We tried London's first driverless bus
Scroll to the end for: Berlin Wall latest • More on the TfL hacker's motive • Picturehouse Central fully reopens • London's Norwegian connections
I’m sitting inside a driverless bus heading along the side of the Thames in Barnes, south west London, when it suddenly jolts to a halt.
There’s a minor problem: the onboard computer that’s controlling our progress knows it has right of way. But an aggressively driven SUV feels otherwise and shoots across the mini-roundabout in front of us, causing our AI-driven transport pod to abruptly brake.
The technicians on board explain that the autonomous vehicles are too well behaved. They insist on following the Highway Code, which is sometimes incompatible with making rapid progress on the capital’s streets.
Once we negotiate the junction, progress is smooth. The electric-powered vehicle drives at a steady 15mph in fully autonomous mode from Barnes High Street to Hammersmith Bridge. It traces the bend in the River Thames at a steady pace, albeit with an uncannily conservative approach to driving that feels more like being on a tram than a bus. There’s no steering wheel, just two wide benches at both ends of the vehicle. It feels like you’re at the back of the Docklands Light Railway, just facing the wrong way.
It has ramps for wheelchair access and giant screens showing the mapping of potential risks for hundreds of metres around using LIDAR sensors. While passengers are currently required to sit down and wear seatbelts, in the future it could hold 14 people and operate without onboard staff. Despite our test ride taking place in 35°C heat there is incredibly effective air conditioning. Passersby and schoolchildren all want to have a look. So do the human bus drivers parked up and having a rest between shifts.
London Centric was the first news outlet to be invited on board the Ohmio vehicle during its visit to the capital this week. While self-driving pods have been tested over the last decade in the Greenwich Peninsula and the Olympic Park, this is believed to be the first time that an autonomous bus has been tested on London’s public roads in real conditions, alongside human drivers in their private cars and vans.
“This is the future of transport: autonomous vehicles,” said Charles Campion, a local architect and member of the Barnes Hammersmith Electric Light Transit group. “It’s the future of taxi transport, of personal transport, but also public transport.”
Campion is part of a community group in south west London who are trying to solve a problem. This week local government officials finally gave up on plans to allow cars or buses to return to Hammersmith Bridge, which links Hammersmith to Barnes over the River Thames in west London.
The Grade II* listed Victorian bridge, which has been closed to motor traffic since 2019, is now too weak to carry the weight of modern vehicles without vast investment. As a result it is set to become a permanent walking and cycling bridge.
But what about the elderly, disabled, or less able who can’t walk or cycle over the bridge to and from the transport hub of Hammersmith?
That’s where the proposal for the self-driving pods comes in. A standard TfL single-decker bus weighs around 15 tonnes. Unlike robotaxis, the pods follow a fixed route and only weigh three tonnes, which the community group says would fit within the bridge’s weight limits.
“There isn’t a business case for the government to fund the rebuilding of Hammersmith Bridge,” argues Campion. “We’ve got to be real, and accept where we are now.”
These vehicles also don’t need as many staff, he says, although it’s not entirely clear how you’d convince people to tap their payment card: “Once you take the operator, the driver out of the equation, costs come tumbling down.”
In recent months Londoners have got used to the sight of driverless taxis from the likes of Waymo and Wayve circling the capital on test drives while covered in sensors, ahead of their launch to paying customers later this year. But Campion, along with a group of local activists, wants to convince Transport for London that a network of lightweight self-driving AI buses can fill a gap in the capital’s transport networks, starting with Hammersmith Bridge.
The initial proposal is for a service from Hammersmith transport interchange to the Barnes side of the bridge. This could then be extended all the way to Barnes railway station, says Campion: “We’re looking at a fleet of maybe 10 vehicles, eight running, with one pod across the bridge at any one time. We can carry thousands of people a day.”
It would require some specialist infrastructure, with a total cost estimated at around £10m. While there wouldn’t be drivers, there would need to be a control centre with permanent staffing in the local area to respond to any incidents.
The Hammersmith Bridge closure has changed the area. The residents of Barnes, one of London’s wealthiest enclaves, have lost the miles of traffic that used to blight their area, as residents of south London no longer drive through Barnes to get north of the river.
Not everyone’s happy with this. Some local MPs have campaigned for the bridge to be reopened, with Putney’s Labour MP Fleur Anderson leading a campaign on the basis it causes congestion elsewhere and leaves “Roehampton effectively cut off”. But responsibility for the bridge was given solely to Hammersmith & Fulham council in 1986 when the Greater London Council was abolished. And they don’t have much interest in paying the enormous cost of sorting it out for the benefit of residents south of the river.
As the FT’s Stephen Bush put it, it’s a microcosm of London’s bodged devolution deal: “The people of Hammersmith and Barnes mostly get what they want, a beautiful bridge free of cars. The drivers of Wandsworth will have to take longer journeys.”
Transport for London, for its part, put the kibosh on the suggestion it would back the driverless buses proposal.
“We have no plans to introduce these vehicles on Hammersmith Bridge and no plans to introduce driverless buses elsewhere on the network,” a spokesperson for the transport authority told London Centric.
Oh, and the unions that represent bus drivers aren’t necessarily going to be happy.
The Barnes group aren’t giving up though. A solution will eventually need to be found, they believe. And they are going to keep making the case for autonomous pods.
“If I was looking at a place where I used to run several bus services across seven days a week and now I can’t, to me it’s natural to start looking at an alternative,” says Campion.
If you want to see the vehicles in action, pop along to the Barnes Fair on Saturday or walk across Hammersmith Bridge to Castelnau Road.
Thanks to everyone who enjoyed our big read on teenage hacker Thalha Jubair who brought down TfL. The comments section was fascinating, as usual.
Professor Peter Sommer, who spoke to us for the piece, said a major issue is the “social element in the motivations of this class of cybercriminal”. The vast sums of money gained are not really the point:
“They meet people who are similar to them in interests and outlook, help each other out within the various groups but also want to be better than anyone else. The ransoms they collect are trophies - in most cases turning crypto into fiat cash without being traced is very difficult. But the ransom money is of course still lost to the victims.”
There’s a case to be made that the teenager Jubair was, on paper, one of the capital’s richest people, all while living in his parents’ Tower Hamlets flat.
But is the Berlin Wall art?
We had a lovely chat with Steven Thorpe, the property developer who decided to install a piece of the Berlin Wall in his south London garden.
It’s been widely reported that he’s now in a planning battle with Southwark council, after a neighbour complained that the concrete slab is too close to their garden and ruins their view. Thorpe insists it’s an artwork and has pledged to fight the case and open up his garden to community visits so locals can learn about the wall’s history and the end of the Cold War.
Thorpe showed us around his garden and pointed out how he’d raised the fence to screen the piece of wall from his neighbour’s garden: “He said it was spoiling his view. I don’t know what his view was.”
He handed us the letter from Southwark council which concludes that he does not have the right to put up a giant slab of reinforced concrete in his garden. The planning officer wrote: “I consider that the works you have carried out are unacceptable and result in a planning harm. I will recommend that a planning enforcement notice is served. That notice is likely to require the removal of the works.”
In the worst-case scenario, Thorpe risks a £20,000 fine for failure to comply. He disagrees with Southwark’s interpretation: “If it’s considered a piece of art or a historical artefact it shouldn’t be dealt with in the same way as if it was a wall or a building. There are two sides to every dispute. I would argue it’s a historic artefact.”
The story of how Thorpe came to purchase a slab of the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall is a tale in itself. A German farmer took large lumps of the concrete when the wall came down in 1989 and used them to build farm sheds. Decades later, the farmer realised he owned a supply of priceless art. Thorpe won’t say how much he paid for the slab of wall, although he says the farmer chucked in a free box of pig’s ears for his dog to eat as a thank you. He also sent us video of him transporting it to Dulwich from Germany.
Sad news from Scotland
Long-term London Centric readers will remember that our ongoing investigation into central London’s tax-evading gift shops uncovered a linked network of shops in Scotland. Last summer we published our findings in collaboration with the wonderful Edinburgh Minute because stories that begin in London often shape the rest of the UK. The Scottish government took our findings seriously, just as the Westminster government has been reading our reporting on dodgy shops.
Sadly, in the early hours of Thursday morning, part of the historic Edinburgh building that housed the tax-evading gift shops caught fire and suffered “extensive damage”. The building’s owner is billionaire London landlord Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital, which had planned to turn the unit into a branch of its windowless Zedwell hotel chain.
Criterion said in a statement: “There have been no reported injuries and we are very grateful to the emergency services for their swift response and professionalism. This building is an important and historic part of Edinburgh’s city centre and we continue to liaise with the emergency services and relevant authorities.”
Positive cinema news from central London
Restrictions on Picturehouse Central’s rooftop members’ bar, one of central London’s best-kept secrets, have finally been lifted. For the last year or so members have been unable to enjoy the full benefits. We covered this baffling situation at length last summer. Officially, both sides blamed Westminster Council for the restrictions. All of this was news to the council, who kept telling us it was nothing to do with them and referred questions to the landlord, Criterion Capital.
Picturehouse had been in a messy legal dispute which resulted in a judge ruling that Criterion unlawfully overcharged Picturehouse hundreds of thousands of pounds for the cinema’s insurance. An appeal in the case was recently abandoned and a truce appears to have broken out, suggesting the future of this central London cinema is now secure. Negotiations over the Prince Charles Cinema, another Criterion-owned central London cinema, are understood to be continuing.
Preposterous property of the week
At first glance from the street this Grade II listed London home doesn’t meet our usual high standard of ridiculous London properties. Then you notice the underground car lift.
Concealed behind its normal facade is a winding labyrinth of glass and marble. With a floor plan that we can’t quite get our heads around, this £17.95m six-bed in Notting Hill takes up 9,561 sq ft of space, and features a swimming pool, gym, and cinema.
There’s Norway they’d make a joke that bad
World Cup fever continues to hit London during the heatwave. Aside from the disturbances following Morocco vs France, there’s the fact that transport operators are competing against each other to rename their stations. Thameslink has turned Bellingham station into Jude Bellingham, while Canary Wharf is currently Kaneary Wharf. Could Reece James’ Park follow next?
On Saturday night it’s time for Norway vs England. It’s not one of football’s biggest rivalries but if you look long enough you can find Norwegian influence in London. There’s the docks in south east London where Norwegian timber used to be unloaded, which is why there’s the beautiful Norwegian church next to the Rotherhithe tunnel. There’s the annual Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. There’s the name of Tooley Street near London Bridge. And there’s London Bridge itself, which was supposedly (let’s not check the facts too much) pulled down by a Norwegian king a thousand years ago.
We did our best to prove on Instagram that all news is local if you try hard enough.
PS It was the 21st anniversary of the 7/7 bombings earlier this week. Quite a few people linked to our piece from this time last year on how the capital’s (human, non-AI) bus drivers got people home that night. If you missed it last year, have a read now.
As soon as I read the words ‘owned by’ in London Centric my brain autocompletes to ‘Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital’ I can’t stop
I’m astounded by the attitudes of the nay-sayers. Get real and work with viable solutions.