We welcome as members individuals and organisations who care for Hammersmith
As a Member, you will receive regular updates outlining our activities, giving you the opportunity to participate in consultations and campaigns. We'll invite you to our Awards Evening and AGM, and other events. Members are always encouraged to take an active part in the work done by the committee – come along and see if you can help.
The membership year runs from 1st Jan, and only costs £6 for individuals, £8 for couples or families, and £15 for organisations. Additional voluntary donations always welcome.
There’s some evidence that politics are again in charge of poor transport policy. Those of you taking note of the words in the article on Cycleway 9 just three months ago, may be rightly disappointed that the gambit proposed – actually somewhat tongue-in-cheek – was in reality already planned.
“Perhaps this is part of the grand plan, to make TfL redundant, the Mayor abandon most of his responsibilities, and the great unwashed go back to using their feet ? “
A logical extension of converting peak-time multipurpose bus lanes into full-time single-purpose cycle lanes – not just in Hammersmith – but across London, with a consequent disbenefit to 97% of the population, was that something like this could well be on the way.
While the Mayor of London blames a 4% central government funding cut, the Transport Minister has responded that the cuts were already planned over a year ago, and there’s some evidence deep in a sustainability plan from Jan 2021 to support that. One side of the political divide may also be playing games with the other, choosing to “park its tanks on the opposition’s lawn” by perhaps imposing more cuts on their supporters patch, and also meaning that our bridge continues to be unfunded as the Cinderella of this melodrama. Overall, the reduction in total peak bus frequency is 424 to 324 per hour, or a 25% reduction in the affected services, according this spreadsheet made from TfL data by Sian Berry, chair of the GLA transport committee, which might reasonably surprise you.
Please complete the consultation by 12th July so that there is a record of dismay, regardless of outcome. The story is covered in local press in more detail, the summary being that some of the oldest routes such as 11, N11, 14, 27, 31, 49, 72 and 74 will be cut, or no longer serve the borough, The 27 is again a pawn in this game, it having already been cut back as the picture above reminds us – it went as far as Chiswick Business Park in recent memory. It’s now proposed to replace the C3 route where it’s never ventured before, and no longer serve H&F at all.
The well-worn argument is that the Hopper fare, allowing you to freely change bus within the hour, compensates for direct route losses. But there’s a problem – changing buses makes them even less competitive, by making journeys yet slower and less convenient end-end, especially if you’re carrying things or wheeling something – or yourself. London buses are already at an all time slow crawl, in the bottom 25% of 15 major world cities; this makes them less popular as they force real people to hang around on windswept street corners or bus islands in the road, waiting to change route. The argument is threadbare, and the kind of thing only a policy wonk would come up with, while sitting in his centrally heated office with a computerised bus route simulator, someone who’s perhaps rarely been on a bus in winter, or possibly recalibrated his smartwatch in TfL minutes*.
People keep saying we need to get the cars off the road. In central London, there aren’t any
There’s also some evidence that the recent proliferation of various flavours of private hire and delivery vehicles are now congesting the roads rather more than the usual bogeyman – cars – and undoing the Mayor’s plans. If you refer to the relevant maps, you can work out the politics involved, suffice to say it’s beginning to look like Ken’s Western Extension to the Congestion Charge Zone, another expensive and ill-conceived political expedition, and we know what that resulted in.
* A ‘TfL minute’ is defined as a measure of time only regularly or reliably achievable by a simulator, often excluding waiting or transfer times, and rarely experienced by the travelling public, especially those less able. It’s duration has been estimated at around 90 of your Earth seconds.
©2025, The Hammersmith Society | Privacy | Contact | Join | @ Subscribe | ⓘ
Campaigning for over sixty years