Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said that there are no plans to extend the Night Overground service on the East London line due to low demand.

At the moment trains run between Highbury and Islington and New Cross Gate overnight on Friday and Saturday nights, serving Rotherhithe, Canada Water and Surrey Quays.

Responding to a question tabled by Florence Eshalomi AM, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has revealed that each Night Overground train carries an average of 44 passengers.

The Mayor said: “Transport for London (TfL) has considered the value for money that would be offered by extending the current Night Overground service from New Cross Gate to West Croydon and Crystal Palace.

“Unfortunately, loadings on the current Night Overground service between Highbury and Islington and New Cross Gate are relatively low compared to those recorded during the remainder of the day, with an average of 44 customers on each train as it passes between stations.

“Loadings south of New Cross Gate are forecast to be about a quarter of this with (on average) only 10 to 15 customers on each train.

“At this level of demand, the customer benefit and revenue generated by this service change is unlikely to represent adequate value for money, given the additional costs that would be incurred (which include funding changes to Network Rail’s maintenance regime to accommodate these services).

“TfL does not therefore plan to extend the Night Overground network at the current time.”

Transport for London says it has adjusted the information on connection times between Jubilee line and London Overground trains at Canada Water displayed in its journey planner using anonymised wifi data gathered from passengers’ phones.

TfL has implemented the first improvements for customers following the start of collection of WiFi connection data earlier this year.

The 2.7 billion pieces of depersonalised data that have been analysed so far have allowed TfL to update Journey Planner to more accurately reflect the time it takes to travel through stations.

By collecting the data TfL claims that it has gained a greater understanding of the routes people take across the network, where they interchange and how long people may have to wait at certain points along their journey due to crowding or maintenance work.

At major interchange stations like Canada Water, the time to interchange between lines has been adjusted to better reflect busy times.

Historically, TfL has relied on customer surveys to understand the flow of movement through a station.

Using depersonalised WiFi data provides a more accurate understanding of how people interchange throughout the day.

The data collection, which began on 8 July 2019, is harnessing existing Wi-Fi connection data from more than 260 Wi-Fi enabled London Underground stations.  All data collected by TfL is automatically depersonalised to ensure that it is not possible to identify any individual, and no browsing or historical data is collected from any devices.

Lauren Sager Weinstein, Chief Data Officer at Transport for London, said: “Our lives are now more data-rich than they have ever been and therefore we are working to use this data to allow our customers to better plan their journeys and find the best routes across our network. These changes to our online Journey Planner using depersonalised Wi-Fi data collection is just the start of wider improvements we are hoping to introduce which will provide better information to our customers and help us plan and operate our transport network more effectively for all. As we do this, we take our customers’ privacy extremely seriously. It is fundamental to our data approach and we do not identify any individuals from the Wi-Fi data collected.”

Google is adding ‘crowdedness predictions’ for public transport on its Maps apps … and the company says that Canada Water is one of London’s most crowded stations and the Jubilee line is the most crowded line.

In a blog post Google explained: “Crowdedness predictions come from optional feedback directly from the people who use Google Maps. In fact, you may have received notifications asking about how crowded your subway, train, or bus ride was after navigating in transit mode. To learn more about how crowdedness levels vary around the world, we analyzed aggregated and anonymized reports of crowdedness from Google Maps users from October 2018 to June 2019 during peak commuting hours (6am – 10am), and identified which lines had the highest number of crowdedness reports. “

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan recently responded to concerns about the overcrowding at Canada Water, noting that the Elizabeth line could help free up capacity on the Jubilee line.

TfL is also bidding for Government funds to further upgrade the East London line – including a revamp for Surrey Quays Station – with a decision due in July.

Transport for London has announced that work will begin on 5 July on the construction of the £54 million cycleway between Tower Bridge and Greenwich via Jamaica Road.

Work is starting on the first section of Cycleway 4 between Tower Bridge and Rotherhithe Roundabout and includes new pedestrian crossings along Tooley Street and Jamaica Road and the overhaul of the Rotherhithe roundabout.

“I’m delighted that work is about to begin on this major new cycle route in south-east London,” said Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

“High-quality segregated cycle routes greatly increase the numbers of people who feel confident cycling on our streets and with new pedestrian crossings along the route, road danger will be substantially reduced for thousands of pedestrians too.

“Boroughs like Southwark, Lewisham and Greenwich really understand the huge benefits of investing in high-quality walking and cycling infrastructure. With record investment from TfL we will continue to work with boroughs who share our vision to tackle London’s inactivity crisis, reduce road danger, and get more people out of their cars and into cleaner greener forms of transport.”

Cllr Richard Livingstone, Southwark’s cabinet member for environment, transport and the climate emergency, said: “In Southwark we welcome this new addition to our growing network of cycleways.

“I hope that the introduction of segregated bike lanes and improved junctions will encourage even more people to get on their bikes and help to improve their health and happiness, and all of our air quality.”

Public consultation on the Lower Road section of the route is expected this summer.