We continue to put pressure on TfL to improve public transport for residents to travel to and from Queen's hospital.
Despite numerous letters and emails from Councillors and individual CHRA members, to Geoff Hobbs (Director of PublicTransport Planning) and Seb Dance (Deputy Mayor of London), our request for a short extension of the 86 bus route has continued to be rejected by TfL.
A petition, requesting that the route of one or two 86 buses per hour should be extended to Queen's hospital, was signed by over 800 residents, and gained support from our Councillors, as well as Jon Cruddas, M.P., Margaret Mullane and Unmesh Desai (London Assembly member). Despite a wide variety of reasons being given for our request, a limited number of excuses has been given by TfL for its rejection. We have decided to continue our petition, and now have added this on Social Media sites.
In September, a response to a letter sent by our Secretary (see here) led to a response from Geoff Hobbs, Director of Public Transport Service Planning.This failed to take into consideration the points that had been raised by CHRA, and contained a number of incorrect and irrelevant statements. While it had previously been suggested that a member of TfL should try to take the journey with residents, to experience the difficulties, Mr Hobbs suggested that we could meet to talk with local "planners". While an improvement, this was not felt acceptable.You can read the response from Geoff Hobbs here,
Our Secretary sent a response to Mr Hobbs and received a reply in January. Again, it fails to acknowledge the serious issues that have led to us requesting a direct route to the hospital. You can read copies of both emails here.
All correspondance were copied to Margaret Mullane, M.P., along with Members of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and Jaz Athwal, M.P. Margaret was invited to a meeting with TfL, again with a negative response. However, she was able to persuade TfL to agree to meet with our residents, at a special CHRA meeting on Thursday, 3rd July. Although this was very well attended, and residents were able to express their views in detail, it seems we shall have to wait some time before they reconsider our request.