Forget rivers of blood, famine and locusts; Tooting and Putney motorists, cyclists and motorcyclists are suffering the daily torment of perpetual potholes, some up to 6 inches deep. The local paper delved into council funding and found that their budget for footway and carriageway repairs was £1m less than it was 3 years ago. Wandsworth blame this on the cyclical nature of funding from central government and claim that all reported potholes are programmed......

In an attempt to wheeze a bit of life into his flagging mayoral campaign, Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick has called for bus drivers to become 'have-a-go heroes' and tackle crime and anti-social tomfoolery on their double-deckers. The former cop inveigled bus drivers to take action against criminal activities on their rides. He cautioned that they should pick their fights carefully, and "choose which crowd to take on", before (rather like the playground bully)......

For those piqued by peak fares and confused by the lugubrious lexicon of British rail tickets, some good news: the entire system is to get a thorough shake-up, with a simplified structure introduced to make it easier for passengers to snag the best fare for their journey. From May, rail travellers will be presented with just three choices: advance, offpeak, and anytime. Gone are the Byzantine days of Apex fares, business first Great Western......

Did you walk to work today? Members of the Londonist team managed it as did notable others: Londonista Hazel went in an efficient, no messing about straight line from East End to Farringdon, while, Londonista Dean took in a pastoral pre-work stroll along a north to south route. Did walking to work change their lives? What's it like on the streets at 8am? Will they want to do it again? Let's see... Londonista Hazel......

If you're a highly recognisable global statesman, whose successor's pathetic performance is making the country remember why they fell in love with you in the first place, it can be tempting to think that you're above the laws of the land. That's the only explanation we can find for the damning news that Tony Blair was apprehended by a ticket inspector as he travelled on the Heathrow Express on Wednesday. Upon asked for a......

Tube drivers are irked by a new film that takes a light-hearted look at one of the more harrowing aspects of working for London Underground: the "person under a train", TfL-speak for a suicide. Members of the Aslef union plan to picket the premier and hand out fliers expressing their displeasure. Three And Out, released next Friday, tells the story of a Tube driver unfortunate enough to experience two "one-unders" in quick succession. Discovering......

In the relentless battle against anti-social behaviour and juvenile crime on our public transport we've reported on 999 text hotlines and genuine gansters brought in to educate the kids. We've had local heroes, PCSOs, poster campaigns and overzealous bus drivers. Now, apparently, we need God. The Ascension Trust have been deploying Street Pastors over large parts of South and North East London since 2003. Their mission "engaging with people on the streets to care,......

What with all the whinging we've done about the comical opening of T5, and the state of British infrastructure in general, it seems we've forgotten about the smooth, stress-free move that Eurostar made from Waterloo to St. Pancras last November. Fortunately, travellers to the continent have been quick to take advantage: the operator has recorded a 21% passenger rise in the first three months of 2008. The world's largest inter-capital rail service could welcome......

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......

Just who do the AA think they are? Jamiroquai? Joining celebrity motorcyclists across the city, the 4th Emergency Service have announced they are to trial a fleet of electric scooters and motorbikes, in a bid to beat the traffic, and reach our capital’s ailing motorists faster. A response to the findings of a city motorists’ average speed league table, compiled by someone at the AA’s HQ with a whole lot of time on their......

With the situation showing little sign of improvement at the brand new T5, London's aviation bosses are keen to turn the public's attention to plans for dealing with the real elephant in the Heathrow departure lounge - the traffic congestion caused by still only having two runways. Yesterday saw the first test of a solution that could be in commercial use as early as next year. The bold plan seeks to double potential runway......

The original sort of Iron Men found on Olympic Park Hitler liked naked lady paintings Cut price bespoke tailoring shakes up Savile Row Seems there's another tube strike on its way zzzzzzz Image of Sarkozy & Bruni in Greenwich this week courtesy of Orhan via the Londonist flickr group.......

Honestly, did you really ever expect to see that headline? This is what London does better than anybody: ballsing up big civic projects. Think of the Dome, or the Millennium Bridge. It wouldn't be a proper London opening if chaos and confusion weren't part of the mix. Despite all the test runs, T5's first day of operational use quickly turned into a farce. Early teething troubles with the baggage system meant the entire system......

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.......

We don't want to get burned again by a false rumour, like the sadly inaccurate story that Madonna was buying a London pub so take the following with a shtickl of salt: Kate Moss has apparently solved her transport woes by snapping up a black cab. The shy, retiring supermodel and occasional moral crusadee has parted company with £45,000 to get her hands on one of LTI's taxi cabs - a LTI-TX4, for those......

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......

Tell us something we didn’t know: London is the most expensive city to live in worldwide, according to UBS research. Pro-Tibet protesters target British Museum’s First Emperor exhibit. Heathrow to charge drivers £20 to drop off passengers if sixth terminal proposal is approved. In other Heathrow news, super jumbo jet completes inaugural flight to London, with 470 passengers aboard. Mohammed Fayed fails in his bid to make the Queen and Prince Philip testify at......

It's still difficult to tell how the mayoral race is going - where are all the opinion polls? But there's no doubt that, in the past week, the Livingstone campaign has made a huge effort to get its show on the road. The launch of his transport manifesto at Stratford station on Monday was designed to invite the most damning of comparisons between the present mayor's apparent grasp of the scale and complexity of......

Her Maj has cut the ribbon on Heathrow's Terminal 5. The £4.3 billion node, designed by Richard Rogers, opens for non-Royal business on 27 March. The BBC has all the facts and figures you could ever need. Rather than repeat them, with added quips, we'll simply point you in the direction of our sneak preview and leave you with a few images of this immense addition to London's international transport network.......

Heathrow panic over rucksack man, running onto runway. He removed his shoes first though as per airport protocol. Woman charged over drug mule children with illegal leg loads. Environmentally aware, double-barrelled teen to ski to North Pole. The Royals are checking out their sugar suppliers in Silvertown And, newer, shinier, longer DLR trains are GO (thanks IanVisits!). Image courtesy of rodfdoyle via the Londonist flickr group.......

The bendy bus comes in for regular bashings, and the articulated eyesore is one of the hot topics in the Mayoral election, with Boris Johnson threatening to scrap it altogether in favour of a remixed Routemaster. Now a new report comes along that suggests the bendy's popularity with fare-dodgers is bigger than ever. According to a Liberal Democrat study, fare evasion has almost doubled from 2.2% in 2003 to 3.9% last year. This coincides......

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......

A few weeks back a group of Flickr folk, led by Annie Mole and supported by Trusted Places and the lovelies at Flickr themselves, were given free tickets to run amok in the London Transport Museum with their cameras. The Museum reopened in November last year following a major revamp and what better PR could the place wish for than a load of London photographers taking nearly 700 snapshots, posting them on Flickr and gushing......

We fell in love with Black Cab Sessions the moment we first heard of them. How could we not? Taking a drive around the best city in the world (okay, we're biased, yes) in a design classic with some of our favourite bands rockin' out in the back seat: it's exactly how we'd like to spend a lazy afternoon. Since we generally are unable to scrape together enough coins to even steal sideways glances......

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......

Bad news for those who rely on Tower Gateway DLR station: you’re going to have to find another way around starting this summer. Beginning in June, the DLR station will be closed while improvements are made. Service will hopefully return in April 2009. Tower Gateway currently has platforms that can accommodate two-carriage trains, but as more people use the DLR, the need has arisen for trains with three carriages. The station will be closed......

Just the tonic we needed after walking to work on a cold, blustery March morn: Richard Branson is mulling over introducing a direct service between London and Kerala. Pressed during a holiday to the south Indian region about whether a connecting flight is on the cards, the Virgin Atlantic boss offered this gnomic reply: "It could be, but there is no immediate plan". Okay, it's hardly a ringing endorsement, but it has got Londonist......