London: Mayor & More

Boris On The Buses (Pt 32,629,630)

The Labour Party - not Team Ken - lost no time alerting me (and everyone else) to Boris Johnson's interview with Tim Donovan on the London bit of the Politics Show this morning. Its press office provided a transcript of what it called "the car crash that was Boris Johnson's attempt to stand up his bus costings." I've just watched it online (from about 30 minutes in, after Jon Sopel has grilled the three main candidates) and have to conclude that the "new Routemaster" plan is, if not a complete write-off, then might be best re-filed - to recall an old retreat strategy - as an aspiration rather than a pledge.

After consistently refusing to put a price on the whole scheme Johnson has recently started mentioning the figure of £100 million, as in this interview with ePolitix:

Question: Have you properly costed your spending commitments? Johnson: We have completely costed the commitment to spend £100m on a new generation Routemaster and I challenge the Labour mayor to come up with figure for his 500 hybrid buses and I challenge ePolitix to winkle it out of him.

He's begun doing this since he let slip the figure to that undercover citizen journalist last week and it's hard not to suspect that the two things are related. He did so again with Donovan, once more adding that the expense would be much the same as Livingstone's planned hybrids. But when Donovan pressed him, the vagueness of the costing's basis was exposed. Was the £100 million for the buses only or for staffing them too? Did it include pay for conductors and the additional drivers that would be required, given that double deckers can carry fewer passengers? Johnson didn't answer and then revived his old line about it being impossible to price for a bus that had yet to be invented, thereby undermining the validity of the £100 million figure still further.

This one isn't going to go away. Had Johnson restricted his pledge to phasing conductors back in on a modest initial scale and spoken of a general wish to phase bendys out, the policy, though less eye-catching, would at least have seemed plausible as well as attractive (including to me). Now it's looking like a liability.

Boris On The Buses (Part 4,672,914)

As the man who first exposed the financial inexactitude behind Boris Johnson's "new Routemaster" proposals I've got to say I'm amazed that six week later he's still getting his abacus in a twist about the cost of the scheme. Actually, other people are in a muddle about it too, but Boris's latest comments are making matters even worse for him. The story so far:

Episode One: Boris tells Vanessa Feltz it would cost £8 million to put conductors on the existing bendy bus routes. The following day, Ken Livingstone claims it would cost £80 million, though his website swiftly reduces that to £70 million. They can't both be right.

Episode Two: I ask TfL to tell me what it thinks the conductors would cost, and to make an assessment of the cost of implementing the entire Johnson "new Routemaster" policy, buses and all. They think it would cost £49 million for the conductors and a total of £112 million a year to put the whole thing into effect. This means TfL thought both candidates were wrong on the cost of conductors, Boris by the most. Team Ken, however, immediately claimed victory with regard to the overall figure because it nearly matched their estimate of £110 million. In fact, they reached that figure by a different route from TfL: they had a higher figure for conductors but forgot to include the cost of hiring the additional drivers that would be required if existing passenger capacity was to be maintained (double deckers can carry fewer passengers than bendys, so you'd need more of them, hence more drivers). I did point this out to them at the time, but they weren't about to look a gift bus in the mouth and, after all, I suppose they could have stuck on a bit extra for the drivers if they'd been so inclined.

Episode Three: Team Boris accuses TfL of being "highly mischevious" and said it stuck by its £8 million figure. The suggestion that TfL was deliberately generating Ken-friendly figures was repeated in an Evening Standard article on 19th March, despite TfL's estimate having been broadly confirmed by the independent company TAS in the meantime. But, of course, the TfL figures were at odds with Livingstone's as well as with Johnson's. Funnily enough, the Standard story didn't mention that.

Episode Four: On Newsnight, Boris Johnson still wouldn't offer a total figure for his "new Routemaster" policy. His earlier defence - the one his campaign presented to me - had been that you can't reliably estimate the cost of a bus that has yet to be designed. This might not be very satisfactory, but at least it sounds plausible. Instead of it using it, though, Johnson claimed it would cost about the same as Livingstone's proposed "hybrid" buses. And he again failed to make clear that the £8 million figure referred only to the cost of conductors. True, it was miles out, but not £100 million out, and could have been finessed - as his campaign team did in response to my questions - as enough for an initial roll out, one which Londoners could be said to support.

Episode Five: In a well-executed sting operation, Johnson revealed to an undercover Livingstone supporter that he did, in fact, have a figure for his new Routemaster scheme - "about £100 million," which is pretty close to the £110 million the Livingstone campaign had said right at the beginning, and the £112 million TfL said it would be - the very calculation Team Boris told me it was "highly mischievious" of it to have provided. Result? A somewhat vague but, nonetheless, serviceable and potentially popular policy looking a complete and utter mess.

No Bus Purge

Following today's Guardian story, Team Boris tells the Standard that Peter Hendy won't be getting the chop. And after all the things he's said about him! How very moderate.

Mayor Boris, His Team & The RMT

Top reporting from the Guardian.

London Unlocked, A Blog

They write:

"We are glad that transport is emerging as a key battleground in this election, though it is disappointing that the misrepresentation of his opponent’s policies appears to be Ken Livingstone’s line of attack."

They see virtue in the proposals of both Paddick and Johnson. Now read on.

Question That: A Blog

He or she is a London-based science graduate student, a "thoughtful libertarian, an atheist and a sceptic," embarking on dispassionately assessing Livingstone and Johnson's policies. To begin:

"Transport Verdict: Narrow win for Boris."

We need more blogging like this. Now read on.

TfL To Buy Croydon Tram

The deal was agreed on Monday. Details from Transport Briefing.

Diamond Geezer On The "New Routemaster"

Thanks to Peter Watts at Time Out as well as Google Alerts for bringing this to my attention. DG identifies four problems with Boris Johnson's "21st Century Routemaster" plan:

"1. Boris can't bring back old Routemasters because accessibility legislation bans the use of non-inclusive 1950s technology. There aren't enough of the old vehicles left anyway, because most of those withdrawn from service a few years ago are now either in private hands or rusting. So all that Boris can promise is a competition to design a 'new Routemaster'. Something like this Johnson-approved blueprint here (although the design can't be anywhere near perfect otherwise he wouldn't be relying on a contest). Expect the timelag from competition launch to first on-road replacement to be several years. Long term good, but medium term nil."

He continues:

"2. The new design won't really be a Routemaster at all, just a rear-platform people-mover with an evocative name. Call it a Routemaster if you like, Boris, but it won't be the classic bumpy spluttering vehicle we know and love. It'll be some new shiny thing with intrusive on-board announcements and electronic destination panels. But before the election, of course, all that matters is a convincing sounding rebranding exercise."

The rest of the post is here. But already I'm again wondering how many bus manufacturers would be interested in entering The Blond's competition. Has anyone asked any of them? Perhaps someone should.

Bendys End

In case you'd missed it.

Tim McLoughlin, Blogger

From Highbury, he writes:

"A mayoral term lasts four years, product development and licencing would take longer than that. So even if Boris managed to get a design approved it is unlikely that he would be able to replace bendy buses with a new Routemaster duting his term of office anyway. If this is all he has to offer then London deserves more ambition than a vague and unresearched idea. It is nothing more than that."

Tim may be "Labour-focussed," but does that mean a lot of neutrals aren't thinking the same thing?