Our Mayor Call - we should have looked at London’s bus figures
June 18th, 2004
A week on from the London Mayoral Election and our abortive call you cannot but admire what an extraordinary politician Ken Livingstone is.
Looking at the results again the striking feature is that more than a third of all those who gave Ken their first preference did not vote Labour in the London Assembly election at the same time. They were voting for the man and not the party.
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To work out why all you have to do is get on a London bus.
While all the media focus has been on the congestion charge it’s easy to ignore the transport revolution that’s having a huge impact on Londoners - the transformation of London bus services that have become cheaper, faster, more comfortable, more regular and much more convenient to use. This is being funded by the planned revenue from the charge and Ken has been getting the credit.
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New fast services, the new comfortable “Bendy Buses” and a whole new approach to ticketing and bus infrastucture have boosted bus usage to upto 6 million trips a day - an increase of 31% since Ken was first elected.
Achieving this has cost an enormous amount and many in the Capital believe that London is better for it. Ken is popular because many believe he’s made the capital a better place to be - and we misjudged the impact.
All our thinking had been based on the view that Tories and Lib Dems would find it much harder to vote for Ken as Labour candidate than as in 2000 when he stood as an independent. In the end almost the same proportion of Tories who went with Ken last time made the same mayoral choice this time. .
But the level of voters switching party for Mayor has left Ken with an enormous headache as he seeks to lead London. The part of our call that proved to be 100% accurate was the huge increase for the Tories in the Assembly election. This has now elected a Tory chairman , who is very pro-motorist, and Ken has got some battles ahead.
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I don\’t know whether you live in London, live I do, but your assertions about the buses are incorrect.
o Bus journey prices have risen from 70p to £1 in the last two years. You are charged £1 whether you go one stop or a whole journey.
o Bendy buses are not popular - they cause incredible amount of congestion as London\’s streets are not straight or wide enough to deal with these monsters
o Bus journeys are slowing down - only today a report has been published showing it is quicker to walk from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road than to get a bus
o The new buses were supposed to be funded out of the congestion charge, however that is not bringing in enough revenue to even pay the retainer to Capita - hence London taxpayers are paying not only for the buses, but also for the compensation to the infrastructure operator. Livingstone\’s costing us an extra £235 pa on our Council Tax
o Bus trips are up - a cynic might suggest it\’s down partly to the deterioration of other forms of public transport, and the drive out of cars. Buses themselves drive around virtually empty most of the day. We should be measuring passenger miles.
o If you need to get from A to B changing at C and D you need to buy three tickets, wheras if you did the same journey on the tube you\’d only need one.
It wasn\’t the buses that won it for Ken - it may well have been Jarvis that lost it for Norris