Crime is up, half the Tube network is delayed or suspended, but never fear, Sadiq Khan is here. The Mayor of London has today unveiled his latest wheeze to show he’s not all inaction man: bestowing six different parts of the Overground with new, right-on names and distinct colours. After all, who needs a statues commission when you can just rebrand every transport map?
His apparatchiks in Transport for London (TfL) have today declared that these services will become known as the Lioness line; the Mildmay line; the Windrush line; the Weaver line; the Suffragette line; and the Liberty line. Presumably the Amy Lamé line was a stretch too far…
In predictable bureaucrat-speak, TfL said it had worked with customers, stakeholders, historians, industry experts and local communities, with the names representing the areas the lines travel through, while marking London’s history and cultural diversity. The Weaver line, for instance, travels through several areas of London known for their importance in the textile trade.
Khan declared that the new names are about ‘honouring and celebrating different parts of London’s unique local history and culture’. Yet his SDP opponent Amy Gallagher accused him of pushing a partisan agenda:
The names of the new London Overground are clearly political. The Suffragettes, for example, believed in political violence to achieve their goals. We should not be having train lines named after such a divisive political movement. The names should simply be either geographical or neutral, but not political .
Khan’s Tory rival Susan Hall meanwhile called it the ‘stuff of nonsense’. ‘The Central line is falling apart,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t call one of them the “Sadiq line”.’ Don’t give our self-congratulating Mayor any ideas, Susan…
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