You are browsing the Transport category
November 30, 2007
We feel churlish bringing it up again, but not so long ago Heathrow was voted the world's least favourite airport. As we head into the crunch Christmas travel period, it could surely use a slice of decent press. So is there any good news to come out of TW19? Is there 'eck. Word reaches us that key workers at Heathrow are to be balloted for a strike. The Unite union has asked the airport's...... [continue]
| November 29, 2007
O2, it seems, are cornering the market in progressive mobile gadegtry, already having the monopoly on the shiny smart iPhone and now the pilot phase OyPhone. Sorry, "Oyster Wallet" is the much more sensible and meaningless name for TfL's latest technology wheeze which puts your travelcard in your mobile phone and today, 500 Oyster users begin trialling the Nokia 6131 handsets with Oyster embedded. Barclaycard are also in on the trial, charging up the...... [continue]
November 27, 2007
The trains have been re-routed, the signage amended, the tube announcements re-recorded (completed, luckily, before the woman behind them was given the heave-ho). The re-opening of St Pancras means that Waterloo's reign as Britain's main international train station, a duty it fulfilled without complaint for thirteen years, is well and truly over. But what to do with those elegant Eurostar platforms, so admired in their mid-Nineties infancy? The plan in the short term is...... [continue]
November 26, 2007
Londonist imagines that saying "mind the gap, "stand clear of the closing doors" and endless variations on "The next station is...." for a living can get a little wearisome. Professional voice-over artist Emma Clarke does just that. Hence, she decided to spice up her days by making a few spoof announcements and posting them onto her website, including one that went: "We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost...... [continue]
Curious and curiouser: we got a tip-off from a mysterious source that the District Line had a distinct lack of advertising over the weekend. Could this have anything to do with Buy Nothing Day, which took place on Saturday? Those baffling adverts coyly suggesting you need more fibre in your diet - or maybe it's oestrogen or hair that you're lacking - all seemed to have disappeared, leaving the carriages refreshingly blank and clear....... [continue]
Advertisement: Londonist Continues Below!
November 26, 2007
So, did you get up early and grab your Mark Titchner poster? We know some of you did. One of our lovely readers even let us know of an extra, added bonus thrill about this giveaway. A compo! Here's the deal: Each poster is individually numbered from 00001-25000. On Monday 3 December, TfL will pick a number in that range. The lucky person in possession of a poster with that number will win a...... [continue]
November 23, 2007
Further to our earlier post and readers' comments we've been in touch with Art on the Underground to clarify about the poster giveaway next week. Each day a different poster will be available from 8am at the 5 Underground stations: Kings Cross, Victoria, Waterloo, Paddington and Liverpool Street. The... [continue]
To celebrate the rebranding of the Platform for Art initiative as Art on the Underground, TfL are giving away specially commissioned posters at 5 Zone 1 tube stations all next week (bound to be a bunfight on Monday though, be prepared). Among the artists is Turner Prize nominated Mark Titchner and poster designs include a fictitious A-Z map and some snow capped mountains. 25,000 of each design have been produced and will be stacked...... [continue]
November 22, 2007
Toot toot! And honk, honk! For the London Transport Museum has finally reopened after two years and £22 million of renovation. Hot on the (w)heels of St Pancras. Typical: you wait years for a major nexus of transport heritage to open, and then two come along at once. The Covent Garden attraction tells the story of the trotting, crawling and whizzing of our city over the past 200 years. There’s also a section looking...... [continue]
Heathrow Airport: to expand or not to expand, that is the question. The debate can begin in earnest, as today Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly laid out options for consultation, including a potential third runway and sixth terminal. With Terminal 5 not even finished yet, it may seem premature to be discussing more construction work, but the Government stressed that it would take until 2020 for a new runway and terminal to be operational. Kelly...... [continue]
And so, for the next instalment of the Mayor's Indian Adventure. Day 4: Ken takes the train. Yes, our man of the people took a train from one side of Mumbai to the other and was captured smiling winsomely by a camera phone. As the local paper mused: Perhaps... [continue]
November 21, 2007
Londonist is fuming, literally and alas will be for quite some time – the £150 million plan to chill the tube looks set to be suspended. It’s deemed too expensive (shock, horror) by Transport for London, who has taken over from maintenance company Metronet. Of course our hopes of a cooler network were not that high – what with seemingly ludicrous plans to install ice under the seats or redirect cold water in Victoria –...... [continue]
November 19, 2007
Time Out recently presented St Pancras Station as their inaugural 'Wonder of London'. Profile Books goes a couple of stages further by including the terminus in its 'wonders of the world' series - buildings and monuments, such as the Colosseum, Stonehenge and the Forbidden City, whose 'names will be familiar to almost everyone'. We're not sure if the station is quite in that category yet. It's doubtful it has anything like the global and...... [continue]
November 18, 2007
Today marks 20 years since a dropped match started a blaze at King’s Cross tube station that killed 31 people. Smoking on the sub-surface portions of the Underground had been banned two years before the 1987 fire, but at the time smokers were still allowed to light up on... [continue]
November 15, 2007
It seems Ken Livingstone isn't content with the new, faster Eurostar, but wants to make London actually resemble Paris. He is proposing pedestrianised, tree-lined streets a la the French capital and even wants to get us our own version of the famous Paris Plage, the artificial beach that takes... [continue]
Advertisement: Londonist Continues Below!
November 14, 2007
It’s not all about St. Pancras, you know. (Although, to be honest, it is mostly.) Some First Great Western services into Paddington are a bit shit, MP implies. Overrated immature French plonk now available on the Gatwick Express from Victoria. Yippee. Major vexations for some East Sussex commuters travelling... [continue]
Having visited the new-look station at lunch time, we can confirm: that's one bastard of a roof. Such is the scale and magnificence of St Pancras International, the cleaners will be sweeping up a fine collection of dropped mandibles this evening. We've compiled a few images of the opening, for those of you who couldn't get there. This place really has to be seen to be believed. But first a video. Qype visits St...... [continue]
Unless there were leaves on the line, not enough station staff, delays at Paris holding everything up or industrial action on either side of the Channel, the first Eurostar train should be pulling into its new station at St Pancras this morning. We've had a sneak preview of what it's like and have been terribly excited about it so far, and at last, today, we get to see it in its full glory. We...... [continue]
November 13, 2007
News of a film installation to be unveiled at Rayners Lane and Sudbury Town stations shortly alerted us to the fact that TfL's jolly and diverse Platform for Art programme had undergone a rebrand and will be relaunching as Art on the Underground at the end of this month. There's not much in a name, of course, but always fans of wordplay and puns we rather liked "Platform for Art". However, TfL has opted...... [continue]
November 12, 2007
London Overground (LO) begins operations today. The new service takes over where Silverlink left off (we'll leave you to decide which particular circle of Hell that is). The stations and trains are now owned by Transport for London, with services operated by London Overground Rail Operations Limited. Practically speaking, this translates as follows: - Oyster cards now work on the benighted routes. - The Tube map has a new look. - All stations staffed...... [continue]
November 8, 2007
Ken Livingstone, bless him, has brought us six new buses that are more environmentally friendly than our existing red beasts. They'll soon be putting the green back into Greenwich on the 129 route, and chugging round the 360 route between E&C and Kensington. The new buses are to enter service alongside six that are already on the streets; but the Mayor isn't content yet. By 2012, he wants every new bus joining the fleet...... [continue]
November 7, 2007
This Sunday TfL take over the North London Line. Yes, the service also known as the loony line and infamous for fare dodging and criminal activity on unmanned stations is getting a rebrand. Goodbye (good riddance) Silverlink! Hello London Overground. The long neglected, feared and cursed service that links... [continue]
With the opening of St Pancras and its high-speed line to the continent, the approval of Crossrail, and glimpses of the futuristic bullet trains that will soon call London home, there are plenty of encouraging signs that Britain's rail network is in good health. They don't come much more inspiring than the former railway man who has set up his own rail service. Grand Central Rail was established in 2000 by former British Rail...... [continue]
November 6, 2007
Our much feted and stylish monarch opened the all-new and yet all-old St. Pancras terminal today after a 10 year revamp (of the station that is, not the Queen). The station is (as of next week) to be home to Eurostar after a 5.8 billion pound upgrade of the railway line between London and the coast (which now means trains can actually go as fast as they do on French soil instead of going shstikoff-shstikoff-shstikoff-all-the-way-home)....... [continue]
Had TfL existed in his time, the great Samuel Johnson may well have amended his famous aphorism to read "a man who is bored of London needs to hop on the number 19 bus". In its perambulation from Battersea to Finsbury Park, the 19 cuts a swath across the capital's economic and cultural barriers, revealing the world within one city that modern London manifests. Vogue has certainly been impressed by the number 19. The...... [continue]
Advertisement: Londonist Continues Below!
November 2, 2007
Forget supping champagne as you hurtle from shiny new St Pancras to Gare de Nord by Eurostar, soon we'll be considering a picturesque pedal to Paris. No doubt inspired by this summer's Tour de France prologue in England which took an ultra scenic route to the French capital, three... [continue]
The nice people from Docklands Light Rail have contacted us to respond to our report from a couple of days ago of an unintentionally unmanned DLR train carrying passengers between stations. Here's what they had to say: The Docklands Light Railway can confirm that on 30 October 2007, at approximately... [continue]