Oil Deal 'Could Cost London 70 million'

Oil Deal 'Could Cost London 70 million'
First Published: Wednesday 21 February 2007
Damian Hockney, leader of the One London Party

Questioned by One London Party leader Damian Hockney at today's Mayor's Question Time Ken Livingstone admitted he does not know how much yesterday's Venezuelan oil deal will cost Transport for London in lost fare revenue.

According to figures released yesterday by the Mayor's office the maximum income from the scheme is £16 million.

The Mayor was unable to counter estimates from Hockney that the scheme will cost at lease a third more - £25 million - in lost fares revenue.

It's claimed that when the cost of London providing expertise in areas such transport and town planning to the Venezuelan government the loss could be as high as £70 million.

Hockney branded the situation "an outrageous abuse of the Mayor's position" and accused Livingstone of "grandstanding by promising cheap travel for the poor".

The One London leader accused the Mayor of failing to do "the most basic arithmetic to check whether he can fulfill this promise without busting TfL's budget."

TfL’s obligation should be to pedestrians, not road traffic

TfL’s obligation should be to pedestrians, not road traffic

How sad that yet another pedestrian was killed in a hit and run accident at Henlys Corner, as was reported last week (Two men die in road accidents,' February 8).

For years, we as residents of this area have been trying to convince Transport for London (TfL) to make this lethal crossing safer. We were told by TfL in 2002, after a public consultation, that pedestrian crossing facilities would be installed there. However, we heard nothing further and when the recently completed work was about to begin, we again wrote to Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.

We quote from the reply: "More detailed analysis showed that this scheme (as outlined above) caused severe additional delays to road traffic, with substantially increased traffic queues on all approaches to the junction.
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"TfL has an obligation to balance the needs of all road users and it was felt that these proposals were too detrimental to road traffic. A decision was therefore taken to abandon the scheme."

The few minutes it would take to stagger the lights at a pedestrian crossing would have saved the life of this young man. It appears that TfL feels more obligation to the needs of traffic than to the lives of pedestrians.

Thea and Bernard Valman Bridge Lane, Temple Fortune