The Overground

An interesting Sustainable Development select committee meeting this Tuesday evening. Darren Johnson (given his other hat as a GLA member) obviously knows his transport stuff, and we're getting into the weighty business of trying to understand the needs and options for rail transport to serve Lewisham. This meeting was mainly a briefing from the Council's Head of Transport, Darien Goodwin, before we hear from witnesses from rail companies and TfL.

The biggest two problems with railways (IMHO) are the enormous lead times (meaning you have to predict demand about 20 years ahead, gambling on all sorts of unpredictables like whether everyone will be tele-working by 2025); and the fact that London's so crowded with railway tracks, roads, hills and everything else, that to create any new routes you have to use complex and expensive engineering to tunnel or bridge to where you want to go. Oh, for the simplicity of India or Arizona, where they just move further out into some empty desert to expand!

An important and relatively short-term improvement for Perry Vale will be the arrival of TfL-operated tube train services at Forest Hill station by 2010. Their press release on Tuesday shows they've been commendably frugal (or just boringly unimaginative?) with the cosmetics of branding it, and are going to use all the same signs as on the tube Londoners know and love(?), but with "UNDER..." rubbed-out and replaced by "OVER..." (image above (c) Transport for London 2005).

The report from the last Sustainable Development investigation, into waste recycling, went to Mayor and Cabinet last night (Wednesday), and all our recommendations were accepted. I'll be looking out for a photo-illustrated article in Lewisham Life real soon - although I'm told the operators of the MRF (the machinery that magically separates paper from glass from plastic from cans, etc) are a bit 'shy' about pictures of it giving away their trade secrets to competitors. Hmmm...

Bandwaggons and Cattle-waggons*

It's good to see that the long-haul work on improving Forest Hill Station being done by Len Duvall - and by local councillors for the old Horniman and Forest Hill wards over many years - is getting some recognition - in the Sydenham Society's newsletter and in the Mercury (30-Aug, page 8) this week.

I know I've been battering away at Network Rail and all their predecessors since at least 10 years ago, on issues like non-stepped access to the Southbound platform, and the state of the pedestrian subway under the railway. I've recently been discussing plans for some simple-but-effective improvements that could be made to the subway, with members of the Sydenham Society and the Forest Hill Society.

Also good to see (on the same letters page) that the new LibDem councillors in the new Forest Hill ward (which used to be Horniman ward) have also noticed that Forest Hill Station is an important part of keeping Forest Hill town centre alive-and-well. I welcome the extra pressure that they may be able to put on to get more improvements. I fear they'll probably try to pretend that nothing happened before they came along; and try to take the credit for what does get achieved by Labour councillors, Labour MP Jim Dowd, Len (the Labour GLA Member) and the Labour Mayors (Ken and Steve); but that's to be expected of them and I'm sure most people (who've lived in Forest Hill and Perry Vale a bit longer than some of their councillors) won't be fooled by it.

Their concern for the "much-deserving Perry Vale side" of the station is very touching - but I think we're managing as well as anyone could, thanks! I hope they understand that this sort of regeneration is often a long and never-ending battle, and we'll see if they have the stamina for it. But never fear, the "prefab-like shabby...dilapidated disaster" on the Forest Hill side won't be neglected by me, either, because it's what most Perry Vale residents (including me) have to look at and use when we go to work by train.

[* "Cattle-waggons" is not at all fair (merely for the sake of a slightly witty title) on Southern, who have now got rid of all the 'slam-door' passenger coaches and have some very nice new rolling stock for a lot of commuter journeys. My only current beef with them is their non-acceptance of Oyster Pay-as-You-Go - which I'm also doggedly working at.]