Sadiq Khan has been urged to do more to improve public transport options for people travelling within and between outer London boroughs, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
London still does not have good enough connectivity between outer boroughs to discourage car use, the mayor has been warned.
Keith Prince, a Reform UK member of the London Assembly who sits on the body’s transport committee, credits City Hall for boosting the capital’s passenger capacity in recent years, especially with the introduction of the Elizabeth Line.
But he says it’s still too difficult for Londoners to travel between different points in outer London by public transport, suggesting an M25 bus and new Superloop that follows the route of the North Circular as solutions.
Khan and Transport for London (TfL) resolved to solve the connectivity issue through an expansion of the Superloop network – first proposed in 2008 under Boris Johnson – to connect town centres and travel hubs in outer London.
There are now twelve operational routes around London, including one launched between Gants Hill and Rainham earlier this month, and three more in the pipeline.
However, Enfield Dispatch revealed in July that TfL had ditched plans to introduce a Superloop route between Barnet and Stratford, via Enfield Town, Chingford and Walthamstow.
And while Khan pledged to double the number of Superloop services from ten to 20 during the 2024 City Hall election campaign, current plans would only take the total to 15 routes.
Prince says the mayor needs to be more radical if he wants to achieve his aim of ensuring 80% of journeys are taken via public transport or ‘active travel’ – walking or cycling – by 2041.
At the Urban Transport Group fringe event at the Reform UK conference last weekend, Prince told attendees that London had many lessons for other major UK cities to learn from – such as the full transition to contactless payments and a joined up, simplified fare system – but suggested there was much room for improvement.
“In London, we’ve got capacity sorted – the Elizabeth Line was the last big jump, really, and that has made journeys much quicker and easier,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) after appearing on an urban transport panel at Reform UK’s annual conference in Birmingham last week.
“The challenge now, and what the Mayor has tried to do with the Superloop, is boost connectivity.”
Citing his own borough of Havering, where he leads the council, he said a journey into central London was far easier than a shorter trip from the north to the south of the area, and said the new SL12 Superloop route doesn’t go far enough to solve this.
Instead, he said, City Hall should pioneer an “internal orbital bus” that runs around the North Circular and an express bus on the M25 that meets with local bus services just off the motorway.
“That way you’ll be able to get to where you want to go a lot, lot quicker,” he added.
“Sometimes I go to Lewisham and places like that by public transport, it’s horrendous – what would be a 45-minute car journey can turn into a two-hour transport journey.
“If you want to encourage people to do things, it’s if you’ve got the services that people need and want, then they will use them. But if you don’t, they’re still going to want to use their cars, otherwise it just makes life a lot more difficult. It makes a lot more congestion.
“For example, the decision to introduce a whole load of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). What used to be a five-minute drive to the local Screwfix turned into 45 minutes in the car – and there was no bus service, so I was on the road nine times more than I would have been before the LTNs, causing more pollution.
“Even the 20mph limits, in my opinion, means people are in their cars for longer.
“These restrictions don’t stop people using their vehicles – it just means there’s more pollution as a result.”
He said he had relayed such issues to the party’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, adding: “I’ve had lots of chats with Laila about transport and she’s very switched on. And I tell you, the one thing that she will do, that this mayor has absolutely, massively failed on, is she’ll get London moving.
“London traffic now has come down to a halt. You can almost walk quicker and you can certainly jog quicker than a London bus – that really has to be dealt with.”
A TfL spokesperson said: “We are committed to providing a comprehensive, reliable bus service across the breadth of London and keep the network under constant review to ensure we invest our resources where they are needed most.
“The mayor has previously outlined plans for further Superloop routes which operate across London, and we continue work to look at implementing them in the future.
“In relation to the M25, given that it is a multi-lane motorway with a national speed limit, it would not be suitable for scheduled bus services to operate on.”
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