Boris Johnson Is Clueless On Transport

Taking a break from Iraq, Afghanistan, extraordinary rendition and similar minor issues, it's time to return to London and all the fun of the Mayor.  Now, my main interest in London politics is seeing who has the best transport policy, under a long-standing prejudice of mine that you can always judge a government on how it treats its railways.  Now, this is one area where it's commonly acknowledged by people who live in London, like me (and not by people who live outside London and drive large cars, like Jeremy Clarkson), that Ken Livingstone has all the cards.

Proved expensively right on Metronet, he then arm-twisted the Treasury into paying for the debacle their crass ideology forced on us.  He also managed to wrest control of the North London Line from the dead hand of the DfT and their privatised bus bandit friends (National Express, in this case) and come up with what looks like the first sensible management for what should be a key transport link since the advent of trams about a century ago (hiring in the best from abroad, telling them what it should look like and letting them get on with it).  I could go on, but they're all pretty much well-rehearsed arguments by now.

I'd half-expected Boris Johnson not to even try going up against that, but transport is one of the four key areas the Mayor runs (the others being culture, emergency services and development) so he can't ignore it.  He is, after all, partly standing for election as Chairman of the Board of Transport for London.  Unfortunately for Boris and his backers, the evidence so far demonstrates that he can't be trusted with the job, full stop.

The first sign of this was the response to the proposed switch to emissions based charging, which is, after all, a fairly radical and unproven move.  Johnson's response was this bizarre comment:

"Londoners use their cars because of the appalling state of the transport system"
A big car tax won’t change that. We need better alternatives to get out of our cars - especially those who live in the outer boroughs with bigger families, many of whom can't afford to swap cars.”

Honestly, where to begin.  Obviously public transport can't replace cars completely, so what any sensible public transport professional looks to do is encourage modal shift, identifying where people will switch journeys from car to PT and implementing schemes to incentivise this.  So far Boris is coming out with received wisdom, no one admits they want *more* car use.  The mechanisms for accomplishing modal shift are obvious and well-proven; benign tactics to make public transport more attractive, such as more frequent services, better networking and information, interchangeable ticketing and newer vehicles all the way up to more controversial measures (at least to the right wing) like subsidised fares, bus priority schemes, tighter public sector control and congestion charging.

Now, Boris' problem here is that all of these have been implemented in London, including charging people with 'big cars' and the result is quite predictably not a system in an 'appalling' state at all, but a much improved one that provably encourages people to shift modes (by giving them 'better alternatives', in fact).  The combined effect has produced the near-miracle of a reduction in city centre car use during a boom and the incredible statistic a few years back the the entire apparent increase in bus use in the UK was down to London.  'Appalling state', eh?

[Actually, this is merely the continuation of a trend - I've lived in London since 1997 and I've never driven into the centre even once.  In fact I didn't own a car until 2003 when a new job outside London required it (previously I worked 20 miles away on the other side of town and never felt remotely inclined to drive).  In other words I went to work by bus and tube and rail every day for years and take it from me, they've never been better.  The local bus route here has a virtual stream of nearly new double deckers most of the day and a lot of the night - back in 1997 it was an occasional elderly single decker.  Fares are a flat 90p, cheaper than most of the rest of the country - from the centre of Birmingham to my parents' place is £1.40 on something that looks like it was last cleaned during the Wilson era]

Having unknowingly backed Livingstone's transport policy without realising it, Boris then tries to argue that the absence of what he's just backed and which clearly exists means that some people will suffer.  Now, it's obvious to me who suffers - people like a friend of mine living 100 yards inside the congestion charge zone with a two-seater sports car emitting just over the 225g limit who will lose their resident's discount and face a £25 bill every time they want to go anywhere during the weekday, which strikes me as a bit harsh.  However, they're having a kid soon, so the car'll have to go and I suspect he won't be buying a 4x4 (mind you, he won't be voting for Ken either, as he's made virulently clear to me in the past).

That's not what Boris meant, though - his fantasy sufferers instead appear to be people in the outer suburbs who can buy a big polluting car, afford to feed and house a large family, can't afford to pay £25 a day when they need to go into town but will switch to public transport when it's a better alternative, which, as we've seen, it already is.  So, looking at this honestly, they'll switch to public transport, won't they Boris? 

From this, one can see how lying about the state of London's transport system isn't an accident, it's the only way he can keep a semblance of a coherent policy.  To admit, honestly, that the current Mayor has pretty much got it right, perhaps suggesting a few tweaks here and there would also provoke a furious reaction from the traditional pro-car Tory reactionaries and dinosaurs who, emboldened by the polls, are dusting off their Great Car Economy soundbites and pretending its still 1985.  Don't they know Cecil Parkinson buried that one 17 years ago when he scrapped the various son-of-Ringway London road schemes (that never quite seem to die), instead putting money into rail and tube projects?

Conclusion: it speaks volumes that appeasing these twits is more important than running an honest campaign.  What happens when he sits down at the first TfL board meeting?  Does he spend the meeting telling seasoned professionals that they're wrong?

Boris' other big point, that people will get round it by buying a small car for the city run strikes me as a positive argument for the scheme, since any emissions based charging scheme is blatantly intended to incentivise the purchase and use of smaller, more efficient cars and thus encourage manufacturers to make them and dealers to sell them.  Not being an ideological Thatcherite, I'm not afraid of distorting the market, particularly as that's the way it's going anyway, with even quite large, well appointed cars like Ford's Focus and Citroen's C4 are now sneaking under the limits.  This actually benefits motorists, as it offers a way to reduce the effects of rocketing fuel prices without giving up on too many creature comforts.  And they say Livingstone is anti-motorist.

Now for some light relief - Boris wants to bring back the Routemaster.  Living up to his reputation as a joker, he justifies this by saying

it's time Londoners had an approach that is optimistic and can-do...

I don't know about you, but going to the Treasury and strong-arming them into paying for Metronet, going to the DfT and persuading them to give you control of parts of the privatised network, introducing the congestion charge, making winning the Olympics part of your election manifesto and building an entire railway line through East London sounds pretty can-do and in some areas (particularly the Olympics) pretty optimistic as well.  Boris seems to think bringing back a 1950s design of bus beats them all, because what the people of London want to do is be carted around in museum pieces  Let's just analyse what's wrong with this:

1) Bus design isn't the Mayor's job, it's the responsibility of private competing bus builders, of which we have a good number.  You'd think a Tory would know this.  Buying bespoke products instead of mass-production off the shelf items always costs a fortune, not just in up front costs but in full-life costs.  No one else is going to buy them.  Also, unless you get every manufacturer to produce one, you're not going to get the benefits of open competition.

2) The bus franchising system in London works well, with TfL specifying fares, ticketing, routes and service levels and private companies (you know, the ones the Tories encourage) working out how best to meet them.  What happens when they say 'actually, Boris, we can meet your targets more efficiently if you don't foist son-of-RM on us, thanks'.  Does he listen to the businessmen or his fantasies of leading London into the 1950s?  Who pays?  How much?

3) Routemasters were scrapped for a reason - they weren't up to the job any more.  As Peter Hendy, who as the person responsible would presumably not find favour in a Johnson administration (perhaps because Hendy has 30+  years experience in public transport management) said:

The issue that most recently inflamed Hendy was the reaction from certain quarters to his decision to pull the old Routemaster buses and replace them with bendies, or "artics" (short for "articulated") as they are less pejoratively known within the industry. The howls of outrage that met this piece of philistinism, as it was seen, came largely, says Hendy, from "middle-class dinner-party land," a place he seems to disapprove of at a conceptual level. These are people, in Hendy's mind, who have never taken a bus and only championed the Routemaster because they liked how quaint it looked as they shot past in their Saabs. "What will mark me for the rest of my life is experiencing people being prepared to advocate active discrimination against people with disabilities for the sake of nostalgia."

This nails it - Johnson is on record that people want 'the wonderful Routemaster buses they used to have', because he sees things from the point of view of a non-bus user.   Hendy takes the exact opposite view because he sees things from the point of view of a bus user, who, in a time of rising demand and overcrowding, might well welcome a bus with twice the capacity, and in many cases isn't going to remember using RMs anyway.  I certainly never regularly used them round here, because the standard driver-only double-decker was perfectly adequate, if rather slow until Oyster removed the need to pay at the door.

[Apropos the disability thing - I was on a (double-decker) bus the other day when a wheelchair bound chap rolled up outside.  The driver spotted him, extended the ramp, opened the rear door, the chap wheeled himself up the ramp and stuck the brakes on.  We trundled off up the road until we reached his stop, where the same speedy process happened in reverse.  The best thing about it?  No one offered to help him - the bus is designed and built to allow him to get about under his own steam.  Neither, therefore, did we need a conductor.  Indeed, quite what the point of a conductor would be when most journeys are on Oyster and all buses have CCTV and radio entirely escapes me.]

Having demonstrated that he's willing to pretend the opposite is true about the state of public transport, invent a class of people to justify reversing an improvement scheme and suggest dropping an unspecified amount of money on a pointless conductor job creation scheme (not very Thatcherite, Boris), Mr. Johnson turns to the Tube, where he wants more police.  Brian Paddick came back at him on this straight off, pointing out that Tube policing (plus National Rail, DLR and Tramlink) is the job of the British Transport Police, not the Met, and thus isn't under direct Mayoral control or MPA funding (there's an organisation called the BTPA involved, which is nationwide in scope). 

TfL do, however, have direct control over BTP officers on the London transport network and there's nothing to stop Boris Johnson funding some BTP cops through this structure.  However, there was nothing to stop Ken Livingstone doing so last year either:

Finalising his budget proposals for 2006/07, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, today announced funding for an additional 89 British Transport Police covering London.

...

Funding will be provided by TfL under contract with the BTP in North and South London to add to policing around violent crime hotspots, on the Bakerloo overground stations and Silverlink services London, alongside a similar deployment in South London. These mobile and visible teams will patrol these stations and trains targeting specific crimes and providing much needed security and reassurance for London’s travelling public.  The officers will join 500 British Transport Police who already cover the over land network in London and also return to full strength the 670 officers directly responsible to Transport for London who work exclusively on London Underground and the Docklands Light Railway network.

So Mr. Johnson's hardly advocating anything revolutionary here, in fact yet again he's backing Ken Livingstone's existing plans.

On the rails he doesn't inspire confidence.  If people are, as he claims 'paying some of the highest prices in Europe' they're on mainline rail Train Operating Companies, which, having been privatised with Boris' full support, are under the control of the private sector and, increasingly, central Government via the DfT's micro-managed franchise specifications.  This therefore isn't in the Mayor's remit and Boris doesn't seem to have realised this or proposed how he intends to accomplish this, merely saying:

We must end the lack of investment in London's overstretched, unaffordable and overcrowded rail services. A Londoner in Richmond on the minimum wage will have to work two hours just to cover the cost of their daily Travelcard. This has to change.

As an illustration there's currently a tussle between Tfl, the TOCs and DfT to get pay-as-you-go Oyster deployed on commuter lines, which would, if the Tube zonal fares applied, result in a lot of journeys becoming much cheaper.  A lot of the north-of-river lines are now done, but the big commuter operators south of the river are holding out, to my local annoyance.  Part of the issue is financial arrangements outside the Mayor's control, part is a highly esoteric technical one between the DfT's favoured (vapourware) ITSO smartcard technology, included in the franchise contracts, and TfL's extremely widespread Oyster, which people actually want to use.  The details are tediously dull (who pays for dual-smartcard gatelines?), but Boris is going to have to get a handle on them or we'll lose out.  Does he seem to be the man for the job?  What in his background and experience prepares him for fighting his corner, on a state-of-the-art technical issue, against Whitehall bureaucrats and private rail operators anxious to protect their profits?  Not a lot, I reckon.

Finally, one last bizarre comment:

I genuinely think we can make a huge difference to the commuting experience of every Londoner, by looking at the multiplicity of ways by which people get to work, stop clobbering them, start helping them.

Now, I hear that as code for 'more cars please!'.  The only people who can remotely think they've been 'clobbered' and thus might need 'helping' are motorists who won't switch to public transport, and so Boris Johnson has contradicted himself again - remember he said 'better alternatives' would be needed to get people onto public transport?  In his roads policy we get a whole range of motorist-friendly, traffic-encouraging policies - rephasing traffic lights to speed traffic, scrapping the emissions charge and (presumably, although he euphemistically says 'reformed') abolishing the western extension.  Those aren't better alternatives to car use, they're making car use more attractive, you mug.

Livingstone described all this as 'chaotic'.  For once, I don't think he's being harsh enough on an opponent.  They're a barking mad attempt to hide a hard-right, environmentally unfriendly, damaging car-friendly shift behind a facade of a crude repackaging of TfL's existing policies.  Does David Cameron think this is fooling anyone?