The goal of London Mayor Boris Johnson to establish the city as the European electric vehicle capital has received a timely boost after £17 million in funding being made available for the programme’s infrastructure.
The financial impetus will go towards making a network of some 7,500 charge points across the city over the next three years, will completion date set for 2012. The next 12 months will see the installation of 1,600 new charging points.
The Department for Transport will comprise £9.3 million according to yesterday’s announcement, which will complement the already ledged contributions from several leading organisations of £7.6 million in [...]

Controversial plans to build a new airport somewhere on the Thames Estuary would be complicated but ultimately possible according to an initial report.
 
A second study into the proposal has now been initiated by Boris Johnson. If given the go ahead the south east could get a new six runway airport in the estuary with high speed rail links joining it to the mainland. Thames Estuary Research and Development Company spokesperson, Bridget Rosewell says that although she is not yet announcing that a new airport would necessarily be a good thing for the area she is determined to look closely [...]

The British government is set to receive plans for a new London station in the heart of the city to handle the proposed high speed rail network.
The report will be presented by High Speed 2 (HS2) which was commissioned by the government to undertake a comprehensive investigation of potential high speed rail lines across Britain, with Scotland and the West Midlands also on the agenda. HS2 has labelled the high speed service as similar to an aeroplane on wheels and will offer the government costs forecasts for the exercise that looks likely to be up and running by 2025. The [...]

Speaking at the climate summit in Copenhagen, London Mayor Boris Johnson made the assertion that by the year 2015 not a single Londoner would be further than one mile away from an electric car charge point.
Mayor Johnson went on to reveal details of a citywide network of charge points for electric vehicles as London strives to be a world-leader in zero carbon-emission vehicles of the electric kind. Johnson had been using the summit to showcase London’s electric vehicle plans and his desire to make such vehicles a notable feature of the city. London is at the forefront of a global [...]

After an agonising wait, the delays that have affected some 30,000 passengers utilising the Eurostar Channel Tunnel should finally be over today. However, the company has acknowledged that thousands of people are unlikely to make it home in time for Christmas.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has demanded that services are operational by Tuesday, having ordered French rail head Guillaume Pepy to get traffic moving again and to install measures to prevent similar incidents occurring again. Traffic has been suspended between London and Paris as Eurostar undertakes testing to determine the cause of five tunnel breakdowns on Friday evening, leaving some 2,000 [...]

At 5.13am this morning a revolution in British rail travel as an early whistle will sound out in the darkness signalling the departure of a historic journey.
Britain’s first high-speed commuter train will have hit the dizzying heights of a top speed of 140mph as it flies across Kent from Ashford to eventually dock at London’s St Pancras station. The 58 mile journey will take a mere 37 minutes. Transport Secretary Lord Adonis and Dame Kelly Holmes will be two of the high profile passengers on the inaugural journey.
Lord Adonis has said that the new offering will ultimately see Britain connected [...]

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that from the beginning go of 2010 it begin using a new roadworks permit scheme. The scheme is aimed at coordination of the various companies that undertake maintenance work to wires and piping that run underneath the capital’s roads in the hope that this will reduce the amount of disruptions caused to motorists.
Earlier this year the government approved the decision which was ratified by the TfL and 18 borough councils in greater London ahead of the start date announcement. As of the 11th of January any company that wishes to dig up roads will [...]

Britain’s largest and busiest commuter train service, Stagecoach Group Plc, has announced that its first half profit has fallen by 13 percent due to the reduced demand for travel brought about by the recession in addition to rising fuel and pension costs.
Net income for the group fell by £60.6 million to a total of £98 million at 8.4p per share. This represents a decline from the £69.4 million, or 9.6p per share, from the same period last year according to a statement released by the Scottish based company in a statement released today.
On a positive note, group sales were up [...]

Last week’s World Travel Market, marred by the non-attendance of several Iranian exhibitors due to visa delays by the Tehran British Embassy, saw industry experts still pondering how to cope with the lingering effects of the global recession.
London played host to some 5,000 tourism and travel professionals, whose main concern was consolidating the faint ray of hope ahead after the first three quarters of 2009 were disastrous.
For the period up until the end of August, international travel and tourism was down by around 7% worldwide compared to 2008. The impact was more so felt in Europe, where the European Travel [...]

GoGo Electric Car Rentals, a progressive car hire based in the UK, is offering its London customers the chance to rent a vehicle with zero emmissions.
Although the green-car travel option is widely popular the GoGo service is the first of its kind and is sure to strike a chord with energy conscious Londoners . The cost of using the service is similar to regular rentals with prices from around £22 per day.
Four passengers can easilly fit into the Mega City GoGo hire car which can make it to all travel destinations across Britain. The energy conscious car however comes with [...]