Catching the river to work Commuting to work by river is catching on with more and more Londoners. Locally there's a popular peak hour service from Putney to Blackfriars which stops at Wandsworth Town alongside the new Riverside Quarter development. There are three morning services leaving Putney at 6.20am 7.30am and 8am - all stop at Wandsworth Town five minutes later. Further downstream there are services to Canary Wharf which have attracted Transport for London funding. The council wants TfL to expand its support for river services so that more commuters have the option of using this stress-free form of transport. Operators need help with the cost of acquiring boats while more riverside developments on both sides of the river need to offer piers and jetties. This would enable more services to be run at more times during the day. With proper TfL investment the Thames can finally take its place as a fully-fledged arm of the capital's public transport network. More information can be found at http://www.thamesexecutivecharters.com/ and you can download a timetable in pdf format. The council wants to know what local people think about river transport and what could be done to make this form of transport more widely used. We will use the support of local people to build our case for increased investment in this much under-used resource. |
