitalia is persevering with plans, it's all gone quiet from Evolyn and Heuro.

Image: Dan Wright, Pexels License

Gemini Trains, a new potential train operator, was created solely with the intention of offering cross-channel services, initially between the UK, France and Belgium, with the potential to expand to other destinations at a later date. Interestingly, Gemini proposes to use Stratford International rather than St Pancras, and may end up building its own train depot in Ashford (Kent), potentially bringing Ashford International back into use, and bypassing the need to use the Temple Mills depot.

TL;DR: the possibility of other operators running cross-channel routes in future hasn't been ruled out, but they'd likely have to provide their own alternative to basing their fleet at Temple Mills, as there isn't space for them there. Additionally, if any operator wanted to run trains from the mothballed Stratford International, Ebbsfleet International or Ashford International stations, they'd likely to have to come up with the funding for the border infrastructure themselves.

As recent Eurostar passengers, we'd also argue that the departures lounge at St Pancras could do with a bit of expansion before any more services depart from there, but given the station's footprint, there's not anywhere for it to expand to without removing some of the shops from St Pancras station.

Click or tap for larger version.

Rent. It keeps going up, doesn't it? Well, not always.

Over the past year, the average rental price has increased in 28 of London's 32 boroughs. Camden, Kensington & Chelsea, Kingston, and Westminster have all got cheaper for renters (on average) since we last looked at the figures in June 2025.

Across the whole of London, rents have gone up 2.2% in one year, and now stand at an average of £2,302 per month (up from £2,252 last year). Looking back to 2016 (a ten year span), this is up from £1,679 per month.

The figures, from the July 2026 release by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), reinforce what everyone already knows: London is an expensive place to live. The most spendy borough of all is, unsurprisingly, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, where renters must find an average £3,596 per month (down from £3,616 last year). This is the most expensive place to rent in the UK. Westminster is not far behind, on £3,168 per month.

The cheapest borough, meanwhile, remains Bexley, where the average rent is less than half that of K&C's at £1,528. This is still greater than the national (English) average, which stands at £1,446.

Signs that the market may be cooling in Brent. Image: Matt Brown

It should be noted that these prices are averaged across all property types, from the smallest studio flat to a multi-roomed town house. In K&C, for example, a one-bed flat costs a 'mere' £2,572 a month. Shift over to Bexley, and you can enjoy a one-bed rental at an average price of £1,531 per month.

Now the good news. While rents are continuing to go up in almost all boroughs, the rate is slowing down. The ONS has now recorded drops over seven successive months. Rent is still going up, but not as fast as it was last year.

We'll update this article annually with fresh data.

Below, we've pasted in last-year's picture, using June 2025 data

Click/tap for larger version

All aboard! The London Bus Museum hosts another of its wonderful free heritage bus days in October. Image: © David Bowker

All aboard for free vintage bus rides this October!

London Bus Museum's semi-regular heritage day returns on Saturday 3 October 2026, when buses dating from the 1930s-70s ply a short stretch of the 106 route, pinging between Finsbury Park and Ash Grove Bus Station on Mare Street. Stops along the way are Stoke Newington, Clapton and Hackney Central.

How does it work? Simply show up at one of the bus stops on the route above, between 10am-5pm. Soon enough a vintage bus — most are Routemasters and their predecessor the RT-type, but you never quite know what you might get — will scoop you up.

Some services have a conductor on board too, handing out facsimile tickets. (Just be aware that if you board a modern TfL service on the route that day, you'll need to tap in and pay a fare.)

And the fun doesn't end there. Ash Grove Garage is hosting a 45th anniversary open day, giving you a chance to snoop behind the scenes. There's a small entry fee, with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support.

London Bus Museum Route 106 Heritage Day, Saturday 3 October 2026, approx 10am-5pm, free.

Note that because of the buses' vintage, they're unable to accommodate wheelchairs and most modern buggies, although crews will make every effort to accommodate the less able and those with small children.

The current advertising cradle at Wandsworth Roundabout. Image: Matt Brown

It's been a landmark on the Wandsworth Roundabout for 30 years, but the metal cradle's days could be numbered.

Not very often do people lament the loss of advertising infrastructure, but the one at Wandsworth Roundabout has some special associations.

The circular structure had dominated the junction since 1995, a familiar landmark to anyone passing through the area south of Wandsworth Bridge.

Its design, like a mechanical sphere, could be a nod to Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange (1971), which used the underpasses beneath the roundabout as a filming location. (We've always thought it resembles Jodie Foster's wormhole machine in Contact, but that's neither here nor there.)

Now, the site's leaseholders Wildstone Estates want to replace the structure with something more efficient. Plans submitted to Wandsworth Council show a peculiar, asymmetric tree-like structure, with four advertising screens up in the branches. The company describes its proposal as "a sculptural, nature-inspired landmark that enhances its surroundings".

Image: Wildstone Estates and Tate + Co

Replacing abstract hoops with something more organic and arboreal sounds like a very good move. It might work rather nicely. Yet from some angles, the proposed structure looks decidedly ungainly; some would say ugly.

Image: Wildstone Estates and Tate + Co

Many locals agree. The proposal has now received 133 objections (see planning application), which are peppered with phrases like 'waste of money' and 'eyesore'. And that's with visuals in which the advertising screens are showing scenes of forestry, rather than giant corporate logos.

As well as aesthetic objections, some fear that the screens — slightly larger than the existing ones — will be a greater distraction for drivers.

Are we also losing something of historical worth? Even we'll admit that would be a hard argument to sell, but with the recent loss of the similar advertising cradle at Old Street roundabout, there's a danger we may entirely erase a category of 1990s architecture.

The existing structure has a fine simplicity about it. Image: Matt Brown

True, there are bigger planning battles out there and, at the end of the day, this is 'just' an advertising structure. Yet we can't help thinking that this is an unwelcome erasure, especially when the replacement looks like a cudgeled wine rack.

You can scrutinise the planning documents for yourself over on Wandsworth's planning site.

Asquith Xavier is now honoured with a Blue Plaque outside his former Notting Hill home. Image: English Heritage

On the first day he arrived in London from the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1958, Asquith Xavier started working.

The 38-year-old Windrusher started out as a porter for British Railways at Marylebone Station, but his work ethic, and popularity among customers, ensured he was soon promoted to train guard — the first Black person to serve as one in Britain.

But something stood in the way of Xavier's next career move. In 1966 when he applied for a transfer to Euston Station, he was rejected, the staff representatives refusing to accept "coloured staff" in public-facing roles. Such unofficial 'colour bars' were both common, and grossly ironic, given that Windrushers had been coaxed to British shores in order to help rebuild the 'mother country'.

Xavier tussled with the powers that be at Euston, to become the staton's first Black train guard. Image: willnoble13, All Rights Reserved

Xavier — who died in 1980 — refused to accept the decision, and worked with a union representative to bring the story to national attention. Eventually British Railways was forced to overturn its decision. Perhaps the divisional manager of the London Midland region of British Railways who spoke at the subsequent press conference should have thought twice before suggesting that "staff representatives as Euston were not really anti-colour so much as pro-white...". We'll leave that one there.

Not only was Xavier awarded the job — becoming the first Black railway guard to work out of Euston Station, on 15 August 1966 — he was given two months backdated pay. "This is my happiest day since I arrived in England eight years ago," Xavier told the press, as he arrived for his first day on the new job 50 minutes early.

Meanwhile, British Railways announced that future job opportunities in London would no longer be closed on racial grounds. This was not, of course, the end of racial discrimination in London's workplaces (indeed, Xavier was the recipient of a number of anonymous abusive letters). But a powerful stand had been made; a big step forward taken.

"Whatever he did, he did it for compassion." Image: English Heritage

"Whatever he did, he did it for compassion," remembered Xavier's daughter, Sandra St John in 2023. "Because he cared about people." This was at an event in which the late Xavier had an Avanti West Coast Pendolino train named in his honour.

In August 2026, he received another honour — an English Heritage Blue Plaque unveiled at his former Notting Hill home on Ledbury Road. Said English Heritage senior historian, Howard Spencer: "Asquith Xavier's story is a powerful reminder that ordinary people can have an extraordinary impact. He was not seeking to become a campaigner or public figure.

"His fight began with a simple desire for a fair opportunity to support his family, but it became a landmark moment in Britain's struggle against workplace discrimination."

Proposals to pedestrianise Oxford Street — a major shopping thoroughfare in central London — have been mooted since the 1960s. In 2026, the vision will finally see the light of day — in part, anyway. Here's our explainer on what will be a substantial shake-up to one of the city's most famous streets.

Is the Oxford Street pedestrianisation actually happening?

Crossing Oxford Street should soon be a lot easier. Image: Ahmad2saud, Pexels License

Plans to remove cars and other vehicles from Oxford Street have been rumbling on for so long, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's some pie-in-the-sky pipe-dream. But yes, it's actually happening: a section of Oxford Street will soon be permanently closed to vehicles (with the exception of emergency access), leaving the world-famous shopping street part-pedestrianised.

Who's in charge of the Oxford Street pedestrianisation?

As of 10 August 2026, an organisation called the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) — established by the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan to work on his behalf — has taken on planning powers which were previously held by the London Borough of Camden and Westminster City Council (Oxford Street sits within both of these local authority areas).

This means that new planning applications within the OSDC area must be submitted to and determined by the OSDC.  The area covered by the OSDC is marked on this map.

Which part of Oxford Street is closing to cars?

Initially, the section between Orchard Street (the road immediately to the west of Selfridges) and Great Portland Street (the road to the east of IKEA) will be pedestrianised, as shown in red on the above map. This is a stretch of around 0.6 miles (0.9km), and includes the busy Oxford Circus junction where Oxford Street and Regent Street cross.

It's worth noting that although vehicles will no longer be allowed to travel east-west (or vice versa) along Oxford Street, they will still be able to travel north-south (or vice versa) on roads running perpendicular to Oxford Street, so vehicles will still cross Oxford Street at these points:

• Duke Street (for traffic heading northbound only)
• Davies Street and Stratford Place
• Vere Street and New Bond Street (for traffic heading southbound only)
• Holles Street and Harewood Place (for traffic heading northbound, and TfL proposes to also provide a contraflow cycle lane here for cyclists to travel southbound)

Access for emergency vehicles, street cleaning and refuse collection will be maintained, so the street won't be completely sealed off to vehicles.

When is Oxford Street being pedestrianised?

Your days of catching a bus on certain parts of Oxford Street will soon be over. Image: Russ Quinlan, Creative Commons

Pedestrianisation was finally given the go-ahead in February 2026, with the intention of implementing it from September 2026. That's now been slightly pushed back to Monday 26 October 2026.

For a few months, the new set-up will be in a live testing phase (also known as the 'transition scheme'), with local businesses and visitors able to give real-time feedback, before permanent changes are installed towards the end of 2027.

Will buses still be able to go down Oxford Street?

Look out for big changes to bus routes on Oxford Street. Image: No Swan So Fine, Creative Commons

The initial scheme will see this stretch of Oxford Street closed to private motorised vehicles, buses, taxis and private hire vehicles, cycles, scooters and pedicabs.

So no, buses will no longer run the length of Oxford Street, and existing routes will instead either be diverted via alternative routes nearby, or terminate early.

Oxford Street closure: which bus routes are changing?

Daytime routes. Click or tap for larger version. Image: TfL

In its 2026 consultation, TfL identified several bus routes which will be affected by the closure of Oxford Street. Daytime routes affected are: 7, 94, 98, 139 and 390. Night routes affected are: N7, N98, N113, N137 and N207.

The consultation showed how TfL planned to deal with these routes (daytime services here, night services here), and the above map shows the changes which will happen to daytime routes, while the map below shows the changes to night routes: some will be terminated early, at Marble Arch or nearby, where passengers can connect with another route to complete their journey. Others will be rerouted via Wigmore Street and Henrietta Place, with new stops installed along these roads.

Night buses. Click or tap for larger version. Image: TfL

Also worth noting: eastbound buses will follow a temporary route via Wigmore Street and Regent Street until future development work on Henrietta Place is completed, which can only happen once the Cavendish Square development works are complete.

New bus stops have already been installed in preparation for these changes, and further works are ongoing to make the new bus routes safe for everyone.

According to TfL, people wishing to access Oxford Street West by bus will have to walk a short additional distance to and from their bus, with new stops located approximately 100m to 200m from Oxford Street.

Will bikes be exempt from the Oxford Street vehicle closure?

Cyclists will have to abide by the Oxford Street traffic ban. Image: Waterford_Man, Creative Commons

No. As above, bicycles will be banned from Oxford Street, with cyclists rerouted down neighbouring streets, such as Wigmore Street, Henrietta Place or Margaret Street which run roughly parallel to Oxford Street.

Many cyclists have been using these as a quieter alternative to Oxford Street for several years, so the increase in traffic as a result of the Oxford Street closure may have an adverse impact on them, as the routes suddenly become busier.

Will all of Oxford Street eventually be pedestrianised?

This eastern end of Oxford Street will remain open to traffic. Image: DiscoA340, Creative Commons

Oxford Street runs all the way from the traffic triangle at Marble Arch in the west to Tottenham Court Road in the east, a distance of around 1.2 miles. Beyond that, New Oxford Street runs further east, to the junction with High Holborn, an additional 0.4 miles.

The initial pedestrianised area, as mapped above, runs from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street. Back in 2016, when the transformation was due to be complete by 2020, the plan was for pedestrianisation to eventually apply all the way from Marble Arch in the west to Tottenham Court Road in the east.

In August 2026, the OSDC told Londonist:

Regenerating the whole of the street is important to the Mayor and OSDC. The first phase of transformation works will see almost one kilometre of the street go traffic free (from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street) as well as some improvements to the whole street to make it cleaner and more welcoming. We are also exploring the potential for further change beyond this first phase, with any further traffic management proposals being subject to consultation and necessary consents.

So the pedestrianisation may, or may not, be extended in the future.

There are no plans — and as far as we know, there never have been — to pedestrianise New Oxford Street.

Is the Oxford Street pedestrianisation a good thing?

That depends who you ask. People in support of the removal of vehicles from Oxford Street cite benefits such as improved air quality and pedestrian safety. The Mayor of London has already proved significant success cutting emissions via ULEZ, with independent analysis from Imperial College London showing that, between 2019 and 2024, estimated air pollution-related deaths in the capital were reduced by circa 40%.

Others say that forcing traffic to use nearby side streets as an alternative only pushes these issues onto other areas, and that it makes using the shops harder for people with accessibility issues, with bus stops moved further away, and taxis no longer able to drop people off nearby.

What about the Oxford Street Christmas lights?

Sorry, these days are over. Image: Matt Brown, Creative Commons

One thing we'll personally miss? Riding a TfL bus down Oxford Street at Christmas to get the best views of those Christmas light displays. Several tour companies have operated festive bus tours down Oxford Street for many years too, so they'll be facing changes this winter.

On the plus side, the lack of traffic should make it easier to gaze up at the Christmas lights from below, and snap a festive photo or two without having to dodge traffic — though as we said earlier, emergency vehicles will still have access to the entirety of Oxford Street, and traffic will still intersect the street at certain points, so you'll need to keep your wits about you.

The OSDC told Londonist:

OSDC are working closely with New West End Company who are leading on the Christmas lights to ensure that this Christmas is a very special one.

Details on the 2026 festive plans will be shared in due course.

Oxford Street pedestrianisation: a timeline so far

Image: Oast House Archive, Creative Commons

A quick catch-up on the story so far:

1960s: The Society for the Promotion of Urban Renewal floats the concept of 'High Oxford Street' in 1961, involving an elevated walkway with a travelator. This is followed in 1963 by a similar proposal, whereby pedestrians would access shops on the first floor, via an elevated deck. Neither plan goes far.

1971: The Oxford Street Action Committee is formed, calling for the ban of traffic on Oxford Street, but nothing much happens, apart from a demo and 22 arrests.

1983: Plans are put forward for an Oxford Street flyover, also featuring an elevated pedestrian walkway. No dice.

April 2004: Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Simon Hughes pledges to pedestrianise Oxford Street, should he oust incumbent mayor, Ken Livingstone. He doesn't.

February 2005: Ken Livingstone, the first Mayor of London is reported to have complained about how hard Oxford Street is to navigate as a pedestrian, with too many buses and narrow pavements. "One of my priorities in my second term is to determine what is going wrong at Oxford Street," he says. The following year, Livingstone announces plans for an Oxford Street tram, but that idea quickly vanishes.

November 2005: There is talk of creating more pedestrian areas in the West End as a whole (Oxford Street isn't the specific focus), with the New West End Company highlighting "the importance of the West End as a destination of choice, not a thoroughfare".

December 2008: Oxford Street and neighbouring Regent Street go traffic-free for a special shopping day, leading to calls for permanent pedestrianisation.

2009: The diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus is installed and opens in November (having been proposed a year prior), showing that improving the pedestrian experience on the street was already a consideration. Then-Mayor Boris Johnson describes it as "a triumph for British engineering, Japanese innovation and good old fashioned common sense".

Swap cars and buses for seats and planters. Image: Oast House Archive, Creative Commons

July 2010: The New West End Company releases a vision of what it would like its jurisdiction to look like 10 years hence, in 2020. Plans pertaining to Oxford Street include a reduction in bus traffic, with green shuttle buses linking Marble Arch with Tottenham Court Road; a public pavilion outside John Lewis; and a second diagonal crossing installed at the Tottenham Court Road crossroads. Little do they know that Oxford Street will be practically deserted for large parts of 2020, its world-famous shops shuttered for months on end...

2012: In part of his manifesto to run for Mayor of London, transport-journalist-turned-political-candidate Christian Wolmar name-checks Oxford Street as "an obvious candidate" for part-pedestrianisation. Wolmar has been highlighting the dangers of Oxford Street as far back as 1992, including calling out then-Major Boris Johnson for his lack of interest in such a scheme in 2008.

July 2016: Within two months of taking office, new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan lays out plans for Oxford Street to be pedestrianised by 2020, citing air quality as the main motivation. It isn't clear what pedestrianisation might look like, or whether it can even be done.

April 2017: A TfL public consultation ahead of Crossrail's (planned, but later delayed) 2018 opening asks for people's thoughts on the future of Oxford Street, including whether it should be partly or completely pedestrianised.

October 2017: The results of TfL's public consultation reveals that 62% of respondents support plans to transform Oxford Street, though 19% of those in support says they have some concerns about the planned changes.

November 2017: Sadiq Khan's 2016 plan for pedestrianisation by 2020 becomes old hat, as he announces ambitious plans for a pedestrian boulevard to be in situ on the street as early as 2018 (again: Crossrail was due to open at the end of 2018, so it all would have tied in nicely). It encompasses a half-mile stretch between Orchard Street and Oxford Circus being closed to all traffic.

March 2018: The results of a further consultation reveal that around two-thirds of respondents once again back the idea of pedestrianising Oxford Street — though the survey also identifies around 700 issues that need to be ironed out before it can progress.

June 2018: Westminster Council blocks the plans, saying that the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street is "off the table for good".

October 2018: Further proposals for switching things up on Oxford Street are revealed, though they have an air of chucking everything at it and seeing what sticks. Case in point: the suggestion of inserting a public piazza space somewhere in Oxford Circus while also keeping it fully open to traffic.

Sadiq Khan has been a major advocate for pedestrianising Oxford Street. Image: DavidPMaynard, Creative Commons

February 2025: TfL and the Mayor of London launch another public consultation into pedestrianisation plans, including setting up a new Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to oversee Oxford Street, which will have the necessary powers to support the transformation of the area. The logistics of pedestrianisation remain vague at this point, with further consultations promised at a later date.

June 2025: The results of the public consultation show that around two-thirds of people want to see Oxford Street pedestrianised, similar figures to the consultation which ran back in 2018 (though at this point you have to wonder if people are just saying that to get the whole thing over and done with). Khan pledges to push ahead with the plans.

February 2026: Following the 2025 public consultation, final approval for the pedestrianisation scheme is given, with the expectation that it'll be implemented from September 2026.

May 2026: The Westminster Conservatives group criticises the Mayor of London and TfL's plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street, planning to take legal action to block the changes. It backs down a few days later.

August 2026: The new Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) which featured in the 2025 consultation takes control, suggesting we might finally be getting somewhere. It's the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC), more on which above.

October 2026? Oxford Street is finally (part) pedestrianised.

Earlier in 2026, two 'New Towns'  were shortlisted for construction in Greater London, as part of an ambitious Government scheme. But things are already getting complicated. Here's the lowdown.

What exactly is the New Towns Programme?

This riverside brownfield site in Thamesmead could become one of seven 'New Towns' across the UK. Image: Kleon3 via creative commons

Introduced by the (then fresh-faced) Labour government, the New Towns Programme is an ambitious project to emulate the post-war building boom that saw the creation of Stevenage, Harlow, Milton Keynes and many more. In all, 32 new towns were built. The UK, says the government, is suffering from a "chronic shortage of housing" "[that] is not only blighting countless lives but also hampering economic growth and productivity."

With the potential of building up to half a million homes, the New Towns programme is touted as the biggest housebuilding project in half a century. The Government claims that every new town will be "designed for modern, everyday life — with neighbourhoods that people can easily get around without a car, shared green spaces and vibrant high streets."

It's not just about housing, though. Some of these new towns will also feature added infrastructure to help them connect and thrive.

An initial shortlist of 12 New Town sites has been whittled down to a final seven. Although, as we'll learn, those seven have already become six...

Where will the proposed new towns be?

Crews Hill in Enfield was going to be one of the locations earmarked for major new housing development, but it's now withdrawn. Image: James Cracknell, Creative Commons

Outside of London, five New Towns are planned for Tempsford in Bedfordshire; Leeds South Bank in West Yorkshire; Manchester Victoria North in Greater Manchester; Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc in South Gloucestershire; and Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.

Naturally, our interest lies in the two new towns mooted for Greater London. These are:

🏗️ Thamesmead in Greenwich, where up to 15,000 homes would go on a 100-hectare brownfield site along the Thames, touted as one of "the last major undeveloped waterfront sites in London and the south east". It's already got a flashy name: Thamesmead Waterfront. Technically speaking, as this explainer from TL;DR tells us, the 'New Town' at Thamesmead would be more urban infill.

🏗️ Crews Hill and Chase Park in Enfield, which would have seen up to 21,000 homes built on 884 hectares of green belt land. We say 'would have' because as of May 2026, Enfield has voted in a minority Tory government which has immediately withdrawn from the New Towns Programme. A significant blow early on for the project.

Isn't there already a town in Thamesmead?

Image: The JR James Archive, University of Sheffield, Creative Commons

Famously, Thamesmead itself was built in the late 1960s as a 'town of tomorrow'— with a progressive design of elevated walkways built around lakes and canals, and on-site amenities including schools, supermarkets, GPs and banks. Alas, funding ran out, and the utopian dream had to be seriously compromised.

While Thamesmead is technically a town already then, there is ample room for improvement. Perhaps the New Towns Programme is a second chance to be the town it always should have been.

There's plenty of action already happening at Thamesmead, separate from the New Towns Programme. This includes 2,000 new homes at Lombard Square (the first of which have now been completed), and the proposed demolition/redevelopment of the 1960s Lesnes estate, which'll forever be remembered for its cameo in A Clockwork Orange.

Where's all the money coming from?

All over the place in theory, including central government, the newly-launched National Housing Bank and private investors.

When will London's New Towns actually be built?

A highly ambitious project like this will inevitably face obstacles. Image: Scott Blake, Unsplash License

Probably not for a while. The government has said it's determined the get 'spades in the ground' on some of the sites by the end of its term (probably 2029). One of these sites was supposed to be Enfield. As we know, that now won't be the case — at least not under the New Towns designation.

Thamesmead Waterfront may be contingent on the construction of the DLR extension to the town. This itself is a project that keeps being pushed back; work should in theory now begin on this in 2029, meaning the previous estimate that the extension would be ready by the 'early 2030s' is optimistic.

Zanna Bowles MRICS, partner, head of land and development at property consultancy Bidwells says the suggested timeframes "will prove unrealistic unless development corporations are established promptly and able to work outside the conventional local planning authority process."

Tube trains could've had wooden wheels. Image: Phillip Ridlen, Unsplash License

"Screeeeeeeeeeeee!"

The toe-curling squeal of steel alloy wheels grinding on Tube tracks is enough to make you leap up from your moquette seat and yell: "ARE WE SURE WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING, PEOPLE?!"

Londoners in 1930 were going through the same frustrations. By this time, cast iron wheels had been ditched in favour of steel, but the grinding of metal on metal often remained insufferable.

And then an inventor by the initial-heavy name of A. A. D. Lang suggested he might have the solution: wooden wheels.

Lang was no crackpot. A successful inventor, he'd created a laminated wooden propellor built up via layers of thin wood. After five years of tinkering, his company, Lang Wheels, introduced a similar design for wooden wheels, created by layering discs of wood on top of one another, and cementing them firmly together. "Each layer," explained the Herald of Wales, "is composed of six sectors of specialy [sic] chosen spruce, so arranged that the grain of each sector runs in a different direction. The layers are placed on top of one another in such a way that the joints between the sectors of one do not coincide with those of the other."

Image: from the Herald of Wales, July 1930, courtesy of Newspapers.com

As well as being lighter and less noisy than steel, the wheels were supposedly 'immune to moisture or heat', plus there was a suggestion they were actually more resilient than steel. Lang had already shown off the strength of his wheels during War Office trials for gun carriages, held in Woolwich. The wheels had been run on tracks for a distance of 192 miles, before being subjected to machine gun fire and shelling. After which, they were still fine.

Interest in Lang's wheels was understandably high, and test wheels were made for the London Underground Railway and London Tramways, as well as for the Manchester Corporation. Mr Murray Griffiths, Director of the London District and Underground Railways, hailed the invention as "A wheel that will wear, and that will obviate the terrible noise we now experience in our towns." Griffiths went on to say he was quite satisfied that the wooden wheels would go on to be used on the railways.

Wooden wheels never became a thing. Image: Ketut Subiyanto, Pexels License

Meanwhile, Lang challenged the Central London Railway to stick a mic in one of its carriages to record the noise, before refitting the carriage with one of his wooden wheels and doing the same again.

These were thrilling times for screech-phobes. So what happened with Lang's wooden wheels? Well, we're not entirely sure. The records fall silent about the experiments. Perhaps subsequent tests saw the wheels crack, splinter, catch fire or all of the above. The whole 'machine gun fire' thing did sound incredulous after all. As far as we know, wooden wheels were never properly, well, rolled out on the London Underground.

Lang Wheels carried on regardless; in 1933 they diversified into the fairground and theme park game, quickly trebling its workforce to manufacture roundabouts, dodgems, autodromes and the like. The screeching from those riding on such contraptions would have matched the wheels on any Tube train. But at least in this case, the passengers were having fun.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

This is actually a sculpture, on a quiet road near Canary Wharf. Image: Matt Brown

9 December 1868 is a doubly important date in world history. In the city of Breslau in Prussia, Fritz Jakob Haber vacated his mother’s womb and settled down for his first feed. 40 years later he would develop the ammonia-producing Haber process, which now feeds half the planet (through fertilisers), and kills vast numbers of people (through explosives). Haber was, arguably, the most consequential scientist of all time.

On the same day as his birth, the world’s first traffic light was unveiled in Westminster.

It was a spectacle. The contraption behaved like a railway signal, but towered six metres (20 feet) over the carriageway, with a trio of four-foot arms and a glowing headpiece, “like a dovecote”. Here’s a press image from the time:

The Westminster street semaphore, from the Illustrated Times, 16 January 1869. Copyright the British Library Board via the British Newspaper Archive.

This “frightful monument,” as one letter-writer saw it, was quite alien, like something from the pages of HG Wells (though not yet; he was currently toddling around his parents’ china shop a few miles away in Bromley). It might have been a “gratuitous hideousness” (another letter-writer), but the street semaphore was sorely needed.

Victorian London was a crazed clopjumble of horse-drawn traffic, all vying for progress along the ill-paved streets. The rules of the road had yet to be codified. Nobody indicated. Nobody had assumed priority. It was a dung-scented free-for-all.

Well, not quite. The busier junctions enjoyed the superintendence of a policeman. The short arm of the law would bend, stretch, and beckon, to let drivers know when it was their turn to proceed. It must have been a hellish job. Many policeman were injured amid the vehicular maelstrom.

One junction had a particularly bad reputation. This is the one where Parliament Street runs into Parliament Square and the approach to Westminster Bridge… the junction nearest Big Ben. It’s still a wretched grimfest today, but back in the 1868 it was a right old snarl up. Two Members of Parliament had recently been injured trying to cross on foot, while a traffic policeman had been killed earlier in the year. The spot was chosen, then, for Britain’s (and the world’s) first traffic lights.

A “dreadful portent”

The brains behind the scheme was John Peake Knight, a respected superintendent on the South Eastern Railway. Knight had a simple idea: that signals like those used on the railways might also tame London’s road traffic.

His experimental apparatus was duly installed at the Westminster junction, roughly where the Winston Churchill statue stands today. It did not look much like a modern traffic light. For daytime operation, a semaphore system could start and stop the traffic by the raising or lowering of mechanical arms. Only at night, when red- and green-filtered gas lamps were used, did the system look the part. None of this was done automatically, of course. A policeman still had to stand on the island and operate the device, and he was usually backed up by more than one colleague to help further manage the flow with gesticulations.

Should you accidentally ‘quantum leap’ into the body of an 1860s coachman, then you’ll need to know how to understand the signal. Happily, this contemporary information sheet has survived in the archives:

Richard Mayne, whose name appears at the bottom, was head of the Metropolitan Police… or, at least, he was for a few more days. He died at the end of December 1868 while the trial was still ongoing. Image: Public domain.

Simply put, you were free to guide your vehicle forwards unless both arms were in the horizontal, or the red signal lamp was illuminated. Notice that the sign mentions a pedestrian crossing. This was actually the whole point of the exercise. This first traffic light was a binary: either it was on to all vehicles or off to all vehicles. The arms could not be moved independently. During the ‘stop’ phase, all traffic halted and pedestrians were able to cross (in all directions) safely. During the ‘go’ phase, traffic would proceed in all directions, with some orchestration from a policemen. You’d be mad to try and cross on foot.

The traffic lights had some initial success. "The regular town drivers are fairly, and to quite an unexpected extent, amenable to the signals," thought the Illustrated Times, soon after the lights were installed.

A plaque to John Peake Knight near the Westminster junction he tried to tame. Image: Matt Brown

Others were more skeptical. One commentator, on approaching the “Dreadful Portent” from Westminster Bridge, asked his driver what it was. “Another o' them fakements put up to wex the poor cabbies,” came the reply. A more serious limitation was the manpower needed. The signal still required a police presence. The lights and semaphore reinforced the hand gestures of the constabulary, but didn’t replace them.

Appearances aside, these early traffic lights were simply not good enough. Many drivers did not understand what the angled semaphore blades were supposed to indicate. Others ignored them. The technology often broke down. In January 1869, a gas leak caused an explosion at the base of the semaphore, badly burning the face of the police operator.

The lights lingered on for a few more months, but constant breakdowns and general ineffectiveness led to their removal by the end of the year. Semaphore systems were adopted elsewhere, but London would not see further signalling for many decades. The roll-out of traffic lights in London was proving to be a stop-start affair.

The first electric traffic lights

Regular readers may recall that London’s first traffic island was supposedly installed at the top of St James’s Street in 1864. Remarkably, London’s first electronic traffic lights were anchored to that very same spot.

Eight sets of lights were placed along Piccadilly — between the Circus and Clarges Street. They were switched on on 3 August 1926, to coincide with the remodelling of traffic flow in Piccadilly Circus. Much as today, London’s first lights had three colours: green to go, red to stop, and amber to be ‘ready for a change’. This time, London was behind the curve. Electric traffic lights had been in limited use in the United States for over a decade by this point, and numerous European cities had also dabbled.

The locations of London’s first eight traffic lights, as deduced from newspaper reports of the time. The blue house symbol represents the control booth on St James’s Street. Image: Matt Brown in Google MyMaps.

Circuitry wasn’t yet reliable enough for an automatic system. Rather, the lights were overseen by “a perspiring policeman in full uniform, including helmet,” perched inside a grey, glass-fronted booth on St James’s Street. The poor fellow would sit there squinting down the road, pushing buttons for hours on end, and sequentially scrolling through the phases on each signal.

These light signals were not for the direct benefit of drivers. Rather, they were intended as cues for the regular traffic police, who were stationed at each set of lights, to perform the customary gestures. This was, after all, an experimental system, and motorists had no previous experience at obeying coloured lights. The chief benefit was that one man could now coordinate the entire street, rather than the existing anarchy of independent junctions.

A policeman on point duty at Piccadilly Circus in 1911. Image: public domain

The Piccadilly lights were of limited success. Traffic flow was judged to be improved, but the mixture of a beckoning human and a guiding light caused confusion. The police on point duty could not always see their lights, which then as now were hooded. “A hundred times a day, drivers are waved out of Bond-street into Piccadilly be the policemen on point duty, although the signal at the corner is set to danger," reported the Evening News one month into the trial. “Similarly, a hundred times a day drivers see the green and think all is well for straight ahead, and find that the policeman will not let them pass”.

These mixed messages, and the sheer cost of employing so many members of His Majesty’s Constabulary on traffic duties (around 1,300 across town at any given time) meant that moves towards a fully automatic system were inevitable. London was again slow to adopt such a system. Detroit had automated lights as early as 1921, and the technology was widespread in North America by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, various towns across the UK, including Hastings and Wolverhampton, held their own trials before London.

The first large-scale system in central London was installed in Trafalgar Square in 1933. It was surprisingly sophisticated. The lights were informed by pressure sensors on the road surface, which relayed information about traffic levels on different approaches. Drivers were even given filter arrows, which allowed traffic to turn from the National Gallery onto Charing Cross Road, even though other directions were on ‘red’. These pioneering lights had their teething issues, but were quickly deemed a success. 14 police officers were reassigned from traffic duty.

Trafalgar Square is today notable for its novelty pedestrian lights, which feature various designs inspired by Pride and the LGBT+ community. This one has a subtle heart between the figures. Image: Matt Brown

Automatic lights enjoyed their finest hour in November 1937, when “the biggest unit of traffic signals in the world” was installed at Piccadilly Circus. The “robot master mind” controlling the junction was officially named “Little Eva”. This box of wonders received signals from nine detectors on approach roads, and could vary the phase times according to demand. It was estimated at the time that Little Eva would save some £3,600 a year on police time, and provide a smoother flow as well. Pedestrians were an after-thought. According to one news report: “The loud speakers of a police car continually barked: "Use the subways, they are safer!" but few people did so.”

From that point on, it was a big green GO for traffic lights in London. They spread across the city and country like a tricoloured rash, and remain a key part of road infrastructure today.

Now, there’s an unwritten rule of feature writing that your final paragraphs should always include a call-back to the opening paragraphs. How on earth am I going to pivot back to Fritz Haber? Well, watch this manoeuvre…

Another of those early traffic light set-ups was placed at the corner of Southampton Row and Russell Square at some point in 1932-33, during measures to disentangle an experimental one-way system. It was at precisely this time that Fritz Haber made a series of short visits to London. He almost certainly stayed in the Russell Hotel, right next to the traffic lights.

Long-time readers of this newsletter will know how important this particular set of traffic lights proved to be. It was here, also in 1933, that one of the most important thoughts in human history took place. While on his way to the Russell Hotel (the same one Haber used), the physicist Leo Szilard paused at the crossing to wait for the traffic to stop. It was then that he had a ‘Eureka moment’ in which he conceptualised the nuclear chain reaction — the process that would lead to both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Szilard is therefore a rival to Fritz Haber as the most consequential scientist who ever lived. One was born on the same day as the traffic light, and the other was inspired by one. Like the road-traffic control network, everything is connected.

After that unhinged conclusion, I’ll sign off with some music. Behold, this uplifting ode to traffic lights by Monty Python:

Image courtesy First Rail London

Four new community roundels have been installed at Bethnal Green station.

Head over to Bethnal Green station (the Overground one, not the Underground) and you'll find that it's been decorated with four eye-catching roundel mosaics.

Each one was pieced together at community workshops with contributions "from babies as young as six months old to residents aged 85".

The mosaics are inspired by the Weaver line, which runs through the station and is itself named for the rich textile history of the area. Look closely at the artworks and you'll see numerous references to Huguenot weavers, bobbins, warps, wefts and looms.

Image courtesy First Rail London

The roundels also weave in references to other features of the area, such as Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, the Museum of Childhood and even local bus routes. Some of the tesserae namecheck local notables such as textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite and boxer Daniel Mendoza.

The project was overseen by Maud Milton of Artyface, who has created mosaic roundels for numerous Overground stations. This batch were created with the help of First Rail London (who operate the Overground on behalf of TfL), Good Shepherd Mission and Young V&A.

Image courtesy First Rail London

These are such joyous objects, which not only look gorgeous but also involve local communities. We can only hope that similar creations one day beautify every station on the network.

See Tube trains in miniature. Image: Les Chatfield via creative commons

A chance to see scaled-down Tube trains do their thing.

You might already know about King's Cross' Model Railway Club (MRC). We visited in 2023 (watch our video further down in this article), and even if you're not altogether au fait with your OO gauges or Tenshodo coreless motor bogies, it's magical to admire the functioning layouts — each one thousands of painstaking hours of passionate craft in the making.

On Sunday 6 September 2026, things take a decidedly London-centric turn, as the MRC teams up with the London Underground Railway Society for London's Transport in Miniature.

At this special one-day exhibition — which anyone can attend (it's £10 if you buy tickets in advance) — you'll see various layouts including the fictional/semi-fictional Waddesdon Manor, Carlton Vale and Lammas Lane. Made by the likes of people with names like 'Underground Eric', the sheer attention to detail has to be seen to be believed.

The club's flagship Copenhagen Fields — an interwar reimagining of the area to the immediate north of King's Cross, complete with with street running trams in Caledonian Road and both Piccadilly line stations at York Road and Caledonian Road — will be on display. Check out a few images of what to expect on the website.

Snacks and drinks will also be available to buy.

London’s Transport in Miniature at the Model Railway Club, 6 September 2026, 11am-4pm

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

A cartoon from 1831 lampooning bus travel. Image on display at London Transport Museum, photographed by Matt Brown

Should you ever find yourself miraculously transported back to pre-Victorian days, then you will assuredly want to ride on one of the new-fangled London omnibuses, recently introduced by Mr George Shillibeer (see the previous article).

These early buses came with their own codes of conduct, just as today we all habitually stand on the right-hand side of escalators and give up our seats for those in greater need (well, some of us do).

In January 1836, The Times codified these rules for their readership. Here they are, with my own comments in square parentheses.

The Laws of the Omnibus

The omnibus could get a little cramped. To reduce conflict, a set of norms and courtesies developed. This engraving is from 1859, some 30 years after the first omnibuses. Image: Public domain

1. Keep your feet off the seats.
[Still a good one to observe. In the 1830s, feet would have been all the dirtier, thanks to a preponderance of horse dung.]

2. Do not get into a snug corner yourself, and then open the windows to admit a northwester upon the neck of your neighbour.
[To this day, I occasionally hear cries of ‘can you shut the window please’ on the top deck in wintertime.]

3. Have your money ready when you desire to alight. If your time is not valuable, that of others may be.
[A forerunner of the message played in Tube elevators that reminds us to have ‘Oyster Cards, tickets and PAYG cards ready for the barriers’. Omnibuses, it seems, charged passengers at the point at which they got off.]

4. Do not impose on the conductor the necessity of finding you change; he is not a banker.
[Typical fares were a shilling or 6d. Most passengers would have coins to these values in their purse. Bank notes were not normally used for day-to-day transactions at this point.]

5. Sit with your limbs straight, and do not let your legs describe an angle of forty-five, thereby occupying the room of two persons.
[Is this the first description in recorded history of manspreading?]

6. Do not spit upon the straw. You are not in a hog-sty, but in an omnibus, travelling in a country which boasts of its refinement.
[If this vehicle is so refined, you might ask, then why is there straw on the floor in the first place? It functioned as a renewable floor covering, which could be swept out and replaced once it had got too claggy with mud and horse dung. Spitting was not uncommon in Regency and Victorian times thanks to high rates of smoking and snuff use. I suspect that the sooty fogs of the age would also have irritated the airways, encouraging a surfeit of phlegm.]

The Victorians were not known for succinctness. This verbose ‘No Spitting’ sign is from a railway, but similar signs might have appeared on the omnibus. Image: Matt Brown

7. Behave respectfully to females, and put not an unprotected lass to the blush because she cannot escape from your brutality.
[Shudders.]

8. If you bring a dog, let him be small and confined by a string.
[Lapdogs only. Early omnibuses could be cramped spaces, so not an acceptable domain for a mastiff. Modern London buses allow dogs of all shapes and sizes, but they must be kept on a lead and off the seats.]

9. Do not introduce large parcels; an omnibus is not a van.
[Worth remembering if you were going to try and sneak your friend on in a crate.]

10. Reserve bickerings and disputes for the open field. The sound of your own voice may be music to your own ears—not so, perhaps, to those of your companions.
[A rule still observed to this day on the Tube, where even the most nugatory comment is frowned upon. Silence is golden. Not so on the buses, where you’re now almost guaranteed an intense auditory experience on the top deck.]

11. If you will broach politics or religion, speak with moderation; all have an equal right to their opinions, and all have an equal right not to have them wantonly shocked.
[Can we have that one over on social media today, please?]

12. Refrain from affectation and conceited airs. Remember you are riding a distance for sixpence which, if made in a hackney-coach, would cost you as many shillings; and that should your pride elevate you above plebeian accommodations, your purse should enable you to command aristocratic indulgences.
[The 19th century equivalent of moaning that the Piccadilly line is not as swish as the Heathrow Express.]

1929 replica of an 1829 Shillibeer omnibus, at London Transport Museum. Image: Matt Brown

Modern Omnibus Law

Given that these instructions are now approaching their 200th birthday, it’s high time that someone updated them. Here, then, are my rules for catching a bus in 21st century London:

1. Do NOT form an orderly queue at the bus stop. That is for provincials. Instead, stand where you will, and examine your phone until the bus arrives.

2. If your bus is taking a long time, do not consume 50 bottles of Smirnoff and arrange them mysteriously in groups of five behind the bus shelter… unless you’re in the village of Bedfont near Heathrow, where this seems to be a thing:

Image: Matt Brown

3. DO say hello to the driver. It gives them an enormous sense of wellbeing to ignore you completely, but at least you made the effort.

4. Do not try to pay with cash. It is an unheard-of commodity on the London bus. Travel cards will work, but you’ll immediately mark yourself out as a tourist. Even Oyster cards and debit cards are passé these days. Smartphone or smartwatch payments are the overwhelming norm.

5. Do not offer to show your ticket to the conductor. No London bus has employed a conductor for decades. If you do see a conductor, then either you’ve just consumed 50 bottles of Smirnoff, or it’s a ghost.

6. Select a seat somewhere towards the middle-back. The options nearest the driver are for those who most need a seat. The benches nearest the middle doors are for those looking after buggies or wheelchairs. The back seat is reserved for troublemakers. This leaves just a handful of seats, and so you may want to head upstairs.

7. If heading upstairs, stay as far from the back as you can. The rear five rows are typically taken by passengers who like sharing their music with the whole bus.

8. The front-top seats are reserved for younger passengers who might “pretend to drive the bus”.

9. The bus will inevitably pause five minutes from your destination “to regulate the service”. It is expected that you will emit a mild groan at this juncture.

10. Always ring the bell if you’d like the bus to make a stop. Without a bell, drivers will studiously not stop, and will even accelerate if they can see that people are agitating to get off.

11. Shout “Thank you driver!” as you effect your egress. This once neglected custom has seen a resurgence in London in recent years. And, despite my joshing, bus drivers are among the great unsung heroes of London, and deserve our thanks.

The ill-conducted Conductor

A horse-drawn double-decker from much later (circa 1890) at the London Bus Museum (actually in Surrey at Brooklands). Image: Matt Brown

In 1841, The Times followed up their Omnibus Laws with two new lists. One set out the behaviours of a ‘well-conducted conductor’ and the other essayed the habits of an ‘ill-conducted conductor’. The first list is essentially a ‘good’ version of the second, so here I reproduce only the six hallmarks of the bad busman:

An ill-conducted conductor…

1. Always bawls out “Bank—Bank—City—Bank—Bank—Bank—City—City—Bank—Bank—Bank!” by which disgusting noise his own lungs are injured, the public peace is disturbed, and not any advantage gained.
[Modern buses are pretty good at giving out just the right amount of information. “The next stop is…” and “This is the 107 service to New Barnet”. The Tube, however, still favours an exhausting onslaught of safety messages. See it. Say it. Sorted.]

2. Always bangs the door so violently that if you are sitting next the door you are likely to be deafened for life.
[No such thing as automatic hydraulic doors in the early Victorian period. Manual slam-doors only. I am old enough to remember slam doors on trains, however.]

3. Never provides any check-string, but compels the passengers who want to be set down to use their sticks, canes, and umbrellas, and loud shouts into the bargain, thereby creating a most intolerable nuisance.
[The check-string was a simple mechanism whereby the pull of a cord would ring a bell, alerting the driver to stop… much like the buzzer-bells on modern buses.]

4. Always takes up and sets down his passengers in the middle of the street; by which rudeness they are sometimes bespattered with mud and always exposed to danger.
[Some omnibuses had check-strings on either side of carriage; passengers would pull the appropriate string to indicate which side of the road they would like to set down on. This was possible because doors were typically at the back of the bus, rather than on one side.]

5. Always stands at the door of the omnibus staring in upon the passengers, particularly after he has been eating his dinner of beefsteak, strong onions, and stale beer; and generally has some cad or other crony standing and talking with him. The air that would otherwise circulate through the omnibus, in the way of ventilation, is obstructed and poisoned.
[London’s buses have their problems today, but I think we can all be grateful that the menace of the beefy-breathed conductor haunting the rear window is a thing of the past. The engraving near the top of this article shows one such man.]

6. Always bawls out “All right!” before the passengers have taken their seats, by which gross carelessness, great inconvenience and even danger are often occasioned.
[This still happens today. We’ve all been on buses that have moved off before new passengers have sat down, only for a tumble to ensue. I’ve seen it happen to a parent carrying a baby.]

The Woolwich Ferry has been operating for over 700 years, but it only recently got its first woman captain. Emma Lewis writes about the joys and challenges of the role.

"My favourite is Dame Vera Lynn. She's the female boat and I find she glides so elegantly across the Thames." Image: TfL

Being the first female Captain of the Woolwich Ferry is such an honour. Especially being a normal girl from Birmingham who never even stepped on a boat until I was 21.

Crazy story, but my first ever time on a boat was on the River Thames. My first trip to London was for my 21st birthday and I went on the London Eye River Cruise. If someone had nudged me on the shoulder then and said 'You'll be a captain on this river one day', I would have giggled. But look at me now!

My career on the water started as a Customer Service Assistant for Uber Boat by Thames Clippers. I sold tickets on the piers and helped passengers board. I fell in love with working outside and was really encouraged by how the crew enjoyed their job on board, so I choose to move over to that side of things.

I am not a lover of boats but gaining a new skill and working with such influential people triggered me to start my journey to becoming a captain. My time at Uber Boat by Thames Clippers was so valuable because I had no marine experience previously. The work was fast-paced. Gaining knowledge and experience was so much fun, and every day was different.

Emma Lewis hadn't even stepped on a boat until her 21st birthday. Image: TfL

"Dame Vera Lynn is the female boat and she glides so elegantly across the Thames"

My final shift as a captain at Uber Boat by Thames Clippers was on New Year's Eve — the hardest shift of the year. You have to keep your vessel completely still within a controlled area, with loads of boats around you. You don't get to enjoy the fireworks at all, as you have your back to them, so the back deck is exposed for the customers to have a good view. It was so intense, but I am so proud that I did it.

I moved to the Woolwich Ferry to challenge myself and to gain more knowledge as a captain. The boats here are vastly different from what I had been used to. I wanted change and the Woolwich Ferry was a great place to move to.

We have two ferries, Dame Vera Lynn and Ben Woollacott. My favourite is Dame Vera Lynn (DVL for short). She's the female boat and I find she glides so elegantly across the Thames.

"I do training with my crew daily, so I know they are prepared and ready for any emergency we may encounter." Image: Tom Page, Creative Commons

"With a boat you can't just stop anywhere and let people off"

As captain, my day starts by doing safety checks and a briefing with my crew to discuss daily operations. I navigate the boat from the North to South pier, keeping a watch for any traffic heading inward and outward bound. This is especially important as we are a 'give-way' vessel, so must give right of way to all vessels navigating the River Thames.

On certain days we may have short delays, especially if there are reporting vessels in the area, and sometimes you can have three at once. A reporting vessel is a boat that has right of way on the river and it must fit one of three rules: be longer than 40 metres, weigh 50 tonnes or more and go outside of the River Thames, or be a tugboat towing another ship.

Berthing was once described to me as a 'controlled crash'. We must berth a boat alongside a stable pontoon or pier without causing any damage. When you park a car you don't need to be alongside anything to get out or to stay still, whereas a boat can't just stop anywhere and let people off. So when you are berthing, you need to make contact without causing any damage. Can you imagine having to park a car with contact with the car next to you, without any damage?! The pontoons are protected by 'fenders' which essentially act as shock absorbers, acting as a buffer between the vessel and pontoon.

" I enjoy the sunrises and sunsets." Image: TfL

I do training with my crew daily, so I know they are prepared and ready for any emergency we may encounter. The operation is complex, and I always have to monitor the weather as it may cause delays, especially if it's extremely windy.

I love going down on deck and having a visual inspection of the boat as this gives me the opportunity to speak with customers. A lot of people are surprised we are a free service, so I love giving them the history of the ferry, which started out life in the 14th century.

My favourite part of working at the Woolwich Ferry is the people. I am so unbelievably blessed to call this my job, and I work with some lovely characters who make work seem less like a job. I also enjoy the sunrises and sunsets.

Driverless taxis are already on London's streets, and soon you'll be able to ride one. Image: Londonist

Driverless vehicles have existed in London in one form or other since the 1960s. But things are about to step up a few notches, as robotaxis become legal on the capital's streets. When exactly is this happening? Who are the companies behind them? And are London's crop of human taxi drivers quaking in their cabs?

What exactly is a driverless car?

There are six levels of automated car, level zero being fully dependent on a human driver, and the highest levels being where the tech is in control with very little (level four) or no need (level five) for human intervention.

Level four vehicles are already operating in some parts of the United States, but in the UK, we're not yet at level three. That's on the cusp of changing, thanks to the Automated Vehicles Act of 2024. Trials are already taking place across London, and in the second half of 2027, the Act will be fully implemented, meaning driverless taxis will be roaming the streets.

Which driverless cars are currently operating in London?

Waymo is looking to become an integral part of London's taxi market. Image: Waymo

As of September 2026, it is possible for people in London to hail an autonomous taxi, although only a handful are operating. Elsewhere, big companies are busy continuing trialling them:

🚗 Wayve/Uber: British autonomous driving tech company Wayve is working in cahoots with American ride-hailing platform Uber, as they trial driverless taxis in London. Ultimately, writes Wired, Uber wants to be the 'Kleenex' of ride-hailing apps, that is, you'll be able to use the Uber app to book any number of driverless taxis, including the other two on this list. Of course, Uber is already flush with data on driving around places worldwide, which is extremely useful to autonomous car companies. September 2026 saw Wayve/Uber launch a small fleet of all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles with autonomous capabilities in London. These can be booked by anyone in London via the Uber app. For the time being, every trip will be overseen by a TfL-licensed private hire driver, so it's not quite the full-fat experience, but it is the first proper opportunity for the average Londoner to ride in a robotaxi.

🚗  Waymo: This California-based company — a subsidiary of Google-owner Alphabet —  is already operating driverless taxi services in select metropolitan areas in the States, as well as trialling driverless vehicles in London 24/7. It bills itself "The World’s Most Experienced Driver™", having covered some 200 million miles on public roads already. Apparently that's not enough miles for them to know not to wake up east London residents in the dead of night, or drive the wrong way down an underpass. Those interested in riding in a Waymo in London can now register their interest.

🚗  Baidu: Chinese company Baidu has paired up with US ride-hailing company Lyft to trail their Apollo Go driverless cars. They're a little behind the others, but as of July 2026, have commenced trials in London.

Other autonomous car trials have previously been hosted in London, including Nissan's ServCity project, running from 2020-23.

Does TfL support driverless cars?

TfL says its 'legal duties and responsibilities to keep London moving' means it welcomes CAV (Connected and Automated Vehicles) trials in London. These trials, says TfL, is helping it "understand the opportunities, risks and challenges they present." In short, it's given autonomous cars the green light.

And what do London's taxi drivers think?

"It's like comparing a hotdog vendor to Gordon Ramsay," said one black cab driver on black cabs Vs robotaxis. Image: Londonist

London's black cab drivers have had a lot to contest with recently, one report predicting they could be extinct within 20 years. But if you're to believe general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, Steven McNamara, the general feeling among cabbies about robotaxis is one of skepticism, rather than fear. He cites London's medieval road system, chock-a-block streets and blasé pedestrians as some of the reasons why a proper cabbie would do a better, and safer, job than an autonomous vehicle.

These cars might be clever, but they don't have the Knowledge. Image: Freenow by Lyft x Baidu Apollo Go

There is also the small matter of the Knowledge. "It's like comparing a hotdog vendor to Gordon Ramsay," one black cab driver told the American TV presenter Anderson Cooper.

As for Uber drivers: not long ago they were the threat; now they may fear their livelihoods are in the crosshairs — the very company they work for seemingly happy to phase them out. As human drivers become more of a specialist thing, the Knowledge could work against them. But for now at least, some passengers will prefer to stick with a human behind the wheel. Speaking of which...

Do Londoners actually want driverless cars?

42% of Londoners actively oppose the idea of driverless taxis. Image: Matt Brown/Londonist

"I think Londoners are going to love autonomous driving," says Wayve CEO Alex Kendall, which he would do. Driverless car companies are eager to point out the multifarious touted benefits, including 'enhanced safety' (one of the arguments is that technology can't get tired like a human). Detractors would say that driverless taxis are in fact less safe because, well, they don't have a driver — plus anyone who's faced an overheating laptop or gobbledegook-spouting ChatGPT knows technology can get tired.

Environmental sustainability is another key benefit, say the autonomous companies, although most of London's human-driven taxis are already electric or hybrid. As for accessibility: Gabriel Stewart writes in the Guardian that "this is an opportunity for disabled rights that is too great to be missed."

As far as we know, there won't be any cost difference between human-driven and autonomous taxis, although perhaps driverless companies will initially reduce fees to get passengers onside. Ultimately, the cost we have to pay could be much higher, should we find ourselves with tens of thousands of unemployed taxi drivers.

In direct answer to the question Do Londoners actually want driverless cars?: a survey commissioned by the London Assembly Transport Committee found that 42% of Londoners actively oppose the idea of driverless taxis. That's high, although some of that is probably a fear of the unknown, something that will dwindle over time. Meanwhile, Uber/Wayve say over 140,000 Londoners have already opted into accepting rides from Wayves.

Is London getting driverless buses too?

Driverless taxis are all well and good for those who have money/don't like talking to real cabbies. But how about forms of autonomous public transport in London? Might that be a thing?

Well, automated train technology has been in place in London since 1963, although the closest the city has come to implementing it is on the DLR, which is still overseen by train operators.

Recently, London Centric went for a spin in an Ohmio, a pint-sized self-driving bus-like thing, which has already seen action in Milton Keynes (see above). In this case, the Ohmio was being trialled to tackle the very specific problem of a knackered Hammersmith Bridge that can no longer cope with double-deckers. But while proponents of Ohmio and its ilk say this is the future of travel, it's improbable that self-driving London buses will be a widespread phenomenon anytime soon, the many obstacles ranging from limited seating capacity to trade unions.

If you want to ride in a fully automated vehicle in London right now, your best bet is still one of the pods at Heathrow Airport.

Image: DavidPMaynard, Creative Commons

Arise Lord Khan of Tooting.

Congratulations to Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, who has now been further honoured with a peerage. The three-times Mayor will now be able to take his place on the red seats of the House of Lords, after receiving the nomination from Keir Starmer. He is one of 26 new Peers approved by the King.

It's not yet clear how active a Lord Khan will be. He still has almost two years to serve of his current term in City Hall, and has hinted that he might seek a fourth go at the job. That said, riding two horses simultaneously is not unprecedented in this job. In 2015-16, Boris Johnson spent a year as both Mayor of London and MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip.  

The appointment throws up any number of questions. For example, would Khan accept a ministerial role from PM presumptive Andy Burnham? Serving as a Lord would qualify him for cabinet. Then there's the matter of the Lords itself. Both Burnham and Khan have spoken of the need for complete overhaul in the past.

The House of Lords. Photo: UK Parliament

The quirkiest upshot, though, is the potential confusion the new title brings. Sadiq Khan is now both Mayor of London and a Lord... but he is not Lord Mayor of London.

The Lord Mayor of London* is a year-long ceremonial appointment in the City of London (Square Mile)... the kind of mayor who goes around in gold chains and robes acting as a figurehead and ambassador for the City. Mayor of London Lord Khan, in contrast, is a political appointment with responsibilities over transport, policing and other weighty matters, and concerning the whole of Greater London.

Know the difference. Left: the Lord Mayor of London. Right: the Mayor of London, who currently happens to be a Lord. Image: Matt Brown, with knitted figures by Heather Brown

They are two very different roles, but now with even more similar names.

*The current Lord Mayor is Dame Susan Langley, the third woman who has held the role, and the first to use the title "Lady Mayor".

Grosvenor Square has had a woodland style makeover. Image: Grosvenor

Grosvenor Square will reopen to the public for the first time in over a year on Monday 20 July, following a £25m makeover.

Owned by the Grosvenor Group — the Duke of Westminster's private property company, which also owns swathes of Mayfair and Belgravia — Grosvenor Square closed last June to undergo its fourth major redesign since it was first constructed in the first half of the 18th century.

There's a new cafe kiosk. Image: Grosvenor

Taking on a woodland theme with winding paths, Grosvenor Square is now filled with some 150,000 plants and bulbs, 44 new trees and two (admittedly small) wetlands — a vivacious contrast to its previous austere, be-lawned layout. "At a time when conversations about heat, flooding and the future of our cities couldn't be more relevant," says Grosvenor, "the project asks a simple question: how can urban green spaces work harder for both people and nature?"

Loving the benches too. Image: Grosvenor

One practical answer to this is that the Square can now absorb up to 1.4 million litres of stormwater at a time, doing its bit against urban flooding. We're also told that wildlife is already returning, with ducks, butterflies and dragonflies all sighted in the last few weeks. An education centre run by London Wildlife Trust has been installed, along with a new café kiosk.

The paths are now winding, rather than straight and austere. Image: Grosvenor

Set out by gardener John Alston in the 1720s, Grosvenor Square was initially reserved for the use of the Square's residents, only opening to the public after the Second World War. From 1938 until 2018, the US Embassy overlooked the Square, making the green space a popular spot for protests, including those against the Vietnam War.

This latest revamp has been largely funded by Grosvenor Group, which, it's fair to say, has a few quid kicking around. In 2017 the Guardian revealed that, benefitting from previous offshore investment in the dukes of Westminster empire, the current Duke of Westminster, billionaire Hugh Grosvenor, didn't have to pay the 40% death duties imposed on most British taxpayers.

Click or tap for larger size. Image: Matt Brown

What are the commonest baby names in your borough?

Every year, the Office for National Statistics releases data on the commonest baby names registered over the past year. The 2025 data have now been released. As usual, the London stats are broken down by borough, allowing us to make the graphic above.

Commonest girls' names in London boroughs

Among girls, Sophia and Sofia are the commonest name, topping 10 boroughs between them. That's quite a surge, as the name only featured in two boroughs last year. Maryam is also on the rise. Last year, only Tower Hamlets recorded this as the most popular choice; now five boroughs do.

The biggest decline is in Amelias. A whopping 14 boroughs favoured the name in 2024, now it's just two. Olivia has also stagnated, from seven boroughs last year to seven this.

And welcome to the new entry of Rehmat, the commonest girl's name in the London Borough of Hillingdon.

Image: Matt Brown

Click or tap for larger image.

What if Count Binface became Prime Minister?

It could never happen, of course. (Could it?) But in a flight of trash-can fantasy, we thought we'd speculate about his potential cabinet, were he to become PM.

We've assumed that he would choose fellow bin-shaped individuals to form his Government. So we've rounded up some of London's most charismatic rubbish receptacles to put together a prospective team.

All images are by Matt Brown, except the photo of Binface (from Count Binface himself), and the background image, by jpdfive, creative commons licence.

You wait ages for one vintage Routemaster, and then 25 turn up at once. Image: Peter Hendy, with permission

What's that coming over the hill — is it a 'master, is it a 'master?

Actually it's over 25 Routemasters. This is Imberbus — the annual parade of double-decker London buses from Warminster to Chitterne — via Salisbury Plain and a collection of bucolic villages, including Imber (hence the event's name).

Ohh, a green one. Image: Shutterstock

The uncanny sight comes with a backstory to match. Residents of the small village of Imber in Wiltshire were turfed out of their village by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1943 so the land could be used for military exercises. They were promised their village back at the end of the war. That never happened.

You may spot the odd modern Routemaster too. Image: Imberbus

Fast forward to a tipsy conversation in a Bath pub in 2009, some schmoozing with the MoD's top brass, and the concept of Imberbus was born. Imber may not have any residents, but by heck, it was going to have a (once-annually) bus service.

Imberbus has since ballooned into a cult event, some bus fanatics even coming from overseas to take part.

You ain't seen nothing quite like Imberbus before. Image: Imberbus

So, how DO you take part? All you need to do is get to Warminster station in Wiltshire on Saturday 15 August 2026. Trains from Paddington to Warminster take as little as 1 hour 35 minutes.

Not the usual view you get from a London bus... Image: Ed Webster via creative commons

The 2026 timetable is now live, with the first vintage Routemasters of the day running from Warminster to Imber at 9.30am, and then throughout the day every 15 minutes or so until late afternoon.

On arrival at Imber, some buses from Warminster will carry on to Gore Cross, then either to Brazen Bottom and the Lavingtons or to Tilshead & Chitterne. Extra buses link Tilshead, the Lavingtons, Gore Cross and New Zealand Farm Camp.

In the pretty village of Chitterne. Image: Imberbus

There are various landmarks, events and refreshments to get stuck into, including Imber Church, Caspers Cafe at Warminster Station, the village halls in Tilshead and Chitterne, and the refurbished Market Lavington Museum.

London's urban sprawl is getting ridiculous... Image: Imberbus

Day tickets for Imberbus are £10 (children ride for just £2). This allows unlimited rides, allowing you to try different buses, and stop off in various villages along the way. There's no need to book ahead — in fact you can't. Buses only accept cash, although you can purchase tickets from a special desk at Warminster in the morning using a card/contactless. Cash machines are also available in Warminster Market Place, five minutes walk from the rail station.

In recent years, the event has raised tens of thousands for the Imber Church fund and the Royal British Legion, so your cash is going to a good cause.

Battle bus! Image: Imberbus

By the way, cars, motorbikes, cycles, scooters and pedestrians are NOT permitted access to the military roads on Imberbus day, so don't try to join in that way.

Imberbus, Saturday 15 August 2026.

The Baker Street labyrinth. Image: Matt Brown

Are you the sort of person who takes photos of every Tube station labyrinth? This app might help.

Do you know about the Tube labyrinths? Every station has one; all 272 of them.

The labyrinths were created in 2013 by artist Mark Wallinger, as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the London Underground. Each one has a different pattern, and each is individually numbered from 1 to 272.

'Collecting' the labyrinths is a surprisingly common pastime. Some set out to photograph the designs methodically; others (like myself) collect them ad hoc, whenever we happen to chance across one.

To do this, you need some way of keeping track. Personally, I cross them off on a Tube map, and upload my photos to a dedicated folder on Flickr.

Now, there's an easier way.

Ryan Dobson has developed a free app for iPhone and Android that gives labyrinth-baggers all the tools they need to locate and document the art works.

Screenshots from Mind the Maze.

Mind the Maze is really simple. You tick off each labyrinth as you discover it, and upload a photo. This releases some digital confetti, and unlocks three fun facts about the station. If you can't find a particular labyrinth (and some of them are quite well-hidden), then you can ask the app for a clue. Finally, all 'got' stations are displayed on a map with a different coloured map pin to the unclaimed stations. You can see at a glance where you still need to go.

It's a basic but very useful app... if 'useful' is the right word for the frivolous pursuit of wall-mounted labyrinths.

A selection of Tube labyrinths collected by Matt Brown.

"What I’ve found fascinating," says Ryan, "is that there’s a small but enthusiastic community of people using the labyrinths as a reason to explore parts of London they’d never otherwise visit. Hunting them has taken us to stations, neighbourhoods and corners of the network we would have completely overlooked."

Incidentally, the order of the labyrinth numbers has a hidden meaning. They follow the sequence of stations on the optimal route of the Tube Challenge — the oft-attempted mission to visit every Underground station in one day.

The addition of Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station in 2023 was a slight hiccup to the system; rather than tack them on the end as numbers 271 and 272, they've been numbered 110a and 110b, so they're numerically adjacent to nearby Kennington (110).

Anyway, happy hunting!

Download Mind the Maze for free via links here.