Letters: Aye, aye train driver
[Re: If London is the heart of our economy, more TfL fare rises will cut off the blood supply, Feb 15]
London’s transport system has steadily deteriorated over the course of the pandemic. In the context of the number of road works set up for apparently obscure reasons, this is unjustifiable.
We should have spent the time when people weren’t relying so heavily on the transport network to make it better, more accessible. For a government insistent on throwing money at the problem, they have a blindspot when it comes to the London Underground, perhaps because the capital is run by a Labour Mayor.
In any case, it’s not a position we can continue to tolerate. In Andrew Carter’s piece, he alluded to resentment from other cities about London’s transport network. But we’re measuring it by a low bar. By the time they have a transport system built up to scratch of the underground our tube networks will be almost abandoned.
The closure of parts of the Northern line will encourage more people to work from home at a time when they should be piling back into the city. There are too many tube stations still inaccessible to disabled people and bus routes are outdated.
For future prosperity in the capital, we need to put the investment in now. It might be painful, it might cause political pressure, but it’s not impossible and dismissing it as unrealistic is the sign of a quitter.
Isabella Cox