Your report on conditions on London Transport was timely ('Struggling to cope', Guardian, August 29).

The Local Plan for Epping Forest assumes there will be ample capacity on the Central Line and adequate bus services to support thousands of additional homes within the catchment areas of stations in the district. No doubt various London boroughs’ plans make similar heroic assumptions. It is a critical part of the Epping Forest District Council strategy that local people will stop using private cars and adopt public transport, buses, cycles and walking instead.

Two developments worry The Epping Society. Firstly, our attention was drawn to TfL’s Supplementary Submission in 2016 that showed shocking levels of overcrowding with more than five people forecast to be standing per square metre between Mile End and Bank and unacceptable levels either side of that stretch of the line. Apart from passenger discomfort, high passenger densities increases the temperature at all times of the year.

Our second concern was to learn that TfL decided last year to discontinue repairs to extend the safe operating life of Central Line signalling, some of which dates from the early 1960s. Not only is this a worry for current passenger volumes but it casts serious doubt on the confident claims by the district council and TfL that there will be ample capacity for the huge increase in demand over the coming years.

The situation with bus services cannot be considered encouraging with services recently cancelled from an already challenging timetable.

At the Planning Inspector’s hearings we asked about memorandums of understanding with public transport providers but none appeared to exist.

Andrew Smith

Vice Chairman, Chairman of Local Plan sub-committee

The Epping Society