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.
73 Responses to “What happens to the ‘Boris Bus’ if Boris isn’t Mayor?”
Anonymous
Evantis 121. Jenny clearly has got her facts right, as she does state that it is 10% better than any existing hybrid, but asks sensible questions about whether this is cost effective.Also, hybrid technology is developing quickly which means that the fuel consumption on this bus may be overtaken by more efficient models in the next couple of years.
Imposing one design of bus (a monopoly) on London’s bus operators is likely to be challenged legally by other bus manufacturers, as well as the operators themselves – who are expected to carry some of the extra cost of this vanity project.
belgravedave
Jenny there’s so many things you come out with that I totally agree with but on this one I think you’ve completely misunderstood the feelings of ordinary Londoners. People want two manned buses it makes them feel safe, also the boarding times will be greatly reduced. Also as a cyclist myself it might just slow down the minority of bus drivers who accelerate and brake to aggressively seeing as they have a colleague in the back. As for the extra costs well why not campaign to have all London bus services taken back into public ownership so we can save on these ridiculous subsidies we pay the bus companies. If you want to attack Boris well there’s so much to choose from but on this issue he’s done something good (well in my opinion anyway and I listen to hundreds of Londoners everyday). So please pick your targets more carefully or you might shoot yourself in the foot.
Anonymous
Jenny wrote ” its less polluting “than most other buses” which is untrue. it is THE least polluting bus, fact. Jenny’s sloppy swipe at boris for financing the greenest bus ever for Londoners just has the effect of rubbishing any green credentials she had.
She hasn’t cottoned onto the popularity of the new bus with Londoners and clearly hasn’t grasped that attacking your opponents successes makes has the opposite effect. belgravedave is right, Boris got plenty of week points but attacking one of his highest profile election pledge successes is politically naive. Notice how Ken and Labour have dropped their new bus attacks having seen the publics overwhelmingly positive reaction to it. To me it just emphasises what a no-hoper Jenny is, and that’s coming from an environmentalist!
Anonymous
Regarding your concerns about a single design. As TfL have financed the design and development they can licence it to ANY bus manufacturer. Nor are they imposing a monopoly, the new bus is designed for the highest loading central London routes so there will be a continued requirement for other designs too.
Helen
“People want two manned buses it makes them feel safe” – who says? These “conductors” are nothing of the sort – they don’t go near the upper deck as they don’t sell tickets or check passes, they can’t move through the lower deck as the maximum number of standing passengers is 25 (the maximum “standees” on open-platformed buses was *five*) and there will be no “conductor” during the evening/night as the back door will be closed whilst the bus is in motion.
As for boarding times being greatly reduced, that’s one of the reasons why articulated buses were introduced – the new bus, just like the artics, has three doors and open boarding, meaning fare evasion will be no different.
Articulated buses ran on only *twelve* London bus routes out of a total of over 700 – Johnson has tried to whip up a frenzy over false nostalgia for open-platform buses, the vast majority of which were withdrawn by the Tories after the GLC was abolished, 25 years before the office of Mayor Of London even came into existence.