Boris Watch

Oo, lovely, investment in the suburbs, new facilities for cyclists, all the good Boris stuff:
Transport for London (TfL) and the London Borough of Hounslow today unveiled a new foot and cycle bridge that allows pedestrians and cyclists to cross the railway at Bedfont Road in Hounslow in greater safety.
The brand new shared-use bridge, built alongside [...]

When, two and a half months late, we wondered where Doug Oakervee’s airport report had gone, it was evident others were thinking along the same lines.  After answering the same question from a number of Assembly Members, Kit ‘Airport’ Malthouse and his friends at the Times have produced another one of their airport-pushing puff pieces [...]

Over here.

It’s getting to be a habit, this re-announcing of existing policy as brand-new-Boris-manifesto-rah stuff, accompanying by drooling troglodytes in the Standard comments.
Today’s story is Boris visiting what the Standard describes as an ‘Oxford track’ to run an uneducated eye over the new ‘S-stock’ sub-surface Underground trains, due to start being delivered for the Metropolitan Line [...]

The unions and Val Shawcross are pointing out that Boris’s ‘proudest achievement’ is another case of our beloved Emperor having omitted to get dressed in the morning.  How beastly of them:
The RMT’s Steve Hadley said: “They’ve brought it in without financing it properly, and brought it in without adequate staff, and to be quite honest [...]

Another day, another TfL press release asking us to give credit to Boris for something he didn’t start.  Uh-uh.  This time it’s the iBus automated bus information and location system, the rollout of which is now complete across all 8,000-odd London buses:
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: ‘I put providing Londoners with clear concise information [...]

Via Railway Eye and London Reconnections comes word that London Travelwatch, the rather toothless body charged with representing the London transport user, has noticed a bit of buried bad news in the recent East London Line Extension Phase 2b announcement.  This was the one, you may remember, greeted so warmly a few weeks ago by [...]

Right, I’ve been on a sabbatical from blogging for a week or so, owing mainly to a lack of anything interesting to say.  This isn’t, obviously, from a lack of anything Boris-related to comment about (clearly), but I’d rather wait until I’ve mulled things over for a bit rather than rushing to the Publish button.  [...]

Boris the turtle – from MayorOfLondon’s TwitPic
Dave Hill’s been doing a lot of excellent coverage on the fallout of the G20 policing: his blog is highly recommended reading.
The key Boris-related theme this week has been the near-total silence of the Mayor on this subject.
From the man who merrily stuck his oar [...]

TfL’s budget meeting has, as expected, canned the Greenwich Waterfront Transit and deferred the (rather expensive) Baker Street step-free access project.  The spin is, as usual, so heavy in the air you can taste it:
Step change increase in investment to deliver major milestones for Tube upgrades, Crossrail, the East London Line, DLR and Cycle Hire [...]