45 45 Squared 9) COMPRESSOR SQUARE, E16 Borough of Newham, 50m×30m National Street Gazetteer so it officially exists. Locationwise it's in the Royal Docks immediately adjacent to Royal Albert station, which is renowned as the DLR station furthest away from anyone's home. But had plans gone ahead it would by now have been surrounded by a mass of highrise development, as pictured here in a complex hybrid planning application from 2014. The long building on the waterfront is Newham council's HQ which was already present, but the surrounding densely-packed blocks are part of a hilariously optimistic Anglo-Chinese vision championed by Mayor Boris Johnson which ultimately never happened. Compressor Square would have been where the red arrow is. Eight new squares were planned along the 1 kilometre length of the ABP development, each surrounded by a canopy of trees in an attempt to replicate the smart residential townscapes of west London. In the end only one such square was built, one stop up the DLR at Beckton Park where a huddle of empty office blocks now forms a tumbleweed memorial to entrepreneurial hubris. But nothing up this western end ever got off the drawing board, let alone off the ground, so what's here is pretty much all grass right up to the Holiday Inn and Rowing Club Boathouse. The exception is a long redbrick building called Compressor House tucked below a bend in the DLR viaduct, which is the unlikely reason the adjacent piazza was due to be called Compressor Square. series of buildings set back behind a long chain of warehouses along the northern edge of Royal Albert Dock. Nigh all of those have gone but this smart building was retained, complete with the original hoists, rails and winching machinery used to move produce internally, alas in an increasing state of disrepair. You may be surprised that to hear that the £1.725m needed for renovation was sourced from the last government's Levelling-Up Fund, because Newham somehow managed to claw a chunk of that. Their ultimate intention was to "bring the building back into active use for both financial and placemaking purposes" and that procurement process is now underway. So if you have a unique vision that supports digital innovation, community wealth building, good growth and UK Government funding outcomes you have until 24th March to submit an Expression of Interest, and hey presto your organisation could be leveraging Compressor House as early as September. Compressor House is nigh complete but still quarantined behind a ring of barriers erected by contractors MGL Projects. It looks very smart with its Port Of London Authority medallion above the main doors, and I can well imagine the Mayor walking in to open something culturally enthusing in six months time. Out front is a semi-formal array of trees surrounded by low shrubbery that looks like it may be semi-dead, and beyond that isn't the square the 2014 developers proposed but an access road threaded along the dockside in the 1990s. It has hardly any traffic and also a huge metal bar across the carriageway to ensure that no large vehicle accidentally proceeds and smashes into the DLR viaduct. And beyond that is just a lot of gravel and grass. The grass stretches down to the dockside and is already dotted with daisies despite it only being early March. Around the edge are more seats and benches than might be deemed necessary, although staff from the neighbouring Newham council offices probably spill out in the summer and I suspect they get good use when there's a regatta. Instead I got to watch a couple of sturdy locals exercising an Alsatian, the kind that's too jumpy to be let off its lead so was instead forced to run round in circles while attempting to grab a plastic ring. Most of this area should have been flats, remember, offering DLR passengers a hemmed-in journey rather than a broad panorama across City Airport. destined to become student accommodation instead, not much of it affordable, because foreign parents are all too happy to pay over the odds for their offspring to live in converted open-plan hutches immediately adjacent to a roaring flightpath. The team in charge of that transformation look and sound insufferable, judging by their RAD website, but at least they're doing something to try to bring this dead stripe of dockside to life. Meanwhile the area in front of Compressor House remains a development hiatus, there being no current plans to contribute its potential to our capital's housing crisis. Compressor Square thus exists only as a virtual red line in the National Street Gazetteer designated 'Under construction', and the only body that could delete it is Newham Council's highways team who, amusingly, are based immediately nextdoor.

Yesterday TfL launched a consultation for the introduction of the next Superloop route, the SL11, which will run between North Greenwich and Abbey Wood via Woolwich. It's an express bus so it'll be great. It'll link up with existing transport connections and local centres so it'll be great. It'll improve travel in the long-term accessibility desert that is Thamesmead so it'll be great. So let's play devil's advocate and explain how it won't be great. » The SL11 won't be a new bus route, it's a renumbering of the 472. The day the SL11 is born the 472 dies. » It won't be the 472 exactly, it'll be the 472 with 25 stops missed out, so bad luck if you wanted any of those 25 stops. » Because an express bus runs faster there'll be fewer vehicles on the route. » The 472 currently operates with 16 vehicles so they'll probably cut that to 12 or 13, saving TfL a few million a year. » The SL11 will run non-stop for 2 miles from Charlton to Woolwich, so anyone needing a stop inbetween won't be able to use it any more. » If you live, say, near the Thames Barrier, you're going down from 20 buses an hour locally to just 12. » It won't stop in Woolwich town centre because that eastbound loop's being scrapped in favour of speed. » It won't be express for the 2 miles from Plumstead to Thamesmead, it'll stop in all the current places. » If you want to go from Plumstead to Abbey Wood, existing direct non-express buses will be much quicker. » Technically the SL11 will serve Thamesmead East, but it you don't live near the only stop it won't be of much use. » There's already a Superloop bus between Thamesmead and Abbey Wood, the SL3, so who needs another? » ...and the SL3 does Thamesmead to Abbey Wood quicker, in two stops, whereas the SL11 will do it in three. » The 180 mirrors the 472 for five miles from North Greenwich to Plumstead, but many people will now only be able to use the slower route. » Those forced to switch to the 180 will only enjoy six buses an hour, whereas they currently enjoy a combined 14. » Superloop routes used to be numbered sequentially in a clockwise direction, but they've given up on that idea now. » It won't link with the new SL4 through the Silvertown Tunnel because that's locally useless. » We could have had this years ago, it's effectively Ken Livingstone's Greenwich Waterfront Transit, but Boris scrapped that in 2008. » The 472 needs to continue as a night bus, so now there'll be an extra N472 tile clogging up dozens of bus stops. » TfL have £23m of government funding specifically for bus priority lanes on this new route, so expect years of roadworks. » It goes nowhere near where 98% of Londoners live, so who cares? A lot of these negatives have a counter "ah but", and it's a consultation so stops may change, and obviously it's good news but don't think it's all good news for everyone.

Three questions for the price of one Are repairs underway at Bow Road's gentlemen's conveniences? Gents is the most prominent, surrounded at street level by a crescent of decorative iron railings and formerly accessed down two curved stairwells behind further ornate gates. These toilets were built in 1899 by Poplar Board of Works and Grade II listed by English Heritage in 2008 for being "attractively designed", "relatively intact" and of "group value as part of a significant historic townscape". I doubt they're so intact now after years of rainwater leached down, plus the railings got partly smashed recently and a damaged bollard was shoved precariously into the gap, indeed the whole thing has been in urgent existential need of repair for some time. Looks like it may finally be happening. Yesterday morning workmen turned up in the sunshine and started sealing off the structure behind a wooden screen. The railings vanished within hours, followed by a completely separate structure for the skylight, both now safely ensconced behind the bluest of blue walls. It looks like an unlikely roadside artwork at the moment, all squat and vibrant, but I doubt it'll be long before our local taggers and flyposters get to work. It also looks serious, like someone might be about to spend money on this subterranean treasure at last, but it's not clear whether that'd be for a proper overhaul, a light repair job or merely protective quarantine. Gents conveniences have only been open for six hours so far this century, back in June 2012 when an arts company took them over for a quirky installation called Listed Loo. They spent many collective hours scrubbing it out, clearing the litter from the stairwells, removing the graffiti and then adding their own quirky touches including hundreds of apples piled up in one cubicle and a tree in soil in another. It was quite frankly baffling but also wonderful, mostly for the opportunity to finally step inside this historic municipal amenity where so many gentlemen have found relief over the years. It was seriously evocative to discover a spacious skylit triangular chamber whose roof I'd walked over on multiple occasions and to admire the veneer cubicle doors, the russet marble urinals and the central green pillar supporting the roof. Oh to have such facilities available anywhere in Tower Hamlets today. I fear it looks far far worse down there now and that the public may never see inside again, but I'm delighted that someone's finally turned up to make sure Bow Road's listed loo doesn't get even worse. Are bakeries the new church? This is Pophams on Prebend Street, an innovative viennoiserie that opened in a derelict chemist's shop in October 2017. In the mornings they specialise in crisp flaky pastries, be that a Honey & Smoked Salt bun, a Seasonal Custard Danish or a Marmite, Schlossberger & Spring Onion swirl, not forgetting their signature Bacon & Maple. I'm sure they're damned good but I'm not sure they're worth making a pilgrimage across town to join the back of a line of millennials 40 strong, edging forwards towards an understaffed counter to order a few carbs and a locally-sourced coffee before grabbing a bench seat and snapping an appreciative video to share on social media. As a one-off why not, but there are many folk whose Sunday morning mantra is always where can we meet up and eat - anywhere on trend will do - and who probably end up having most of their conversation in the queue. Is this London's newest boundary stone? plonked in the pavement roughly opposite the end of Borthwick Road although it's been here a lot longer than that particular residential sidestreet. The letters on it say WHP because this was once the edge of West Ham Parish, an ancient subdivision that stretched four miles south from here to the Thames, and the earliest year inscribed here is 1775 suggesting it was installed exactly 250 years ago. 1850 and 1864 also get a mention. I know this because a council plaque on the wall confirms it as a West Ham boundary stone, and also that the 1864 marking is to confirm this was boundary point number 31. The intriguing phrase is that it "no longer marks any boundary", when a quick look at a map will confirm it still sits on the dividing line between the boroughs of Newham and Waltham Forest. Maybe they mean it's been shifted slightly since so it's no longer in precisely the right place, but if not it's incredibly close so this feels like an over-pedantic niggle. Anyway, you'll have deduced by now that a 250-year old boundary stone can't possibly be London's newest so I draw your attention instead to a nearby paving slab which has the words "borough boundary" chiselled into the kerb. saw-toothed factory-shaped sign containing the name of the borough and the local postcode. This was one of four sites chosen for the 'Welcome Sign' project, each marking a main gateway into the borough. Another can be found on Forest Road on the approach to Woodford, another outside the Ferry Boat Inn at Tottenham Hale and I'm still trying to remember where the fourth one is. Leytonstone Road totem is the only one of the four with a modern boundary stone in the kerb alongside, so my claim is that this is London's newest boundary stone until someone tells us otherwise.

Ode to an Annual Travelcard I bought my first Annual Travelcard in 2001 when I moved to London. This is the easiest and cheapest way to commute without faffing at ticket machines every day, I thought, and I was right. That first Annual Travelcard cost me £896, i.e. the equivalent of £2.45 a day, and these days even an off-peak single journey into zone 1 costs more than that. My Annual Travelcard was a significant investment, paying a lump sum up front for travel I hadn't yet made. Not everyone can afford to do this, indeed it's another example of long-term savings made by well-off people while less flush folk pay more often and end up paying more overall. Cost of my annual z1-3 Travelcard 20012002200320042005200620072008200920102011 £896£912£924£952£1000£1040£1096£1136£1208£1208£1288 20122013201420152016201720182019202220232024 £1368£1424£1472£1508£1520£1548£1600£1648£1740£1808£1916 It really is a lot of money, it's £29,000. But for that I've been able to swan around London for the best part of quarter of a century so it's been well worth it. My Annual Travelcard has allowed me one-price travel across zones 1-3, which is effectively what a daily cap does. But a daily z1-3 cap costs £10 and I was paying a lot lot less than that to do exactly the same, indeed about half the price. This is why using PAYG gives me the heebeegeebees. every journey I made on top of that was effectively free. FoI request the number of Annual Travelcards issued in the last financial year was just 15,192, a pitiful total in a capital of nine million people, and down a massive 80% since 2018/19. Most Londoners have deduced that PAYG better suits their needs, especially anyone who sometimes works from home, so expect Annual Travelcard sales number to dwindle even further very soon. Annual Travelcards give a saving of 13% compared with continuing use of Monthly Travelcards, i.e. you get 12 months travel for the price of 10½. Alternatively they give a 23% saving compared with continuing use of 7 Day Travelcards, meaning you get 52 weeks for the price of 40. That's a lot of extra free weeks, although if you have a full time job and take six weeks annual leave plus bank holidays and the occasional sickie it might not actually add up to a saving. 2015 Gold Cards became valid from 9.30am and I caught loads of earlier trains to Norfolk thanks to that. My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to catch buses for free - that's all the TfL buses everywhere including the severely peripheral ones. It was technically possible for me to get to Dorking and back by bus for nothing, indeed I tried it once, and that's several miles outside London... as were Redhill, Bluewater, Watford and Slough. My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to catch trams for free, a perk you get with any Travelcard with z3, 4, 5 or 6 validity. That made a lot of south London readily accessible, or at least not quite as inaccessible it would have been, bringing even Coulsdon and Biggin Hill into practical reach. Indeed I've made so much use of buses and trams over the last year that I only gave TfL £12 on top of my initial £1916 outlay, that's how exceptional value my Annual Travelcard has been. My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to pass in and out of ticket barriers to my heart's content without worrying if I was going to be slapped with an enormous penalty fare. I cannot begin to tell those of you with PAYG how good that feels. I wasn't forever thinking "should I have tapped out there?" or "oh god I hope I tapped in" or "have I been down here too long?" or "is it off-peak yet?" or "will they bankrupt me if I enter the station for 60 seconds and then tap back out again?". I didn't need to know the minutiae of all the stupid penalising rules because with an Annual Travelcard there weren't any. My last Annual Travelcard just expired and I already miss it. I'm struggling to get used to paying for travel and indeed paying what feels over the odds, so have been travelling a lot less as a result. I really struggled with my last evening out at BestMate's, a two-stop journey to Plaistow and back, which suddenly cost me £3.60 rather than the zero I've been paying since 2001. Worse still today is fare rise day so when I go back this week it'll be £4, and no way is eight minutes on the District line worth that. The reason I've bought my last Annual Travelcard is that I'm about to switch over to a 60+ Oyster instead, the Mayoral treat that gifts free travel to sexagenarians to the annoyance of everyone younger. It hasn't arrived yet, indeed expect to read a post about how blindingly incompetent the onboarding process is at a later date. But when it does I'll suddenly be able to go everywhere in zones 1-6 for free which'll be game-changingly better, but also nowhere before 9am which'll be annoyingly worse. My last Annual Travelcard just expired, and I shall miss it.

20 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in February 2025 1) The oldest bus in service in London is the Uno 605, a vehicle introduced in 2007 and currently in use on route 383. However, this vehicle is due to be withdrawn from the fleet shortly. 2) On average TfL's income from ULEZ charges is about £375,000 per day. 3) As of 2024, 52% of all London’s roads have a 20mph speed limit. This can be further broken down as 52% of borough roads and 16% of the TfL Road Network. 4) The TfL Road Network comprises 4% of London's public roads but carries 29% of the traffic. The borough of Wandsworth has the most TfL-controlled roads (36km), Harrow has none. Barnet has the most major roads (109km) and Sutton the least (30km). Bromley has the most roads altogether (913km) but Hillingdon has the most traffic (followed by Havering and Enfield). 5) The noisy manhole cover on the northbound carriageway of Commercial Street at the junction with Fleur de Lis Street has had two utility notices issued, but as yet there is no date for a permanent repair. 6) There are 938 ticket machines at tube stations. These are of four different types. King's Cross St Pancras has the most (45) followed by Victoria (34), Liverpool Street (23), Paddington (22) and London Bridge/Heathrow T23 (18). Roding Valley is the only tube station with one ticket machine (the minimum otherwise is two). 7) Of all the Superloop routes, the SL7 has had the highest spend on vehicle vinyl wraps (£130,795.00) but also the lowest spend on stop/shelter branding (£16,861.43). 8) Customers who need to reset their multi-factor authentication are still unable to access their Contactless and Oyster accounts following the cyberattack in September. 9) A fox was seen on the Central line tracks at Oxford Circus on the evening of 19th January 2025. Traction current was turned off between 19.30 and 19.50 with train services suspended. The fox was unharmed and released in nearby Hanover Square Gardens. 10) Five existing electric vehicles from route 323 have been reassigned to the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle service. Route 323 is currently being operated by Euro VI Diesel vehicles but will be back to using electric vehicles "as soon as is possible". 11) Toilets will be provided for bus drivers at both ends of the 129 and SL4 bus routes through the Silvertown Tunnel (but only at one end of the cycle shuttle because it's a short route). 12) During the last financial year 3,003,614 Oyster users and 13,087,477 Contactless users received an autofill refund payment after being charged for an incomplete journey. 13) Heating is due to be installed on buses on route 463 with the expectation that the saloon temperature be 17 degrees. 14) AI has not been used by TfL or their partners to develop the promotional materials seen around their network 15) If you'd like pdf copies of 38 tube maps issued between 1998 and 2009, this zip file has them all. 16) 295 penalty charges notices were issued on 25 December 2024 for vehicles being in a bus lane. No fines had been issued on any previous Christmas Day, even though the policy changed in 2020. 17) In 2021 TfL ran 14 advertising campaigns for cryptocurrencies, but last year just two. 18) There are now 794 Santander docking stations. The total was 330 when the bikes launched in 2010, 737 in 2015 and 784 in 2020. 19) At the end of 2024 a total of 10,364 customers had an active annual membership of Santander Cycles. That's 0.1% of London's population. 20) During 2024 TfL received 4207 FoI requests.