FTL

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 Mayor launches Action Plan for Disabled Londoners Maggie Heraty writes: FTL welcomes the Action Plan for Deaf and Disabled People launched by the Mayor in September. This follows Transport for London's (TfL) Equity in Motion 2024 plan which set out to create a fair, accessible and inclusive transport network. TfL recognised the unfair barriers to travel around lack of accessibility, affordability and concerns

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 The eighth Healthy Streets Scorecard, sponsored by eight sustainable transport groups, including FTL, was launched on 7th July. The project scores the 32 London boroughs plus the City of London on various criteria measuring their commitment to sustainability. The criteria are divided between input indicators – the action boroughs take – and output indicators – measuring how successful they are at carrying out the

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 Could the sprawling Angerstein Roundabout in SE London be replaced with a more compact junction, with all the local benefits that would bring? John Julius Angerstein (1732-1823) was the son of a Russian empress, born in St Petersburg, he came to this country at the age of 15, became a Lloyds underwriter and art collector. He amassed wealth linked to the transatlantic slave economy: the National Gallery now ackn

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 London benefits from around 400 miles of signed walking routes, ranging from the 15-mile Lea Valley Walk to the 150-mile London Outer Orbital Path (LOOP) encircling London. Transport for London lists them and provides links to detailed maps here. The self-explanatory Thames Path follows the Thames within London for around 35 miles (56 kilometres) from the Surrey border at Hampton Court to the Thames Barrier, fr

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 Thameslink services began in 1988, with the reopening of the link between Farringdon and Blackfriars, but the present scheme was committed in 1996, when Railtrack was given £600 million to build upgrades allowing up to 24 trains per hour. The upgrades finally opened in May 2018 with trains, signalling and stations much changed since 1988 or even 1996, but after a poor start until crews from different operators we

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter October 2026 After several delays, a draft London Plan has emerged from County Hall to replace the one drafted in 2017 and finally approved after government interventions in 2021. The Mayor hopes this one will be implemented in time for the next Mayoral election in May 2028. At first sight the new plan is slimmer than the current edition, but much is removed into Annexes. Annex D deals with transport. The main changes r

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 Since the extension of the Elizabeth line to Heathrow passenger numbers on the Heathrow Express (HEX) have plummeted – there are now an average of 80 passengers on each 460-capacity train. A recently published position paper from Future Transport London1 suggests that this is an inefficient use of the heavily used lines out of Paddington and that the contract, which expires in 2028, should not be renewed. The Eliz

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 The scheme put forward by business group Camden Town Unlimited in 2023 to open an elevated public park and greenway from Camden Town to King's Cross alongside the North London rail line has been ‘paused’. The proposal was to make use of currently disused railway land alongside the live railway. Future Transport London objected to the scheme principally because the land is likely to be needed in the future to incre

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 By Neil Roth Future Transport London had been campaigning (notably in Camden New Journal) for years against the proposed ‘temporary’ Camden Highline walkway, the collapse of which was announced on 12th May 2026. It was a campaign on which all members are agreed: that the two, currently disused North London Line (NLL) tracks between Camden Road station and York Way, should be returned to railway use instead. What

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 By Andrew Bosi The High Speed 2 railway rivals Sir Keir Starmer for the number of resets yet it clings on to its existence albeit in a truncated form. The latest announcement by the Secretary of State for Transport followed the publication of the Lovegrove report into what went wrong, and some interim recommendations from Mark Wild’s on-going review of how the project should be reset. The Lovegrove report is usefu

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 By Dick Dunmore In 2003, Transport for London introduced a Contactless alternative to magnetic ticket readers and optical scanners. Instead, yellow electronic ticket readers transmit a Near Field Communication (NFC) signal powerful enough to charge and operate a circuit on chipped card at a distance of up to 40 millimetres. Passengers buy and use Oyster cards, which can store a Travelcard, a pass such as a Freedom P

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026 Mayor’s bid to run Great Northern Inners The Mayor has submitted a proposal to take the clumsily named ‘Great Northern Inners’ out of GBR control and absorb them into London Overground. The lines from Moorgate extend beyond London to Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage. They include the Hertford Loop, which would need the kind of improvements associated with London Overground if plans for a new town at Crews Hill

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter April 2026 SL11 Neil Roth reports: new Superloop route S11 seems to have made a good start. Its scheduled 45 minutes compares with 60 minutes for the 472 which it has replaced. His journey took slightly more than 45 minutes because of roadworks but loadings were good, enhanced by bus enthusiasts. The average speed of about 9mph for the 472 is now about 12mph for the S11, a good average compared with general London bus speeds

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter April 2026 By Neil Roth In an article dated 13/01/26, Murky Depths says that TfL ….seemingly fail to realise many in Thamesmead – both existing and future residents – will want to reach Abbey Wood or Woolwich for the Elizabeth line and so persist with the flawed DLR project which will do nothing to improve that situation.’ The current DLR project is intended to serve new housing on both sides of the river: at Beckton Riversi

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter April 2026 This is the final version of Dick Dunmore’s series on accessing underground rail stations Lifts and locations The provision of lifts at new stations has led to two new issues. First, avoiding steps completely on long journeys still involves careful study of lift guides like the one below, which suggests that merely to cross Paddington from Elizabeth line to Paddington Basin means finding and using six lifts. On a r

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter April 2026 By Andrew Bosi The recent decline in bus passenger numbers now exercising the Mayor and GLA Transport Committee is not a new phenomenon. From 1958 to the early 1980s there was steady decline in bus usage. In the ten years to December 1969 the scheduled fleet fell from 7756 to 6900, if Country buses and Green Line services are included. Scheduled red buses fell from 6451 to 5785. This decline reflected a growth in p

The Future Transport London newsletter has been produced three times a year. This will now be increased to four times a year so this issue is April. We are still looking for a new editor and I would be delighted to hear from anyone who feels they would like to take this on. Please email me on chrisjbarker46@gmail.com for further information. As usual we cover a variety of different forms of sustainable transport in this issue and conclude Dick Dunmore’s survey of methods of

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter April 2026 By Vincent Stops FTL Newsletter no. 51 (May 24) led on the controversy around SUBBs – Shared User Bus Boarders, the type of floating bus stops where passengers must cross a cycle lane to get between a bus stop and a bus. In November 2025 a pause in the installation of SUBBs was announced by the DfT. Now SUBBs have come under further criticism, following the publication of updated DfT guidance on the installation o

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter January 2026 Plans for Oxford Street On Sunday afternoon, 21 st September, thousands of people thronged Oxford Street eager to experience it totally free of traffic. The closure of this half mile section was a foretaste of what Mayor Sadiq Khan hopes will become permanent. He was present at the opening of the street and said the one-day trial banning traffic from part of Oxford Street marks ‘the day the fight back began to r

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter January 202 6 In mid November City AM reported Housing Secretary Steve Reed as suggesting that housing developments around railway stations would be ‘permitted development’, ie not requiring planning permission. Mayor Sadiq Khan opposed building on the green belt in his first two election manifestos but more recently has changed his view. There is some misconception of the green belt. It is not all green pastures. It wa