Ken: I take the blame

Ken Livinstone admits he is to blame for London's deepening road traffic misery.

The Mayor says his Transport for London (TfL) agency is guilty of trying to carry out too much major repair work at the same time.

TfL's simultaneous schemes at Trafalgar Square, Vauxhall Cross and Shoreditch have been seen by critics as instrumental in reducing traffic to little more than a crawl since last year.

But now Mr Livingstone has vowed to put things right and announced that he is to appoint a traffic "czar" responsible for cracking down on roadworks.

In a key speech last night Mr Livingstone said: "It's quite clear in retrospect they (TfL) strained the capacity of London. There was too much being done at any one time."

This year commuters face a large increase in road schemes carried out by local councils, but the Mayor promised: "We must learn from the problems and now steer these projects to be done in the evenings and night-time and not to conflict with the pressure of Monday to
Friday daytime traffic."

The announcement of a road "czar" to be appointed in the next four to six weeks, comes in the wake of a demand from Transport Secretary Alistair Darling in an Evening Standard interview before Christmas.

Mr Darling said the capital's economy would lose millions unless congestion was tackled in a radical manner.

The new post will be at the top of TfL and will report to the Mayor's transport commissioner Bob Kiley and the Government's transport minister John Spellar.

The "director of traffic management" will work with the police and local councils and to co-ordinate street works, particularly-those carried out by utility-companies.

Mr Livingstone said legislation is being considered to set up a permit scheme for roadworks, similar to New York, "to ensure we don't have the continuing degree of anarchy on our streets".

He said that if the utility companies failed to co-operate voluntarily, he had "not the slightest doubt" that the patience of the Government was exhausted and it would crack down hard on them.

Government figures showed that 190 companies were allowed to dig up London's roads and were responsible for 40,000 days per month of disruption - some 95 per cent of all roadworks. The remainder were carried out by TfL and local councils.

But the Mayor had bad news for motorists in his speech to the London Government dinner at the Mansion House. He said he had just been told by Transco and Thames Water that they would be digging up 35 miles of the capital's roads in the next year to replace Victorian mains.

"This will be a disaster," he said. "Roads built by the Victorians have got to be reconstructed. It would be completely unacceptable for Transco to dig the road up and put in a new main and we come along a year or two later and put in a new road.

"This work must be coordinated and that will be the job of our new traffic boss."

Mr Livingstone also signalled a change in the ban on nighttime deliveries. He is to consider scrapping it to help improve daytime traffic flows.

Despite the problems generated by the work at Trafalgar Square, Vauxhall Cross and Shoreditch, he said all three projects "were finished to time and to budget".