APPENDIX 25
Memorandum submitted
by the London Regional Passengers Committee
1. The London Regional Passengers Committee (LRPC)
is a body established under the London Regional Transport Act
1984, to represent the concerns and further the interests of bus
and rail travellers in and around London. Its remit embraces the
users of all services operated by or for London Transport (LT),
Docklands Light Railway Ltd (DLR) and Heathrow Express Railway
(HER), together with those provided by the train operating companies
(TOCs) and Eurostar within an area extending roughly 30 miles
around London. Its functions include complaint handling, performance
monitoring, liaison with operators on service innovations and
future developments affecting passengers, and lobbying central
and local government to safeguard the interests of public transport
and its users. Members of the Committee are appointed (after consultation)
by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the
Regions, and are chosen to provide a broad cross-section in terms
of age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, physical ability or disability,
and place of residence and work. As a non-departmental public
body, LRPC has no political affiliations, and its sole concern
is for the well-being of London's travelling public.
2. The present transport strategy for the Dome is
for the "majority" of visitors to travel by public transport.
A variety of means of travel will be available, with which your
Committee will be familiar from its earlier inquiry (House of
Commons Paper 340-I) and from other evidence submitted to the
present inquiry.
The Jubilee Line
3. Given that up to half of those attending the Experience
are expected to travel by the Jubilee Line, the timely opening
of the Jubilee Line Extension is clearly vital to the Dome's transport
provision. However, the opening date has slipped more than once,
and the line is now expected to open in 1999. This leaves little
room for further slippage. If the line were not to open in time
for the Millennium Experience, there would be a major impact on
the ability of the other transport systems to cope with the level
of use.
4. By the same token, even with the line in full
operation there is, as with any other railway, the potential for
disruption of the service due to security alerts, train failure
or other causes. In view of this, it is essential that contingency
plans are in place to deal with the large numbers of visitors
that may be affected.
Access by national railways
5. It is not presently known to what extent the national
railways (i.e. former British Rail) train operators, particularly
those in south London to which the Underground does not provide
an alternative, will augment their existing service patterns to
cater for visitors to the Dome. There will clearly be strong demand
peaks before sessions start and after they finish, and there may
need to be frequency increases on some routes to match this. Such
increases would also make the services more attractive to visitors.
6. The present plans for the "Baby Dome"
involve evening performances, targeted principally at people living
(or staying) in London. For people leaving these performances,
the availability of convenient public transport home will be important
in determining their mode of travel. Many routes currently have
reduced frequencies in the late evening. Attention should therefore
be given to ensuring that late evening services are attractive
to these visitors.
7. The transfer between the national railways network
and the Dome is crucial to the effectiveness of rail access to
the site, particularly for visitors from south-east London and
Kent. The present plan, for which tenders have recently been invited,
is for a bus link between Charlton Station and the Dome, a distance
of about 2 miles. Each interchange that is necessary between services
in order to reach the Dome increases the perceived (and actual)
difficulty experienced by passengers using that route, and reduces
the attractiveness of the service. With respect to the bus link,
this should be mitigated by ensuring that the transfer from train
to bus, and vice versa, is as convenient as can be reasonably
arranged. The reliability of the bus link is also important. There
is a danger that it will suffer from congestion, and for this
reason the extent to which the bus link route can be segregated
from general traffic should be seriously examined.
Ticketing
8. The Company has agreed to open the Experience
at 10 am on weekdays, in order to avoid the rush hour in central
London. The recognition of the principle that visitors should
not be encouraged to travel during the morning rush hour is welcome.
However, in order to arrive for a 10 am start time, most visitors
will wish to start their journeys before 09.30. This is the time
at which most cheap fares, notably one-day Travelcards become
valid. Your Committee, in its previous report (para. 45), has
regarded it as essential that the most economically attractive
packages be available for travel and admission to the Dome. It
would be unfortunate if, despite the laudable attempt to avoid
the rush-hour, visitors were put off using rail services by having
to pay peak fares.
9. The LRPC strongly believes that integrated travel
and admission ticketing is a useful way of encouraging people
to use public transport for leisure trips. This would be particularly
attractive for visitors to the Dome, and whilst we acknowledge
the administrative challenge that this represents, we believe
that a package of travel and admission to the Experience should
be available from Underground stations and from national railways
stations in and around London. As most journeys to the Dome are
expected to start from within Greater London, the opportunity
to buy a combined One-Day Travelcard and admission ticket to the
Experience would be particularly useful. It is already possible
to buy, from Underground stations, combined travel and entrance
tickets to a number of attractions in central London, and to certain
events at Earl's Court and Olympia.
River Services
10. The LRPC has long taken the view that the River
Thames has been grossly under-utilised as a transport artery.
We therefore warmly welcome the plans to provide river passenger
services between central London, the Cutty Sark and the Dome,
and also within Central London. We particularly welcome the intention
that a "legacy" service will continue after the Millennium
Experience has finished.
11. However, such services are unlikely to reach
their true potential as long as they are operated in isolation
from the rest of public transport in London, as has been shown
by the floundering of previous attempts to provide river services.
It is therefore a welcome development that these services are
to come under the aegis of London Transport. We believe that they
should be brought within the scope of the integrated zonal ticketing
scheme (including concessionary passes). The river service routes
and stops should be shown on the rail and bus network maps, so
as to ensure that passengers are aware of their existence.
The impact of visitors to the Dome on local passengers
12. It is likely that the Dome will generate a significant
amount of extra road traffic in the surrounding areas, even with
the majority of visitors using public transport. This would undoubtedly
have an impact on other road users. The LRPC believes that day-to-day
bus services near to the Greenwich Peninsula must be protected
from any additional congestion arising from the Dome. There may,
for example, be a need for the highway authorities to examine
the scope for compensatory bus priority measures.
The Steering Group
13. The Millennium Access Steering Group, which comprised
representatives of a number of stakeholders and has been co-ordinating
transport issues with regard to the Dome, has recently been disbanded.
Its successor body comprises a similar group of members, except
that there is no longer any representative of passengers (a role
which had previously been carried out by an LRPC representative,
among others). This is of some concern to us. It surely cannot
be right that neither the interests of travellers to the Dome
nor the interests of travellers who may be affected by the Dome
are represented on the steering group.
July 1998
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