This ridiculous new bus for London has now got beyond a joke. Johnson has just announced that two more routes are to be taken over by the NB4L - New Bus for London - and they will have conductors. All the conductors do is ensure people get on and off safely when buses are not at their stops but stuck at traffic lights since nowadays virtually everyone uses Oyster. And if they don’t, they have to get on in the front anyway and pay the driver.
The whole idea is something from the past. Buses, actually, do not sit in traffic jams in the way they did when I hopped on them to go to school since there are bus lanes and, in any case, they are far more frequent thanks to Ken’s investment in them and therefore it is best to wait for the next one - as my mother used to emphasise.
This has been a crazy expensive exercise all the way through. The design costs of £12m have been borne by London taxpayers, as has the £200m cost of buying the fleet which normally would have been done by the private bus operators.
Perhaps it will take an accident for the policy to change. Clearly, the fact that it costs £62k per year to have a conductor standing there doing nothing so that Johnson can relive his childhood when he ‘hopped on a bus’ is beyond madness and Londoners should be up in arms about it.
At a time that TfL is facing budget cuts, this whole vanity project is showing itself up in style for the true folly it is, and always was. The simple job of closing the platforms permanently would save millions annually.
Yet fares will no doubt rise even more under Boris to pay for it. And when he’s gone, London will be lumbered with the costs for years to come.
If we don’t have Bob Crow whining on about job cuts and safety scares, we get you whining on about unnecessary employment.
The idea of once again being able to get on and off a bus more freely in London is wonderful, and should be celebrated. I wonder what part of London you live in to observe that “buses do not get stuck in traffic jams in the way they used to” - clearly you have not been around Trafalgar Square in a while. There is nothing worse than realising you have missed your stop and then having to sit in traffic for another 10 minutes. If you’re in the unenviable position of not knowing what that’s like, then you’re clearly out of touch with the transient population of London and visitors who don’t always know exactly where they are going. Your comment about “having the time to wait for the next bus” also shows that you are out of touch with Londoners, and I suggest you do something about that if we are to take you seriously as a Mayoral candidate.
Finally, please take your rose-tinted spectacles off when looking back to Ken’s investment. Have you forgotten the dangers the “bendy-buses” were to cyclists, and the problems they caused getting round some of London’s streets? Have you forgotten the uproar when Ken’s “vanity projects” caught fire? Finally, and more seriously, have you forgotten the fact that with only a driver at the front of a very long bus, fare evasion was rife? Who bore the cost of that, then?
The rest of the world seems to be doing pretty well with articulated buses.
Any look what happened to the Bendy buses. Stansted Airport car park runs, and uni students transport in Leicester.
Only last week I was on a 63 bus stuck in traffic at the top of Grays Inn Road, because the lanes nearer Kings Cross are restricted and the traffic lights are rubbish.
How many new cycle lanes or schemes you planning, Woolmar?
If you want to allow people to hop off a bus stuck in traffic, that could be done without a brand new bus - you simply tell the drivers to open the doors to a passenger wishing to alight. If you wanted to solve that problem you could do it across the entire London bus fleet tomorrow with absolutely no cost to anyone.
As it happens, Transport for London rules state - even on the Boris Buses - that you can ONLY board and alight buses at designated bus stops. The “conductors” on the new buses enforce this. Hop on, hop off is a myth.
Incidentally it will be interesting to see the fare evasion stats for Boris’s folly too. You can board via the middle door without paying a fare. A video was posted on YouTube recently showing someone doing just that. You can put money it that others will follow. Incidentally, last few times I’ve traveled on a traditional Routemaster, my ticket wasn’t checked once either.
As for the “dangers” to cyclists of bendy buses, most independent analysis of the statistics shows Boris completely overstated the problem. Indeed it took him years to finally admit that contrary to his statements, not a single cyclist had been killed in a bendy bus related accident. From time of introduction to their removal, not a single cyclist died in an incident with a bendy bus. Cyclists fatalities involving non-bendy buses during the same period? 48.
Costs being borne by the taxpayer I take it you have never heard about the bankster bailout or the oylimpics promised by ken and tony a£2 billion to £3 billion which allmost imediately started raising towards the current £12 billion plus What are your plans for removing the privatised bus operaters and and getting a unified bus operating stucture ala LONDON PASSENGER TRANSPORT BOARD and not the failing third world transport unfit for london capacity enhancements means a sustantually increase on the size of the bus fleet expansion of Croydon tramlink, Completely new tube lines, possible re-introduction of trolleybuses etc etc as a london taxpayer i have no problem paying for such things sorry but at the moment you are proving yourself someone that along side boris and ken who i WONT be voting for as mayor
Sometimes it’s not about the cost, but the convenience and the safety that comes with knowing there is someone who can help you should you need it; and, as others have said here, you obviously have no idea what it’s like to catch a bus. I find I’m often held hostage on buses as they slowly creep towards bus stops in traffic a lot more often than you would like to admit (the last time was down Southwark Street on Saturday morning).
As for your figure of £62k for a conductor, please so feel free to share the documents and your working that gives you this figure. If there’s one thing I learnt, from doing mathematics at school, it was to always show your working.
£62k for a bus is TfL’s own figure. Total employment costs for a conductor are £27k per year (obviously they do not get that much) and each bus would require a bit more than two on average to obtain full coverage.
As for the points made about getting on a bus, I often use them, and yes the design is not always conducive to getting off easily, but that is not solved by having a very expensive and unnecessary arrangement with a conductor.
As for Mr Zodiac, yes there might be times occasionally in central London when buses are stuck and on other high streets, but most people will not, today, hop on or off at traffic lights. As Mr Bowden points out, the conductor is supposed to dissuade them anyway.