• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Okay, I do think that that is an area that we need to follow up. Lastly, my regular hobby horse with you, as we are talking about other agencies, not quite an agency: more policing on overground rail. We discussed this at last Mayor's Question Time I think. Have you thought further about increasing your commitment to policing on overground rail in the second half of your second term?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Transport 2025 really presents the whole strategy that we must be led by financial and commercial needs of the City and the West End, and that transport needs to follow that commercial trend. Now, why is it that we are not doing more to actually put in transport schemes first and then see commerce follow, that is what has always happened before, and certainly when the DLR was extended to Canary Wharf the City moved there? Why are you allowing big commerce to dictate the whole strategy for land use and transport in London?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

The other important thing that you mentioned is reducing the need to travel, but the sort of schemes you mentioned were the soft schemes which made for greener travel. Surely we should be looking at land use policies, which actually mean that a number of people do not need to do anything other than walk or cycle to work, which is about land use policies integrating commerce, services, residential. Why is that not a key plank of the strategy for the Thames Gateway and transport 2025?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Just to reiterate, I think apart from possible problems along Ilford Lanes, it could quite easily accommodate trams on both sides of the river on the transit scheme.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Well, yes, but that is a different tone to exactly five years ago when the transit proposals were published with pretty pictures of trams and trolley buses on the front and lots of claims about reducing carbon emissions on that basis. Now it does seem to me that you have not lost your interest in carbon emissions, but you are losing the argument with the Government in the 2007 review, and that is more the real situation; you are unlikely to get funding for these sorts of transit schemes with zero emissions.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can we stick to the point.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can I just go back to the comments you made earlier about the transit schemes. The East London and the Greenwich Waterfront Transits TfL have recently shown us around. I just wanted to look at the likelihood of the upgrading to trams along those lines. Yes, clearly there are going to be more households down that way and I think there is a particular case there, but in light of the apparent rejection of West Londoners for the tram on the Uxbridge Road, is this a convenient switch that would help the infrastructure down there quite readily?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

We have always described you as a bit of a cowboy.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

So is that not a greater case for a zero energy tram or trolley bus scheme, which was as proposed initially? I do not follow your logic at all.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I would love to see you in cowboy boots.