Blackheath commuters! You need this!

If you have an iPhone and you use public transport in London, you need this app:
http://citymapper.com/

(Update: There’s an Android version too)

If you have a season ticket on your oyster card

Very useful information, via Diamond Geezer:

This guide shows you how to get a third off any single off-peak rail travel using your oystercard, if you already have a 16-25 Railcard, Disabled Railcard, a Gold Card, HM Forces Railcard, or a Senior Railcard.

But you have to go and ask a human being for it, in a station. Which is daft… It’s almost like they don’t want you to use it!

I love the fact that the guide includes step-by-step button-pushing instructions for the station staff.

No trains, no DLR, every bus is full

Stay in bed if you can. There’s little chance of heading in to London at a good hour today, thanks to some gas canisters that London Transport helpfully left to catch fire under some railway tracks… Again! Thanks!

Travel-off-itty

As suspected. No trains to London. No buses at all. No taxis from Blackheath taxis for 3 hours. And the train ticket office is shut.

Interestingly the newspaper vendor next to the ticket office is open. I asked him “how come you can open up but they can’t?”. “they are not serious, I think!”. Amen!

Cable cars across the Thames?

From today’s Sunday Times:

A network of Alpine-style cable cars carrying commuters across the Thames is being considered by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.

Passengers would be transported from the O2 arena in Greenwich to the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, and possibly on to the site of the 2012 Olympics, under plans drawn up by Lord Rogers, the mayor’s architecture adviser.

Rogers is proposing eight river crossings, mainly in east London, to cope with development in the area.

This looks extremely exciting!  I’ve no idea if it would actually ease carbon emmissions or make commuting easier, but just as another piece of “London as a theme park”, it might look quite striking…  Almost as good as the idea of using Battersea Power Station as a tube station.

Plus it gives me a chance to stretch my lamentable photoshop skills… I know, I suck at Photoshop…  The photo above is based on one of the dome by JL2003, and a cable car in Spain by ginsnob (both are creative commons licensed).

Another take on the idea in the Guardian here.