Green Party London Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones AM, leader of the Greens on the London Assembly, ponders what will happen to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Johnson loses.
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By Jenny Jones AM, leader of the Green Party on the London Assembly and Green Party Mayoral candidate for 2012
I agree with Boris Johnson’s comments in the Telegraph that the new bus for London is symbolic of his reign as mayor. It has undoubted style, but when the full costs are revealed will London want to keep it?
Around £10 million spent so far has put two buses on the road with six more promised by the summer.
The development costs of any prototype are going to be expensive and normally don’t really matter much if you plan to build thousands of these vehicles in future years. The manufacturer was selected on the basis they’d make at least 600, bringing the cost down.
Except Boris’s new bus needs an extra member of staff at the back, setting us back £62,000 per bus. If you had 600 buses driving around, that’s £37m a year.
That member of staff can’t even collect fares, meaning it could be little different to the bendy bus when it comes to expensive fare evasion.
Boris Johnson intends to force operators to use this bus, making the contracts more expensive. They won’t be given an option to choose the best bus from the best manufacturer and the best price. So these costs will be carried by Transport for London and that means higher fares.
But is the bus any better? He has tried to persuade greens that it’s a wonderfully clean bus, emitting very few pollutants. Well it’s true that it’s better than most other buses on the market, but at 10% better than existing hybrids is it worth the money?
The real farce is that this £10m could have been used to buy lots of clean hybrid buses, helping the Mayor keep his now-broken promise to make sure all new buses were hybrids by the start of this year. Instead only 56 of the 800 new buses bought in the coming year will be hybrid.
London’s polluted air is the second biggest public health problem after smoking. We need swift action to replace or improve our entire bus and taxi fleets, not a vanity icon.
• Boris’s 9-point plan is a bridge to nowhere 5 Mar 2012
• Boris is doing Londoners out of £1.2 billion a year 3 Feb 2012
• What costs £1.3 million a pop and Boris hopes will get him reelected? 16 Dec 2011
• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos 19 Oct 2011
• Exposed: Boris Johnson’s efforts to evade air pollution rules 4 Oct 2011
As Mayor I would refuse to waste any more money on this bus and would withdraw the extra subsidy. If operators want it then they can buy it, but I will not impose the extra costs upon them. Instead I will focus upon delivering real improvements to air quality using the best and cleanest buses the market provides. It won’t be fancy, or eye catching – but I know it will work.
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73 Responses to “What happens to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Boris isn’t Mayor?”
Alex Braithwaite
RT @leftfootfwd: What happens to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Boris isn’t Mayor? http://t.co/xJvgJL5a
leftlinks
Left Foot Forward – What happens to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Boris isn’t Mayor? http://t.co/mjqKu6Ha
Anonymous
Quite right.
Meanwhile we we have a choice of a tax evader and someone who thinks 28,000 a bike is a good deal.
Doesn’t bode well
Boris Watch
What happens to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Boris isn’t Mayor? http://t.co/d9eNf2TK by @GreenJennyJones
Anonymous
Jenny, you got your facts wrong. It IS the most environmentally friendly bus EVER! 10% better than the next best hybrid and a full 50% better than a normal diesel bus. Its revolutionary in its design, having a much higher seating capacity than those dreaded bendies AND much faster loading and unloading times than a conventional double decker thanks to its two stairs, three doors and the iconic hop-on hop-off feature . London is an iconic city and the red hop-on hop-off double decker is high up on the list of London icons which attracts Billions in tourist revenue. Its British built and flies the flag of British design and engineering. Your whinging about having to employ british workers to a position that provides help and security to the old, infirm and venerable who have to use buses whilst down playing its obvious major benefits makes you sound like an odious begrudger. I care for the environment but you are certainly NOT getting my vote in May.