By More on this later, but the Standard has the detail of the above-inflation fare increase on London's public transport. It is a vicious attack.
A seven-day bus pass will rise an eye-watering 20% from £13.80 to £16.60. Most Oyster pay-as-you-go Tube fares will rise 20p per trip. That would put a single Oyster bus fare at £1.20, up from 90p when Ken Livingstone was mayor. Overall, bus fares will rise by 12.7% and Tube fares by 3.9%. Yet CPI inflation is currently at 1.1%.
The Standard reports that TfL “expects the changes to result in a small fall in bus passenger numbers.” So the shift towards bus use is now being openly reversed.
There are also reports of cuts to services, including yet another attack on outer London from a mayor whose actual policies, rather than his words, have been repeatedly damaging to the suburbs: “The Mayor said there would be a cut in bus schedules and fewer off-peak Tube trains in outer London,” reports the Standard.
The whole direction of transport policy in London is now going the wrong way: higher fares, lower investment, cuts to services.
Let no one be under any illusion that Boris Johnson is ‘red Boris’ or a cuddly, kindlier sort of Tory.
It is claimed - though we will have to see - that the higher fares will raise an extra £125million. Yet Boris Johnson’s own actions have cut millions from TfL’s budgets – £50m-£70million a year will go when the western extension is abolished; £50million a year has been lost through the cancellation of the £25 CO2 charge on gas guzzlers; millions are being wasted through the new Routemaster plan, the removal of bendy buses and the ending of the mutually beneficial agreement with Venezuela.
Fares should have been held down to protect people in a recession, but the opposite is happening.
It’s a bad day for Londoners and transport in London.
This post was also published at Simon's blog.
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You mean the Routemasters which Ken replaced with his cyclist-murdering, fare-dodgers'-best-friend bendy buses?
"Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster"
Ken got the description uncannily right.
There would have been no TfL budget blackhole if
1) the Mayoral precept had not
been unrealistically frozen at the height of a financial
crisis as a sop to outer London voters
2) important revenue generating congestion charge schemes had not been cancelled or were not due to be scrapped (at great cost)
3) fully operational buses were not being replaced at great cost for PR
reasons
4) the PPP investment programme for
the tube hadn't been rushed through
Ken was culpable for none of these,
though number 4 is certainly GB's error.
Now, people (not me) might argue that these four things
were necessary and desirable. I would like to
hear their reasoning.
Economically, the move is nonsense. It disroportonately hits the poor who have a higher propensity to spend. It disproportionately damages smaller businesses and non-central retail areas. It is particularly hard on South London. Most likely, all Boris is interested in is keeping the budget looking tidy and avoiding any taxes on the wealthier Londoners for purely ideological reasons. There is no plan here. It is simply Boris muddling through. I dislike the man for his brutal incompetence but he is only accidentally vicious. Trying to explain the significance of the rises to the low incomed to Boris is comparable to trying to explain
the plight of the Parisian breadless to Marie Antoinette. He lives in another London from most of us. This is not the politics of envy. It is simple fact. We foolishly voted in a man unable (and most unwilling) to do the job properly.
On bus prices nationally, my understanding is that Thatcher wanted to deregulate all UK buses but the GLC fought and won the right to set prices. Other regions would have benefitted from a strong Labour bulwark to Conservative stupidity.
It's depressing for most central Londoners that we had Boris
foisted upon us by the suburbs. Still, if he thoughtlessly cuts all their bus and tube services, perhaps they will think again before voting for him in 2012, assuming he even bothers to stand given his clear boredom with the job.
foisted upon us by the suburbs. "
Sorry, I'm laughing now. Its depressing for the rest of the country that Londoners think the world revolves around them and we should all be paying them for their privilege.
Beyond Watford, it just reads "Here be dragons!"
Never let the truth get in the way of a 'vicious Tory' headline...
Those useless bendy buses your old boss foisted upon us contributed to the mess that Boris has to sort out, not least because most of the passengers who board through the back doors tend not to pay any fares.
Enjoy your retirement. You lost. Move on.
Where in your balanced and sensible article do you discuss the budget black holes at TFL?
Nobody is interested in seriously biased ramblings.
"millions are being wasted through the new Routemaster plan, the removal of bendy buses and the ending of the mutually beneficial agreement with Venezuela."
Actually, millions will be saved in otherwise lost fares on bendy buses. Lives are being saved by their removal and the long-overdue recognition that 18-metre buses designed for postwar rectilinear streets in Europe are grotesquely unsuitable for London.
The arrangement with Venezuela whereby a developing country subsidised one of the richest cities in the world in order to provide their respective leaders with some photo opportunities was simply obscene. The "mutually beneficial" line is a lie, a.k.a. "New Labour assertion as fact".
Page 93 refers:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/corporate/tfl-business-plan-09-10-to-17-18.pdf
By the tone of Simon Fletcher's article, money grows on trees.
London Transport is a money pit. Fare revenues doe not even cover Operating costs (let alone investments). Prices would have to rise around 60% to do that.
Now I know nothing about TFL but I can read a business plan. Simon obviously cannot or does not want to...
Stagecoach's fuel is subsidised so that we pick up the bill above a certain £ per litre. That doesn't stop them jacking their fares up every time the oil price rises.
Labour's recession has cut passenger numbers-did you hear about that? Those who remain have to pay more for the same level of service, unless you want taxes to rise. Oh wait, you're Labour- of course you want taxes to rise.
I would be far happier if local taxation dropped and public transport costs rise. In other words charge the people using the transport more rather than taxpayers who may never get on a bus or tube.
Anyway, £16 a week for unlimited bus travel is a bad deal? Try buying a all-zone pass for bus, train and tube (what most people need) and see what change you get out of £200 each month.
Seriously where do you lefties think the funding for these things comes from? On trees maybe? Is it any surprise we are in a financial mess with this sort of nursery rhyme economics.
And more bias please!
As you worked for Ken for 8 years there's no bias here is there?
PS Alex I did post an earlier note but it's not appeared. Was it too hard on poor Simon?
I've travelled on the tube quite recently and I didn't think the costs were excessive considering the distance I travelled and the number of times I could have used had I wanted to throughout the day. And £16.60 for a week's bus pass? It costs £4 a day around where I live to get a few miles down the road or if my train gets into the local town later than the last bus, its £15 for a taxi home.
London has an exception public transportation system, certainly better than any other city or town in the UK and the costs of travelling on that network are comparitively low when you look at fare costs elsewhere. I realise you'd like to make a big point about Boris vs Ken, but if you hadn't noticed the economy has changed since Ken was in office, everything is costing more.
You can argue that fares should be artificially kept low because of the recession, but considering the higher wages on average in London, I'd argue that if you do it for London, you do it across the country if you really want to help workers. No doubt you'll argue that London is more economically important, but it isn't. There are many sectors that don't occupy London as a base that are very important to the economy, but the workers for those sectors do not have the luxury of an underground network or a regular bus service.
In short you're extremely lucky to have the network of transportation that you enjoy and it would still be cheap if it was twice the price compared with the money many in the North have to part with to get to work. Don't let that stop you though, there is nothing more British than a good old moan.
You want the prices to stay low for the public transportation system by taxing everyone else for the way they do business. It isn't just commuters you know. On any given day there are telecoms engineers, delivery drivers, sign installers, trade reps and many other businesses that don't have the luxury of travelling by public transportation, so what you're saying is wack up their costs to save you a few quid. Great, and I suppose you won't whinge if they have to lay some people off due to the increased costs?
Bendy buses? I wonder how Lee Beckwith's family feel about them? I haven't got the exact figures in front of me, but I'm more than happy to search for them if you don't believe this, but bendy buses cause almost twice the number of accidents as standard buses and for what gain? What is the gain of the pedestrians, cyclists and passengers who have been killed or injured by these things? Or does that not matter as long as you can chase the 'gas guzzlers'?
Yes, you're right, it is Boris who is increasing the fares to try and keep the system running. He's either got to cut more of the services on offer or increase fares. So which is it going to be? Would you prefer services cut or a fare increase?
....Transport commissioner Peter Hendy said the collapse of Metronet had caused a “financial disaster of epic proportions”, while the scale of the national debt meant that TfL could no longer rely on massive Government subsidies to run the bus network — currently £602 million a year. “Now it seems hopelessly improbable that we are going to get any more subsidy,” he said....
You are becoming something of a bore.