Question and Answer Session: Functional Bodies - London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) (Supplementary) [4]

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  No, I do not have it with me I am afraid in that detail.  I had some great news a couple of days ago that cycling has doubled on to the Park but that is more likely to be local journeys than the longer journeys that you are talking about.

Siân Berry AM: I have been looking at figures from the October 2020 Board update that looks at mode shares for individual venues.  By and large it is not too bad, but there are a few things.  It seems like the Copper Box and the Aquatic Centre have high levels of walking and cycling to them.  But I can see that the Aquatic Centre has a 44% mode share for cars reported in 2018.  Those figures are concerning.  They are not the mode share we are aiming for.  Were efforts made at that time to explore the reasons for that high car mode share to the Aquatic Centre?

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Yes.  It is a question I ask quite regularly because we are committed to sustainable journeys.  It is under review at the moment because we are going to be building near the Aquatic Centre and looking at reducing the number of carparking spaces in any case.  What I am told is that it is largely down to parents dropping children off for swimming lessons and so on.  The pool is heavily used by children.  There seems to be some resistance to reducing those spaces largely for that reason.  Then there are a number of disabled spaces there as well.  But it is high.

Siân Berry AM:  Yes, it seems like there could be more work done to maybe clear some of those barriers that parents might find to helping their children get there by other means.

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Absolutely, yes. A lot of those children that are visiting must be fairly local because if you are going to swim there I suspect you are coming from a reasonably local area.

Siân Berry AM:  Yes, I agree with you.  It would be good to hear some more about what you are doing with that.  I want to switch over to Peter for reasons that will become obvious.  Peter, it has always baffled me how the really big efforts that were made to focus on transport planning and communications during the Olympics were not continued in the same way past 2012.  I used to work, to declare an interest, at Campaign for Better Transport and I took part in this massive survey that we did in 2013 of football fans specifically, trying to work out ways of solving football transport.  We worked with the Football Supporters’ Federation and asked fans lots of questions.  In 2013, the Olympic legacy was very much part of what we were looking at.  One of our strongest things that came out from the survey was fans wanted clubs to be working much more closely with local authorities and people in their area who control the transport authorities to make improvements, like what happened during the Olympics.  Can you explain why there is not more of an obvious mission going on within LLDC to get people travelling differently and really thinking about how they plan their journeys?

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  The Park is really well connected and we hear at our Board meetings quite a lot about the work which is done between our own people and the football club and the local authorities about managing football crowds.  You will know if you go there that most of the roads are closed around the Stadium for football, which is the right thing to do, and there are big volumes of pedestrians.  I think you have got to refer to my former organisation at Transport for London (TfL) on the more general issue about persuading people to use public transport.  The Park could not be better connected by public transport, possibly with one exception, which is that Stratford station is becoming or has become overcrowded or was becoming overcrowded prior to COVID.  We have kicked off at LLDC - and I wear both hats in this - a collaborative approach with TfL, with Network Rail and with other bodies to look at the future of Stratford station and what we can do about it.  There is quite a lot going on.  I am not sure that football traffic itself is an issue there.

Siân Berry AM:  This is not just a question about football.  The football report drew on the Olympics, but every venue has parallels.  You say the area is very well connected but also that the current train station - rail, Tube and all that - at Stratford is congested.  I know that we are all very concerned there might be some cuts to bus services in London coming up.  Are you taking part in lobbying, not just to make sure that bus cuts do not affect the LLDC area but that there are bus service improvements to help solve some of these problems?

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  I am personally quite careful about it, bearing in mind the jobs that I have done in the past.  The LLDC is interested in local transport and I do not think we are necessarily foreseeing any reductions in bus service levels in the Park.  In fact, I would expect the Park to be the beneficiary of the right level of bus services for the present and future due to a massive increase in the number of students and the number of visitors to East Bank and elsewhere and an increase in housing.  Nobody, I think, has suggested to us that service will be reduced.

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  We meet with TfL quite regularly on strategic projects and that has not been suggested to us.

Siân Berry AM:  Like you say, we would expect to see some bus service improvements coming, rather than any cuts affecting the area.

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  I would hope so certainly.

Siân Berry AM:  I hope we will get some reassurance about that.

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Yes.

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Yes.

Siân Berry AM:  You will obviously take that up with TfL?

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  I think we would because you have only got to look at the number of people that will be on site at East Bank, either students or visitors, to see that there is a massive increase.

Siân Berry AM:  OK, if I can move on again and back to you, Peter.  The other thing that has always bothered me about the Olympic [Games] travel legacy is the combi ticket, the ticket that came with your ticket for the Olympics that would get you on every mode of transport in London across nine zones, which is astounding.  It was to get you to some of the venues and that has never been repeated or revived.  It was another thing we called for in 2013 in relation to football travel specifically, but you would think that there were venues within the LLDC which could be pioneers of this kind of approach.  I notice that for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP[26]) meeting in Glasgow all the various local authorities in Glasgow have managed to co-operate to put together a combi ticket for attendees of that conference.  Peter, I know you say you are being reticent about your previous jobs, but of all the people in the world are you not the right person to be having those conversations with those various people to reintroduce a combi ticket and LLDC might be the right place to do it?

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  The truth is that whatever the current financial fortunes of TfL, the information and ticketing system is world renowned.  I suspect that that approach for normal Londoners or people who live or work in London, going about their business, is pretty redundant simply because everybody is using either bank cards or contactless or the residual Oyster [card].  It is the envy of the world.

Siân Berry AM:  To pay.  The point about the combi ticket is that the ticket comes free and it could even be an incentive to go to the venue if the transport is free.

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  It has got to be paid for by somebody.  We have not discussed it with West Ham, at least not to my knowledge.  The transport arrangements, for example, for football games, which are the biggest regular crowd events in the Park, are based on public transport usage by people who have already largely got tickets.  I am not sure what you would be expecting them to do because it would not be much of an offer for West Ham to offer some sort of combined ticket which includes travel when most of their audience, at least the London-based audience, have already got travel.

Siân Berry AM:  I am very disappointed to hear you are not as interested in this idea as I am.  This is very common in, for example, Germany.  It is almost ubiquitous when you take cultural and sporting events there to get a regional travel ticket and, again, you could make the same argument that people already have travel cards there.  I am going to have to stop though and leave some time for my colleagues, but I will take this up again because I think it is something that LLDC could well be the right place to do it. 

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  I am sure we can look at it actually.