Greenwich.co.uk

Greenwich news and information

Fighting for a better deal for passengers during the redevelopment of London Bridge station

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London Bridge is a dark, cramped, overcrowded and poorly designed station. It is by no means an adequate gateway into the capital and often adds to the misery of what are (all too frequently) unreliable services for those travelling into central London from Blackheath, Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich or Plumstead.

Its redevelopment as part of the Thameslink Programme will therefore be welcomed by many that hope that it will provide for an increase in the punctuality and reliability of services and a transport hub that is more spacious, better connected and easier to navigate.

However, managing the associated disruption to Greenwich line passengers during the redevelopment phase is going to be a major challenge and it’s crucial that everything feasible is done to mitigate it.

[Read more…]

Travel misery for Greenwich train users

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Greenwich passengers face a nightmare journey home today after Southeastern put together a revised timetable in order to cope with the snowfall and freezing temperatures.

A statement on the company website says:

“Freezing temperatures, snow and ice have been forecast over the next few days. To ensure we’re able to run the best service possible in these weather conditions a revised Metro and Mainline timetable will be in place from Wednesday 6 January 2010.”

Tonight’s final Southeastern service out of Cannon Street to Dartford, calling at Greenwich, Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Charlton will depart at 19:47.

The news has angered many passengers, especially as the snow on the ground is not yet as bad as has been predicted.

Updated 21.16

Local MP, Nick Raynsford, described the Southeastern’s train services as the “weakest link” in the local transport network and accused railway bosses of failing to learn the lessons of last February’s snow.

In a letter to Charles Horton, the Managing Director of Southeastern Trains, Raynsford writes:

“This morning there were no problems with buses running through Greenwich & Woolwich; the DLR was running without delays and the Jubilee line through North Greenwich was running without incident. I understand from TFL that de-icing trains were run on overground tube lines to lessen the impact of the weather on the underground network.

You will, therefore, understand my dismay at hearing that trains run by Southeastern through the borough on Metro services were at a frequency of two per hour during rush hour despite the relatively light snow fall in South East London on the night of the 5th January. I am also quite taken aback to hear from Mike Gibson at Southeastern that the last train to Greenwich tonight will depart at 19.51.

Given that other forms of transport were running without problems it is unfortunate that overground rail services were the weak link in the network. Following the disruption from the snow last February I would have hoped that appropriate contingency plans would be in place to deal with snowfall to keep the network running. Given that the cold snap is forecast to continue for some time I hope that Southeastern will put a plan into place to keep the network running throughout the winter.”

Andrew Gilligan: Rail Fares To Fall Tomorrow – Shock News

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SO there I was, all set to write an angry piece about Boris Johnson’s “massive fare rises.” (The fare changes happen tomorrow, by the way). But then I thought: you know, I’d better check the new fares, hadn’t I?

And guess what? If I use my new Oyster card, the ticket I most often buy (an off-peak single from Greenwich to London) hasn’t gone up at all. It has in fact fallen – by nearly 30 per cent, from £2.40 to £1.70. (If I travel in the peak, it will be £2.10 – still a reduction of 12.5 per cent.)

Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Blackheath single fares fall even further, by up to 35%.

The ticket I occasionally buy (an off-peak return from Greenwich to London) hasn’t gone up either. It too has fallen, by 3 per cent, from £3.50 to £3.40. Peak returns have fallen by 2 per cent, from £4.30 to £4.20.

Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Blackheath return fares fall by 2.5 per cent.

The ticket I always used to buy before I got a bike (a one-day Travelcard) hasn’t gone up. It is still £5.60. The tickets I would buy if I commuted to work by train – period Travelcards – haven’t gone up. They are the same price, too. All this applies almost universally across the zones, by the way.

In other words, virtually every National Rail journey in Greater London will in fact be cheaper, in real terms, this year than it was last year.

It really does serve me right for believing this recent attempt by a declared political partisan to spin the change as “London’s great train robbery” in which “voiceless commuters get screwed again.”

Of course, if you look hard enough, like he does, you can find someone who’s going to pay more. But you do have to look pretty hard (in this case, someone who decides to carry on buying off-peak returns on a paper ticket will indeed pay more).

Or you have to be deliberately misleading. Look, for instance, at that sly reference to evening peak single fares being higher than off-peak for the first time; no mention of the fact that even the evening peak fares will still be lower than they are now.

Look, to take another example, at the claim that “South London families” will “lose out in [the] Oyster upgrade.” Well, it’s true that a concession on the Tubes allowing under-10s to travel for free with an adult is not going to be extended to the National Rail network south of the river. But since we never had such a concession in the first place, it is not something that we have “lost in the Oyster upgrade,” is it?

You have, I suppose, to admire the hours which must have been spent combing through the detail in order to find examples this obscure. But the desired political effect is likely to be rather short-term. Because from tomorrow, real train passengers will start paying real fares. And when almost all of them find that, contrary to the propaganda, their prices have not gone up, it’s going to hurt the credibility of the wolf-cryers.

The benefits of Oyster are not just limited to lower fares, either. Never again will I have to allow five minutes to buy a ticket. Never again will I have time-consuming confrontations with penalty-fare Nazis at the other end.

There certainly are losers from tomorrow’s fare changes – on the buses, where the single fare rises by 20 per cent. A headline about Greenwich’s “great bus robbery” would have been honest – and might also have provided a genuine attack line about Boris’s cynicism in holding down the fares of rail commuters while hammering bus passengers, who tend to be rather poorer and less Tory-voting.

But for rail users in general and Greenwich rail users in particular, this is a boon. Just remember your little piece of blue plastic.

Rail fares (Oyster) to London from…

Offpeak Peak Travelcard
Single Return Single Return 1 Day 7 Day
Greenwich was 2.40 3.50 2.40 4.30 5.60 25.80
Greenwich now 1.70 3.40 2.10 4.20 5.60 25.80
Maze Hill was 3.10 4.10 3.10 5.30 6.30 30.20
Maze Hill now 2.00 4.00 2.60 5.20 6.30 30.20
Westcombe Park was 3.10 4.10 3.10 5.30 6.30 30.20
Westcombe Park now 2.00 4.00 2.60 5.20 6.30 30.20
Blackheath was 3.10 4.10 3.10 5.30 6.30 30.20
Blackheath now 2.00 4.00 2.60 5.20 6.30 30.20

New train timetables come into effect

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The biggest shake up of overground rail services for years came into effect today with the introduction of the new train timetables.

Southeastern say that the new timetables “mean an entirely new service pattern throughout the parts of Kent, East Sussex and South East London served by the company”.

For information about how find out how the new train services will effect passengers at Greenwich stations, see our useful guide to the new timetables.

Greenwich.co.uk Guide To… The New Train Timetables

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It’s the biggest change to hit Greenwich commuters since the DLR and Tube came to town a decade ago. From 13 December, Southeastern rips up its train timetables and starts again, promising a better service for south-east London’s train passengers.

The changes are a side-effect of some of Kent’s services being switched to the new high-speed line to Stratford and St Pancras, freeing up more room on the congested lines through London Bridge.

They also have the future in mind, preparing passengers for more changes when the Thameslink service is expanded from 2015, when the connection between the Greenwich line and the tracks to Charing Cross is expected to be severed as part of a major rebuild at London Bridge.

Southeastern says the changes have come after a consultation programme some years ago – although most passengers won’t recall being asked what they thought. Some will gain, some will lose out, and teething problems are likely after the timetable’s first major rewrite in decades.

The change also comes in time for the switch to Oyster fares on 2 January.

How does this affect you? greenwich.co.uk has pored over the new timetables to see what you can expect.

Morning rush hour from Westcombe Park (and Maze Hill two minutes later)

The service remains sparse before 0630, with just three early Charing Cross trains before then, leaving Westcombe Park half-hourly from 0527. But then there’s a new train to Cannon Street at 0642, and another at 0658. Then there’s a gap until a Charing Cross train at 0717, meaning some adjustments for early commuters.

Between 0725-0905 there will be still be 10 trains to central London from Maze Hill and Westcombe Park – but they will be more evenly timed, at roughly 10 minute intervals. There’ll be five trains to Charing Cross and five to Cannon Street (instead of six and four).

The 0901 will be the last direct Charing Cross train of the morning – then there’s Cannon Street trains at 0915 and 0927 before the new daytime service kicks in.

Morning rush hour from Greenwich

Until now, Greenwich has had the same service as Maze Hill and Westcombe Park in the morning rush hour. But the new timetable gives Greenwich additional trains, with five new services at 0728, 0750, 0810, 0830 and 0850, all to London Bridge and Cannon Street only.

These are the trains controversially switched from Blackheath to free up more room at Lewisham. Passengers at Charlton will also benefit from these trains.

Once the last direct Charing Cross train has left at 0907, there are Cannon Street trains at 0921 and 0933, then the daytime service begins.

During the day

Greenwich passengers lose Charing Cross trains, but Maze Hill and Westcombe Park passengers gain two extra trains each hour. All three stations now get a train every ten minutes to Cannon Street between 0930 and 1900.

Coming home, trains leave Cannon Street at 27, 37, 47, 57, 07 and 17 past the hour from 0927 to 1627.

Coming home to Greenwich, Maze Hill and Westcombe Park

The evening rush hour timetable is as haphazard as the old one, but with a shift in services towards Cannon Street. There are now just six evening rush hour trains from Charing Cross – at 1645, 1706, 1729, 1750, 1812 and 1835, calling at all stations. Otherwise, you’ll need to change at London Bridge.

If you’re going from Cannon Street to Greenwich – or Charlton – you’re in luck, there’s a train roughly every 10 minutes from 1640 to 1840.

If you’re going to Maze Hill or Westcombe Park, you’re less lucky – it’s every 20 minutes, although these are supplemented by the Charing Cross trains if you change at London Bridge.

After 1845, there’s a train from Cannon Street every 10 minutes to all stations until 2000.

Evening trains

The new timetable sees no boost to late evening trains, with four trains an hour through London Bridge until 2230, then, puzzlingly, the service reduces to two per hour from Charing Cross to coincide with pubs, cinemas and theatres chucking out. Trains run from Cannon Street until 2100.

The last train from Charing Cross is later – at 2356. As now, an additional train calls at New Cross, Lewisham, Blackheath and Charlton at 0015.

Coming into central London, the service is roughly the same.

Saturday trains

Early trains stay every 30 minutes, but from 0800-1900, there are six trains per hour from Westcombe Park, Maze Hill and Greenwich to Cannon Street. There are then four trains until 2030, then back to two trains each hour. Direct trains to Charing Cross run early in the morning and after 1925.

A similar pattern applies from central London, with direct trains from Charing Cross before 0800 and from 1956. Last trains are the same as Mondays to Fridays.

Sunday trains

There’s very little change to Sunday trains, with four trains per hour – two to Charing Cross, two to London Bridge – from Westcombe Park, Maze Hill and Greenwich between 0900 and 1900. Between 0700 and 0900, and after 1900, there are two trains per hour to Charing Cross.

The last train back from Charing Cross is at 2330, followed by the 0015 to New Cross, Lewisham, Blackheath and Charlton.

Want to know more?

The full timetable can be found here – it’s table 7b.

Vehicle Fire Forces Blackwall Tunnel Closure

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The Blackwall Tunnel has been closed northbound and is not expected to reopen until Wednesday after a vehicle fire yesterday.

The incident happened on Sunday at around 17.45 and  two people were taken to hospital – one due to smoke inhalation and one with an ankle injury.

Transport for London say that the road surface, lighting and CCTV systems were damaged in the fire and TFL engineers are working 24 hours a day to repair the damage.

The closure of the northbound tunnel has caused gridlock on surrounding roads, with motorists advised to use the Dartford river crossing, Rotherhithe Tunnel, Woolwich Ferry or Tower Bridge to cross the Thames.

Greenwich Council responded to the closure by saying that it underlined the need for additional river crossings.

Cllr Peter Brooks, Deputy Leader of the Council, said, “The travel difficulties experienced this morning – and which are forecast to last at two more days – starkly underline the dangers for Londoners of relying so heavily on the Blackwall Tunnel.

“Greenwich Council has consistently pressed for a package of further river crossings, to relieve the pressure on the crossing at Blackwall, which is why we were extremely disappointed at the decision of the Mayor of London to scrap plans for the Thames Gateway crossing.

“We are continuing to press the Mayor to put the Thames Gateway crossing – together with a new crossing at Silvertown – firmly back on the agenda.”

UPDATE: The Blackwall tunnel reopened tonight after TfL engineers worked quickly to repair fire damage, well ahead of the initial estimate that it wouldn’t reopen until Wednesday.

Garrett Emmerson, Chief Operating Officer, London Streets, said: ‘I would like to pay tribute to the tireless work of the emergency services, tunnel engineers and many others who have ensured we have been able to reopen the tunnel so quickly.

Pay As You Go Oyster Arrives in Greenwich

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Greenwich commuters will finally be able to use Oyster pay-as-you-go for rail journeys from 2 January, after years of negotiations between Transport for London and the capital’s private rail operators.

But there’s a sting in the tail for some rail passengers, with cheaper off-peak tickets withdrawn for those who don’t use Oyster cards, and higher fares for all in the evening rush hour.

Many local passengers have been using Oyster on local rail services for some time, but because they have Travelcards loaded onto their tickets.

Now all passengers will be able to use the smartcards to pay for individual journeys, just as Tube and Docklands Light Railway users have done for the past six years. On the Greenwich line, this means the cards will be as valid as far out as Slade Green, on the edge of zone 6.

From 2 January, passengers who don’t use Oyster cards will be charged a flat rate of £2.40 from Greenwich and other zone 2 stations to London Bridge, Waterloo East, Charing Cross or Cannon Street, with a return costing £4.30.

Those travelling from Maze Hill or Westcombe Park, in zone 3, will be charged £3.10 single, or £5.30 return.

But passengers who do use Oyster cards will be charged cheaper rates, with all journeys being charged as singles.

From Greenwich, passengers for central London will have to pay £2.10 if their journey takes place in the morning or evening rush hour – between 6.30am and 9.30am, or 4pm-7pm.

If their journey avoids those times, or is at weekends, then they’ll be charged £1.70.

Oyster card holders from Maze Hill or Westcombe Park will pay £2.60 for a peak journey, or £2 off-peak.

The new system also means passengers can combine rail and Tube/DLR journeys. If their journey does not include Zone 1, it’s at no extra cost. Someone travelling from Maze Hill to South Quay DLR via Greenwich would be charged £1.80 in peak hours, £1.50 at other times – the same fare as Maze Hill to Deptford.

But there’s an extra £1.10 added for journeys through zone 1 – so Maze Hill to Goodge Street will cost £3.70 or £3.10 single.

A cap will apply on fares, so passengers making different journeys during the day will find they pay no more than the appropriate rate for a one day Travelcard.

For people using paper Travelcards or season tickets, it’s business as usual.

However, the Oyster deal will not make travel as convenient as some users might like.

Passengers with Travelcards who need to travel outside their zones will be expected to get a free “Oyster Extension Permit” from a ticket machine or ticket office, or Oyster shop, before they travel to a National Rail station.

So someone with a zones 1-3 Travelcard will need to get a permit before travelling to Abbey Wood, in zone 5, for example. However, permits can be picked up weeks or months in advance, and will stay on Oyster cards until they are actually used.

Gold Card holders – who have annual Travelcards – will still have to buy paper tickets to get their usual one-third discount on tickets outside their zones.

And all passengers wanting to travel to Dartford or deeper into Kent will need to buy a paper ticket as normal.

As part of a separate agreement, Thames Clippers river services have already started to accept Oyster pay-as-you-go tickets, offering a 10% discount on normal cash fares, while Travelcard holders will get a 30% discount.

A £5.80 single ticket from Greenwich or QEII piers to central London will be reduced to £4.80 with Oyster PAYG, or £3.55 with a Travelcard.

Andrew Gilligan: Progress Report

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THIS COLUMN has been going for just under six months, and there’s already been a bit of progress on some of the topics I’ve been banging on about in that time. I definitely wouldn’t claim credit – but perhaps in one or two cases, the publicity helped push things along a little.

One of my very first pieces, in October, in Greenwich’s flagship shopping street, Nelson Road, with four shops empty and a general air of neglect. Three of the empty shops have now been filled, and not with chains either – not bad going in a recession – and the street has a perkier feel.

In February we pointed out the equally recession-salient fact that the , and offerered better quality food, than our main supermarket, Somerfield.

Now Dring’s the butchers in Royal Hill, one of the shops I mentioned, tells me that it has been shortlisted as “Best Local Shop” in the ITV London/ Smooth Radio Love London Awards. Congratulations, guys: thoroughly well deserved – I bought some chicken from Dring’s the other day and it was ace. Best of luck for the awards ceremony at the Cafe de Paris on 24 April.

Earlier this week, Boris Johnson announced that the Thames Clipper river service would take Oyster pay-as-you-go from November, something for which I campaigned in this space in February. Later this year, this column, my newspaper the Standard, a major think-tank and a number of key political figures in London will be making a great deal more noise about how to improve the riverbus: watch this space.

The biggest result against the forces of folly, though, has been in helping get TfL’s grotesque “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” completely cancelled, something which happened last week. As I wrote in November,  this scheme sounded impressive – but was in fact nothing more than the world’s most expensive bus route.

It would simply have replaced the existing 472 service from North Greenwich to Thamesmead, using the same sort of rubber-tyred diesel buses, running at the exactly same frequency, and along almost exactly the same route and roads. (There would have been a tiny amount of new bus-only road in the Woolwich Arsenal development and in Western Way, near Belmarsh.)

It was the rest of us who would have noticed the difference. The GWT was expected to cost £20 million – absurd enough for a scheme offering no real new benefits beyond a fancy name. By this year, however, the cost had risen to £46 million – more than the entire annual bus subsidy for the whole of Wales!

The cancellation caused some predictable gibbering from the kind of people who still can’t accept that they no longer live in the golden days of economic boom and Ken Livingstone, with great tides of dosh lapping around to be flung at any pointless vanity project that shines in the light.

GWT’s demise left the people of the east of the borough “again bereft of an adequate transport network,” stormed Chris Roberts, Labour leader of Greenwich Council. “At a time when the Government is quite rightly looking for infrastructure projects to support the economy and keep people in work, the Mayor of London is cancelling them.”

One person Roberts’ furious denunciations understandably neglected to mention was the local MP, Nick Raynsford – also Labour – who said last year that he was dropping his support for the scheme because “I no longer consider it justifying the substantial costs involved.”

Raynsford is right. The GWT was in fact a conscious and gigantic con-trick on the long-suffering people of Thamesmead – deceiving them that they were getting, in Roberts’ words, a new “transport network” or “infrastructure project” when in fact they were getting neither of those things.

It would actually have reduced the chances of Thamesmead getting the real transport “infrastructure project” it needs, a tram or rail link, because the bureaucrats would have been able to wave the existence of GWT in the faces of anyone who asked.

So for the sake not just of taxpayer value but of the transport needs of the east of the borough, we should celebrate GWT’s demise this week.

Andrew Gilligan: Lost In The Machine

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FOR A few kinds of simple customer transaction, machines are as good as people: taking out cash from a bank, buying a ticket to park your car. But for anything with any element of complication or choice, they are lousy.
 
Buying a ticket at the machine at the “Greenwich end” of Greenwich station takes four or five times as long as buying one at the ticket office.  Even for the simplest journey, to London, you have to go through two pages on the touchscreen; for most others, you have to press as many as ten buttons. God help you if you are using a railcard. Almost invariably, the machine will reject one or more of the coins you put in; you have to reinsert them, sometimes several times, and sometimes it will never accept them – a problem if you have no more change. Once you have fed in all the coins, there is then a pause before the ticket is grudgingly printed and delivered – a pause usually just long enough to allow you to miss your train.
 
Tourists and others not familiar with the machines take a long time over each step, further lengthening the process. None of the machines is the same – there are three different kinds at Greenwich alone, one involving an even more fiddly little wheel that you have to twiddle. And if there is more than one person in your party, you have to repeat the ticket-buying process all over again (unless you are quick enough to spot the multiple-tickets option on some machines.) 
 
If the ticket office ever happens to be closed during the day, a long and slow-moving queue quickly builds up at the “Greenwich end” machine. And none of the machines, so far as I know, can give directions, tell you what train to catch, or warn you, before you’ve paid over your money, that the service is a bit dodgy today and you might like to try another route.
 
Remember all this when our beloved local train operator, Southeastern, comes forward with proposals to close the ticket offices at our local stations, or reduce their opening hours, and replace them with machines. It hasn’t happened yet: plans a few years ago for ticket office closures were defeated, and have not so far returned. But it is happening now on other train companies, and it will almost certainly soon come to south-east London too.
 
Of course, if Southeastern would like publicly to pledge in the comments section that there will be no reductions in its ticket office hours, I’d be most happy to stand corrected. But I shan’t hold my breath.
 
The fact is that the privatised railways are in deep trouble. Their operating costs are exorbitant (public subsidy to the network is several times greater than it was under BR, and fares have risen far above inflation, for a service certainly no better and arguably worse than BR’s). During the boom years, the rail companies could get away with loading their extravagance and inefficiency on to the rest of us; passengers did seem prepared, if not exactly content, to suffer yearly above-inflation fare rises and rotten services.
 
But now, the recession has put whole financial model of railway privatisation at risk. Passenger numbers are likely to crash very soon, as more people lose their jobs. Fare rises are indexed to inflation in July each year, plus one per cent; inflation this July is likely to be pretty near zero. The train operators have already been pleading with the Government to drop the rule and allow them to raise fares by the usual larcenous amounts. Today, perhaps surprisingly, the transport minister, Lord Adonis, told the Commons that he would refuse those demands.
 
So a double whammy is in effect: fewer passengers, no fare increases. With any luck, some of the companies will be unable to meet their franchise commitments and will have to hand back the keys to the Government. We will start to achieve renationalisation, a sane and unified railway, by stealth, and for nothing. Bring it on, I say.
 
Some companies, however, may try an interim option, of trying to cut costs. Not, of course, cutting their own fat-cat salaries and bonuses; probably not cutting dividends to shareholders; not trying to squeeze out the enormous waste in the Balkanised system – some of it, to be fair, the fault of Network Rail and the train leasing companies rather than theirs.
 
No, as Keith Ludeman, the ultimate boss of Southeastern, says, the option they will be trying first is “going to the Department [for Transport] and asking to take services out.” Cutting actual trains is quite complicated – involving negotiations with other operators and Network Rail as well as the DfT – although train lengths can be shortened. The service most at risk of being “taken out” is staffing at stations. Already Southeastern’s website tells visitors that the weekday opening hours of Greenwich station are “unknown.” Not to me, they’re not – the ticket office is currently supposed to be open until at least 7.30pm every weeknight.
 
Even a staffing cut has to be approved by the DfT. So it is our task to bring pressure to bear to ensure that “unknown” does not turn into “unstaffed.”

Andrew Gilligan: We Are Sailing

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Thames Clippers

IN THIS week’s absurd public transport meltdown, one of the very few links between Greenwich and the rest of the world which mostly kept going was also the least well-known, but arguably the best one, of all.

Even now, astonishingly few people seem to realise that there is a fast, regular and frequent riverbus service between two piers in Greenwich and central London – with rush-hour and evening service to Woolwich, too. It runs every 20 minutes for most of the day – see the timetable on the Thames Clippers website here – and on the fairly rare occasions when I don’t cycle into town, it’s my method of choice.

I several years ago largely gave up on mainstream public transport – a course of action I cannot recommend too highly. Buses and tube, in particular, are now exercises in low-level misery; until you stop using them, you just don’t realise quite how much they blight your life, how much time and mental energy they waste and how much money they screw out of you.

But there remain a few public transport options that are a genuine pleasure to use – and now, with the roads still a bit slippery for cycling and the Southeastern trains not back to a full service, is the time to discover one.

It’s time to liberate yourself from your cattle-truck carriages, your subterranean holes full of other people’s germs, your traffic jams and points failures; time to travel to work with the wind in your hair and the matchless spectacle of the world’s greatest city before your eyes.

As well as the views, you will find a seat, a good punctuality record and even a little counter selling tea and coffee.True, the single fare from Greenwich (£5) is about twice the train price – but if you buy a monthly season (£100) and work within walking distance of one of the central London piers (Tower, London Bridge, Blackfriars, Embankment or Waterloo) you will pay almost exactly the same.

The neglect of the river is one of London’s great transport scandals. We have spent the last twenty years – and will probably spend most of the next ten – tying ourselves in knots about Crossrail, with still a quite serious chance that it will not be built. But we already have a waterborne Crossrail, an almost unused six-lane highway through the middle of the city, which could be brought into the full embrace of the TfL system for a fraction of the cost.

Yet the existing service isn’t even integrated with the rest of the network – no Oyster pay-as-you-go (yet), no Travelcards (Travelcard holders do get a one-third discount).

Greenwich Pier

Greenwich council has recently started what it calls the “Clipper Campaign” calling for Oyster acceptance and a 10-minute peak-hour service. Very laudable aims, although I should point out that TfL had already promised to install Oyster readers for pay-as-you-go on the river service several months before the council started its campaign. Could Greenwich be trying to claim credit for achieving something that is going to happen anyway?

The council website says that “the Mayor of London has given no date for installing the Oystercard equipment on the boats.” That is perhaps a little misleading: I’m not sure what Boris himself has said, but his Transport Commissioner, Peter Hendy, told the last meeting of the TfL board that Oyster PAYG on the river was a “Mayoral priority” which “could be introduced by mid-2009.”

Answers last month to the Tory London Assembly member Gareth Bacon suggest that Greenwich’s “campaign” for the riverbus does not, so far, seem to have involved any contact with either the Mayor or TfL. As the local Tory leader, Councillor Spencer Drury, said: “I am curious what sort of campaign fails to contact the person or organisation which it is seeking to influence.”

It’s also worth pointing out the serious possibility that the Thames Clipper service will in fact contract, not increase, in the next few months. The extension from Greenwich to Woolwich is subsidised by TfL and the council, and was originally supposed to end this month, after the opening of the new DLR station. The subsidy has now been extended by another six months. It would be a shame if the next action of the leaders of the “Clipper Campaign” was to actually, well, clip the funding they give to the thing they’re trying to promote.

Still, let’s not bash the council spin-doctors too heavily this week. Their overall aim is good, and even once Oyster is available on the service, the real battle – for Underground-style fares and Underground-style frequencies – still needs to be waged.

In the meantime, take to the water. Even if it snows again, the Thames is most unlikely to freeze over.