Complete the danged Bakerloo line
A road built to serve cars in a city that passed peak-car a decade ago. A place of vast empty car parks and van storage yards, which houses, pleases and employs very few. A spectacularly grotesque waste of central London - and the only one of the cheap streets on the Monopoly Board that's still cheap.
While regeneration slowly creeps along Jamaica Road through Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, the Old Kent Road serves as a vast grey-brown ligature that restricts the flow of capital, energy and talent from the centre of London south east. With Vauxhall and the Elephant & Castle at last being razed and rebuilt, the OKR remains as the North London bigot's best argument against South London - a place where people are rarely seen, except bunched at crossings or hanging from doorways.
The Old Kent Road is also one of London's designated "opportunity areas". But it's a public transport desert and without new links, that opportunity won't materialise.
So why are we consulting about whether the Bakeloo Line should travel down it or go via Camberwell? This shouldn't even be a question. If the Old Kent Road was in North London, there would have been a Cobra meeting about it by now. Given that the extension will need to be part-funded from levies on developers along its route, the Old Kent Road is the best chance of getting the project paid for - the part of the journey where most development is possible.
Make the decision today, start work tomorrow. Forget about the Hayes extension if that's going to hold things up. In a city where brownfield is a precious commodity, the Old Kent Road represents a dereliction of duty on the part of our politicians.
