Suggestion that major new pieces of rail and road infrastructure will not be necessary if many more people start working from home has been rebuffed by London’s transport commissioner Mike Brown (pictured).

 

Addressing a Policy Forum for London conference last Thursday he replied: “I haven’t forgiven my predecessors in the 1960s who said the Victoria Line had a marginal business case and would never be used. They said people would start working from home and London would be a changed city. They eventually and reluctantly built a narrow tunnel that is too deep.”

 

For decades people have been saying home working will become the norm, he added, “but we are not there yet”. Mike Brown also said he did not want people to say about him in several decades’ time: ‘If only he had built Crossrail 2’.

 

Mike Brown had earlier spoken of the need to invest in new infrastructure in the capital. “Those of you who live and work in London will be bowled away by Crossrail when it arrives. It will add the whole of the Berlin metro in terms of capacity to this city at once and this line alone allows us to carry the whole population of Edinburgh every single day. It will transform the transport system in a way most of us have not experienced.”

 

He added that London cannot stop there and has to look further ahead. He spoke of the need for the Silvertown Tunnel to reduce congestion, welcomed Government’s commitment to Crossrail 2 and said plans are moving forward for an extension to the Bakerloo Line towards Lewisham by 2029, to enable 25,000 new homes and 5000 jobs.

 

The commissioner was also asked for his view of ‘dockless’ bicycles which have begun to be seen on the capital’s streets. “We had a bit of a rocky start on dockless, but I welcome them.

 

“It is easy for Transport for London to be seen as a bureaucratic organisation that starts with the word ‘no’ but we don’t want to be seen as a naysayer. There are some challenges and there is still more work to do about how they work across borough boundaries, but anything that encourages cycling in the city is to be welcomed.”