The Olympic timetable appears to be coping with the 7% rise in passenger numbers, in fact if anything we seem to have overestimated the need. I’ve run several trains in the extra hour added on at the end of the day including a last WER and there’s hardly anyone out there.

On one trip I started at LOU around 01:00 and picked up my first passenger at SNA only for him to get off at LES where I picked up a couple. There were half a dozen at LEY followed by a couple of dozen at STR, most of who got off at MIE. I don’t think I saw more than a dozen people at any other station on the way with STP, BOS, LAG and QUE all being empty when I arrived and when I finally reached EAB there were only four people left. For a train that can hold over a thousand people I doubt if I had more than a two hundred on board over the entire journey

Another mode of transport suffering from underuse is the cable car across the Thames. Having boasted that it would carry 2500 people per hour or 35000 per day it has been revealed that over the first 14 days it was opened it managed just over 20000 per day. Despite these figures and despite splashing loads of tax payers’ money on it after promising that it wouldn't cost us a penny Boris boasted yesterday that it “is fast becoming an iconic way of traversing the Thames and an important link for Londoners living in the east of our city”.

I hereby promise that I will ritually disembowel the next person who declares something to be “iconic”. For the sake of the English language.