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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 13 November 2008

Simon Pitkeathley

Cross-river tram link scrapped

Businesses lament loss of lucrative transport plan while campaigners celebrate

IT was an idea loved by business groups and several Labour councillors. But plans for a tram link between Camden Town and Waterloo were loathed by a vocal group of campaigners, and on Thursday they were finally axed in a sweeping cull of transport projects.
The £1.3billion Cross River Tram project, designed to create an overland link by 2016 joining south London with Holborn, Bloomsbury, Camden Town and Somers Town, was dropped by City Hall.
London Mayor Boris Johnson said he was cutting back on “spending millions of pounds titivating schemes which are either impractical or for which we simply don’t have the funding from government”.
City Hall had already spent £16million preparing the proposals and traders in Camden Town had pinned their hopes on the trams relieving chronic overcrowding on the Northern Line, which often forces Camden Town Tube station to close on Sundays.
Simon Pitkeathley, from the business group Camden Town Unlimited, said: “We’re disappointed. We need a solution to transport congestion which still brings people into Camden Town.”
He added: “We need walkable streets, and it would have been nice for the tram to be part of that.”
Other supporters of the tram scheme lamented the loss of a green solution to Camden Town’s congestion.
Labour finance spokesman Councillor Theo Blackwell called it “a massive missed opportunity” and blamed the Town Hall for its “lukewarm” response to the project.
Environment chief Mike Greene approved the project last February but said that “the disadvantages of the tram outweigh the benefits”.
Cllr Blackwell said on Friday: “The council was completely pathetic and showed no vision despite the fact it was being offered a massive investment in public transport infrastructure.”
Last week, the council’s deputy leader, Cllr Andrew Marshall, said the trams, which would have caused disruption to Bloomsbury’s squares as well as requiring a significant allocation of scarce road space in Camden Town, was “on balance no great loss”.
And while surveys conducted under pro-trams ex-mayor Ken Livingstone showed the project was popular among Camden residents as a whole, many in the south of the borough opposed the plan.
“We are very glad the tram is not coming through Somers Town,” said Councillor Roger Robinson, who led the campaign against the tram in his St Pancras and Somers Town ward.
“I have argued from the start that a tram is not suitable among these streets and close to our schools.”

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