North London Line closed … but the replacement buses won’t serve Cally

Closed for 3 months ... no bus replacement service will call here

The London Overground service along the North London Line is now closed for major engineering works until 31st May. A bus replacement service is now running … but it misses-out the station at Caledonian Road and Barnsbury.

The 3 month shutdown is to permit the main stages of rebuilding the stations and slotting-in the East London Line extension. When it’s finished and the new services are running, it will be a fantastic upgrade. By 2012 it will result in a “metro”-style railway with trains running every several minutes and a fast route into the City.

Doubtless when it’s all completed we’ll have Mayor Johnson claiming the credit for another of Ken Livingstone’s bold investment decisions taken several years ago.

But in the meantime, the line closure is causing chaos and uproar. To be fair, after 18 months of partial closures at weekends, it’s probably better to get as much done as quickly as possible. And a half decent bus replacement service would make the wait almost acceptable. But it is absolutely bizarre to exclude Caledonian Road and Barnsbury from the bus shuttle service. The replacement bus route faithfully connects every single station along the route from Gospel Oak to Stratford .. except for our local station.

Why? Well the transport bureaucrats say that our local roads are not fit for bus services. But they don’t need to use local back roads at all. What they really mean is that routing a replacement bus service up Holloway Road from Highbury Corner and then coming doen Caledonian Road is a bit of a detour. So they won’t do it.

Caledonian ward’s Councillors are monitoring the effect of this closure on the neighbourhood and have asked Transport for London to meet and explain their case and hear what people in this area think about losing this increasingly important transport link.