The last quoted data I saw put it around 60% of households without a car, ie a majority. Were else is that the case?
And remember that the proportion of
people without use of a car is much higher than the proportion of
households without one. It's common for a car to be used for a commute, say, and for several other people in the same family/household then to use public transport for their journeys. So cutting road provision for private cars, in lieu of public transport, cycleways, etc, is actually a good option in London. Indeed, it was said that it was precisely because such a large proportion of Londoners didn't rely on - or even use - private cars that Ken Livingstone found it politically possible to introduce the congestion charge; in other places, selfish car-owners would have made it too electorally difficult..
If I was TFL I would:
- Close the Emirates Air Line temporarily, but investigate selling to a private company.
- Introduce a nominal charge (Upto £3) for Woolwich Ferry.
- Reduce services on Circle, H&C, District, and Met lines so that on shared parts of the lines there are fewer services but on unique sections maintain a good service. E.g. Do we need both H&C and District to Barking?
- Stop Bakerloo Line services from travelling north of Queens Park. It's a cross platform change at Queens Park so easy for people to do.
- Raise bus prices to £2, and reduce hopper time to a strict 60 minutes rather than 70 minutes. (For example Orpington to Heathrow shouldn't be £1.55 but is possible due to Hopper) £3 bus fares that cross boundaries such as any to Bluewater, Dorking, Redhill, Lakeside, Watford Junction, Slough.
- Reduce TFL rail services outside of Greater London authority areas unless funding is received from the relevant local authorities.
- Extend the ULEZ and Congestion Charge to cover the whole of Greater London Authority areas (e.g. all London Boroughs).
- Remove railcard discounts from Oyster cards (I benefit, but this might save some money).
- Restrict free travel for under 18s to between 6am and 7pm Monday to Friday. Over times make them pay a fare.
- Remove travelcard discounts on Uber boats (TfL must be subsidising this - is it needed? No)
Re 2. Isn't there some historic/legal obligation to provide a free ferry for passengers at Woolwich? Isn't that why it has always been free??
I cant see any line closing, the protests would be large from the affected areas! Maybe terminate the Met at Rickmansworth and longer chiltern trains, terminate piccadilly at Rayners Lane, h&c at whitechapel. Richmond branch of the district could maybe go. Hainault to woodford back to rush hours only.
There's now nowhere to turn back trains at Whitechapel - the extra platforms which used to be used for precisely that were lost when the station was remodelled to make space to build lifts etc for the link to Crossrail below.
The more I think about all this the more I come to the conclusion that divisive parochial institutions like the Mayor of London should be abolished.
London and the south-east complement each other, and having an artificial barrier round London is proving disastrous, to people with interests both sides of it.
Another problem which ultimately traces back to a certain Anthony Blair’s government.
It would be silly for there not to be some overall body to co-ordinate things like transport within a conurbation like Greater London, though of course the precise boundary is a matter of debate. But wherever the boundary was there'd be a risk of anomalies ... it's inevitable.
The problem was not the invention of the GLA-plus-Mayor by Blair but the scrapping by Thatcher of its predecessor the GLC (of which the GLA is a pale and less useful imitation).