An alliance of boroughs and businesses is urging London mayor, Boris Johnson, to rethink his decision to drop the Cross River Tram, just as Transport for London was finalising the business case.
Mr Johnson scrapped the £750M Cross River tram and other transport projects, valued at more than £3.7bn, last month, claiming he was ‘stopping the deception’ that funding existed for them.
However, the board of the Cross River Partnership, which met last week, disputed the contention that there was no money for the new 16.5km surface link between Camden Town, Euston, Waterloo and Peckham.
The board was also unsatisfied with Johnson’s offer ‘to assess potential alternatives to the Cross River Tram, including improving existing public transport capacity’. Matthew Noon, projects manager for the Cross River Partnership, said a bid to the Government had been planned for 2010.
‘We want to work with the mayor on the proposed study to assess alternatives. However, we want the tram to remain an option, and want the scope of the work to reflect that.’ Johnson’s only suggested way of increasing north-south transport capacity – separating the Northern line’s branches to add new trains – ‘would do nothing to ease the route’s biggest transport pinchpoint, Holborn’, nor serve areas south of Elephant and Castle.
Joe Weiss, London Technical Advisers Group chair, said losing the Cross River Tram was boroughs’ ‘biggest disappointment’. He said: ‘Unlike the ill-fated West London Tram, foisted on west London’s boroughs by TfL, this was a borough-led, grassroots project.’
Mr Weiss said if TfL could make savings to cover the £55-70M loss in revenue from scrapping the western congestion charge extension, ‘it can cover the loan repayments for this important project’ – estimated to be £50M annually. The Cross River Partnership also stressed that the Cross River Tram would have an annual operating surplus of at least £30M – more, if fares were higher than bus fares.
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