He may be new to office, but that hasn't stopped new mayor Boris Johnson from jumping in with both feet and whipping London into a more Boris-pleasing shape. As of Sunday 1st June, there will be no drinking on all London public transport. Well, no drinking alcohol, that is. (Can you imagine if Boris banned drinking water on the tube? Every other passenger would be fainting come summer.) But there will be no open......

Here at Londonist, we haven’t been shy about our support for cycling. Getting exercise while avoiding the congestion charge or mass transit is definitely positive. But there are some who need to take mass transit in order to get into London – or have an impossibly long journey and need to take the Tube part of the way – and cycle from that point on. We salute these efforts, but not everyone is so......

It may be pissing off our lorry drivers, but as well as improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions, Ken’s Low Emission Zone is also stoking the capital’s coffers. With nearly 1 in 20 vehicles affected by the emission standards initiative falling foul of the legal limits, cash tills rang to the tune of £500,000 this month from fines dished out. Anyone imagining TfL execs bathing in ball pools of cash, or luxuriating in......

The Intelligent Transport Society (now there’s a silly title for an organisation if ever we heard one) has anointed TfL ‘clever clogs of the year’ for its iBus system. East London could become a new Amsterdam. Um, that’s in terms of usable waterways, of course. 7/7/5 film is to debut at Cannes An restaurant worker in Tooting has broken both legs whilst fleeing from immigration officers. That really is awfully bad luck. Watch out......

Hundreds of commuters were stuck underground for nearly 3 hours last night, their hometime ruined by a power failure on the Jubilee Line. As usual, such bad news doesn't make it onto TfL's website but the BBC report that Blitz spirit prevailed with resigned passengers sharing food and seats while the unfortunate driver kept them up to date with... well, not very much really. Eventually, everybody had to be evacuated and led along the......

Evidence was presented this weekend that the East London Line hasn't been forgotten when the promised works manifested themselves in the form of a really big crane hoisting in a really big bridge over Shoreditch. The 35m bow-string bridge (the same design as in Haggerston) was nestled into place over Shoreditch High Street early morning Saturday. The bridge is the first big step in getting the East London Line linked up to the Overground......

If the title of this post doesn't explain what's going on right now on Shoreditch High street, then maybe the press release from TFL will: An extraordinary engineering feat is due to take place in the heart of the city this weekend, to help complete a crucial section of Transport for London’s (TfL) East London line project. Britain’s biggest mobile crane is being brought in to pick up and then gently lower into place......

Those pesky OAPs just keep getting into trouble. This time it's drug smuggling Artists take stand against Shoreditch high rises Tube film upsets train drivers. Well it doesn't take much Bozza waves treehugging card While TfL send Congestion Charge payer 3000 receipts "Urban Chameleon" image courtesy of urban:zoo by [windscreen fly] via the Londonist flickr group.......

Transport for London has sucked up yet another aspect of our city's diverse public transport system today, offering a cool £98 million to acquire Tramlink the company that currently runs South London's trams. The trams will be run by TfL's London Rail Directorate and as with the reclamation of the 'loony line' by London Overground, once the deal has gone through, initial efforts will be focused on sprucing up the network (LO stations are......

As far as fare cards go, the tap-in-tap-out system of Oyster is pretty simple and, barring someone nicking it on its way back to your pocket, pretty secure. But that latter thought might be disproven as a pair of German researchers are now claiming they've hacked the Oyster system. Karsten Nohl and Heinryk Platz say they sorted out how to clone the Dutch manufactured chips used in Oyster and similar cards internationally in December.......

Transport for London's latest cycle safety campaign focuses on road user awareness of what's going on around them. Especially HGV drivers. But this awareness test genuinely shocked us, making the point that however observant you may think you are, however you use the roads, you often don't see things you're not looking for. To reduce the number of incidents involving cyclists and lorries, TfL are giving out free "safety lenses" to freight companies operating......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 37. Fashionably Nice – Ties It’s official, to be nice is on trend. A fashion designer friend of mine told me of an article she had seen on WGSN (a paid subscription service for the fashion industry that forecasts future trends), forecasting that fashion would get a bit more wholesome and nice. It used inspiration......

The clearest thing to emerge from the mayoral race this week is that no one can agree about buses. The arguments began last Wednesday when Boris Johnson told Vanessa Feltz that the '21st Century' Routemasters he wants to replace bendy buses with would all have conductors and that these would cost 'eight million quid'. Ken Livingstone went on the show next day to say Boris’s figures were fine except he’d left a nought off......

What happens in a Tube station when all the passengers have gone home? Why do Tube workers carry cards about rat piss? And why isn't standing on the right of an escalator necessarily a good thing? Londonist finds answers on our latest nocturnal investigation. Some of London's busiest Tube stations are in a mess. Missing tiles and chicken-wire cornices are a familiar site, especially at King's Cross and Leicester Square. It's a case of......

Unite lived up to its name today, presenting demands on behalf of bus drivers across the capital for a standard wage and agreement on driving hours to address considerable disparities across operators. This is their first coordinated claim since privatisation in the 80s. Drivers working for different companies might currently be earning anything from £20-28K all in. Unite is calling for pay to be standardised at £30k across the board, recognising the key role......

Three letter acronyms abound in this story where Transport for London (TFL) have decreed that more environmentally friendly cars running on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are due to lose their 100% Alternative Fuel Discount (AFD) by 2010. This is a knock-on from the £25 congestion charge scheme for gas guzzlers and in an unpleasant twist of unfortunate injustice, a minority of motorists will find themselves not only losing their AFD but subsequently falling into......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 36. Art Attack Last week I mentioned about TfL's campaign to encourage better manners on public transport. The main issues I have with this and TfL's other advertising for this issues are that the new posters do not appear where they are needed (actually in-situ on the carriage) the characters are possibly not well suited......

As a parochial and unglamorous antidote to the Hollywood Oscars that took place last weekend, London Underground was crowned Public Transport Operator of the Year at what LUL are desperately trying to sex up as the "transport Oscars" but are actually more prosaically known as the London Transport Awards. The MD of LUL explained they had scooped the gong for: delivering a record volume of service, carrying more passengers than ever before, while at......

Yesterday, we saw a strange sight in Soho: Cars are being lifted straight out of their parking spots onto trucks and being hauled away. Even more surprisingly, we heard reports of it happening again today, on Regent Street. Well, we can expect to see many more cars being carried by cranes, as it turns out that TfL have yet another congestion-reducing trick up their sleeves. Yesterday they announced that 21 new high-tech removal vehicles will......

Ken hits back at Porsche and tells them to get on their bikes. Or at least to produce some low-emission mean machines. The Osama bin London bunch are jailed. Laid back burglar saunters into Downing Street…and escapes without a custodial sentence. Lib Dem MP for Kingston causes a bit of a rumpus. TfL Mrs. Mops congratulated for Blackwall Tunnel quick fix. Well, it’s good to give our favourite Aunt Sally a positive spin for......

Though Boris Johnson's campaign team may have trouble waking up in the morning, the man himself is not lying down when it comes to outflanking Ken on public transport. His latest initiative is for a network of express buses in south London. The nattily named "London Orb" would offer an alternative to overcrowded rail services, running express bus services between key locations and interchanges that are tough to traverse by train. BoJo apparently dreamt......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 36. In the nicest possible way… Commuting has got lots of anti-social elements to it – Tfl have just launched this lovely campaign about getting on together – it consists of posters around London stations, and then buried deep right at the back of the wardrobe of the corporate TfL website, so deep in fact......

Tube travellers from Balham to Barnet are unhappy at claims the Northern Lane will be separated. According to leaflets being pressed into commuter flesh at Hendon station, TfL, like some latter-day Moses, has "recently announced plans" to part the oft-delayed line, creating two distinct services - one running south from High Barnet via Bank, the other from Edgeware via Charing Cross, with nary a switchover between the two. Trouble is, the story's cobblers. While......

After masquerading as functional, rational, squared-off and decidedly masculine entity for over a century, the London Underground has this week come out as a woman. A new, sweeping, curvaceous tube map has come to light: it rather resembles a multi-coloured Medusa, or perhaps a mad conductor…but be careful what you see in it as the creator, Max Roberts, is in fact a psychologist. The original map by Harry Beck is of course a work......

Good news for anyone who has ever tried to lug a 70 pound bag up and down stairs on the way to the airport (or was that just us?): TfL just announced that it'll be expanding step-free access to 13 more tube stops in its £370 million Access for All programme. Though technically to help access for the elderly, those with children or just generally sickly folk - proximity to hospitals was one consideration......

If you got stuck on the Jubilee line in this morning's rush hour you'll probably not be best pleased to hear the rumblings of a tube strike bouncing round London. Unions are threatening to ballot members on strike action if safety issues for staff aren't resolved by Transport for London in the next few days. That's issues such as ticket office closures and lone working. Which seems bizarre because those are some of the key......

If you were out and about on the Underground this weekend you might have caught sight of one of these guys on TfL's latest 'don't be a selfish bastard' campaign. Together for London employs a gang of unthreateningly rounded cartoon figures, The Londoners, each promising to be a better traveller: I will offer my seat I won't play my music out loud I won't drop litter There's even a short split-screen film by Mike......

It was a delightfully dry and bright, crisp and chilly weekend in London... except for a sudden bit of flooding along Edgware Road on Sunday morning. Not from the heavens opening in a repeat of the 2007 deluges but from what has been reported as a mechanical digger failure at the crucial junction of Sussex Gardens and Edgware Road not far from Marble Arch. This is the junction where traffic from Paddington Station comes......

After receiving what they judiciously describe as "a lot" of feedback, TfL has announced significant changes to the recorded information announcements on London buses. Those changes mainly seem to involve - hooray! - reducing their frequency. The announcements, rolled out last year in conjunction with a display system, are designed to help visually impaired travellers, as well as visitors, navigate the confusing streets of London. A worthy project, certainly, though it means less hilarious......

Us and Paris have won an award for "visionary achievements in sustainable transportation and urban livability". Yes, such an award could only come from the US of A and it is courtesy of their Institute for Transportation and Development Policy that we are sharing such an honour. Ken's C-Charge scheme and best efforts to get us all on our bikes impressed the judges whilst we imagine our Parisian pals' fabulous Velib scheme won them......