Boris: East London Line 2 is the "Way to Go"

Today, Mayor Johnson launched his vision paper for the future of London transport, entitled "Way to Go", with encouraging signals about the second phase of the East London Line extension.

One of its headline commitments is:

"Improving the journeys of rail passengers through the continued development of the London Overground network to form an orbital rail equivalent to the M25, and the roll-out of Oyster across the private rail franchises."

Creating an orbital rail service entails extending the East London Line again, from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction, creating a complete circuit of zone 2-ish parts of London.

The specific commitment in the full document is about as concrete as is possible in a vision document, stating "now is the time" to develop the "potential of the overground".

ELL2 has always seemed like a no-brainer: a low-cost project which will maximise the benefits of the other overground investment projects and free up some capacity on overstretched overland services. Today, it moved a lot closer to reality.