How Boris rode his buses into a ditch
11:18 am - April 17th 2008
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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.
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Dave Hill is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is a novelist, blogger, journalist, married resident of Hackney in east London and father of six children. His novels are about family life. Also at: Comment is free.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Conservative Party ,Debates ,Mayor election ,Westminster
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Reader comments
Have any calculations been made as to how this would translate into an increase in fares for bus users?
Personally, I would be happy payhing anything up to about £1.50 for a single bus journey (instead of 90p) if I knew that I would be travelling in safety and comfort, with staff on board to ensure that my journey isn’t soundtracked by shouting teenagers and shitty tinny ‘music’ being blasted out through their mobile phones…
Also, bear in mind that with conductors one would expect fare-evasion to fall sharply, so increasing revenues…
Boris Johnson also seems to have run into some trouble with his crime claims yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p84UMKG8B9k
Hmm … is there a pattern here?
“Also, bear in mind that with conductors one would expect fare-evasion to fall sharply, so increasing revenues”
Enough to offset:
1) the cost of the conductors
2) the cost of congestion caused by people switching back to cars because of fare rises
3) the loss in revenue caused by driving people off the buses due to congestion and fare rises.
?
If you’re going to spend money on staff put it into travelling ticket inspection teams working at targetted evasion hotspots and times, not having conductors on near empty buses at 1am. That would be a perfectly reasonable policy and oddly enough is broadly what happens now.
The fare evasion vs. cost of conductors question has been asked and answered in City Hall several times. The Mayor’s figures, as I recall (I didn’t take notes at the time I was watching, sadly) suggested that the 49 million which it would cost to put conductors on the buses would recover under 10 million in fares. Not a good investment, from that perspective.
There are also serious question marks over the ability of conductors to control problem behaviour on buses. What powers exactly would they have? Can they physically restrain or eject people from buses? For kids playing loud music, removing their bus passes is a great option – and they’re arguably more likely to respond well to the presence of a uniformed authority figure anyway – but what about for those aren’t children, or those whose anti-social behaviour is more violent or threatening?
Conductors, like the Routemaster itself, strike me as an utterly impractical idea which is only popular because of its sentimental harking back to a bygone age. Getting more British Transport Police officers onto problem bus routes is a more practical solution – but, er, that’s already happening, so I guess it wouldn’t be much of an election policy…
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