Boris Watch

Modal shift occurs by pursuing measures to increase the share of carbon-efficient modes by transferring transport demand from more carbon-intensive modes – plane to train, car to tram, etc. Is there any evidence for the Mayor’s claim that:

[the cycle hire scheme] will be a wonderful way of getting people out of their cars and breathing the fresh air

The Mayoral Decision authorising TfL to deliver the cycle hire scheme [PDF] states:

Increased cycling also alleviates pressure on other parts of the transport network. In addition to increasing capacity on London’s roads by providing an alternative to car usage, the Scheme is expected to ease crowding on the Tube and buses within central London, particularly during peak times, benefiting both local residents and visitors.

Based on customer research conducted by TfL as part of the Scheme feasibility study, the largest modal shift is expected to occur from walking (34%) but some shift is expected from buses (32%) and Tube (20%) with small shift from car (5%), other (4%), taxi (3%) and non-Scheme bicycle (2%).

Only 5% shift from car? To judge by the demographic of users so far, I’d be surprised if even 1% have abandoned their cars for bicycles. As for walking, if online forums are representative, few cycle hirers are using the bikes as an alternative to walking; it is the Tube and bus which have lost their passengers (and revenue) to the cycle hire scheme.

Walking represents a dilemma for the Mayor as he has designated 2011 his Year Of Walking; walk for free or spend money on a hire bike? The Mayor’s commitment to walking so far consists of reducing the length of time pedestrians have to cross the road and proposals to remove some pedestrian crossings altogether.

Back to modal shift. The Mayoral Decision document tells us:

Within the current modal share for cycling, women are less represented than men at 37% and 63% respectively, as are Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) men and women (22%) compared with White men and women (78%) (LTDS 2006/7). Therefore the greatest potential increase in modal share is for BAME women.

Which will be why Boris has chosen Kelly Brook as his tits/legs Face of Cycling, evidently.

What exactly were the environmental benefits cited in the business plan for the cycle hire scheme? Strangely, our accountable and transparent Mayor hasn’t made the business plan public and TfL have not responded to a Freedom of Information request. In the London Assembly’s Budget and Performance Committee report on the GLA group’s environmental spend, 2009/10 [PDF], the Chair of the committee complains:

We find that there is much desirable work happening but that there is a shortage of strategic leadership. By this we mean that although the GLA is corporately committed to long-term targets, particularly of CO2 emission reductions but also, for example, for air quality, the selection and prioritisation and monitoring of projects does not appear to be driven from City Hall towards the achievement of those targets. Each functional body seems driven by its own priorities and without a consistent method of measurement or set of priorities.

As an example, the bicycle hire project, which accounts for about a quarter of proposed environment spend, and over 80 per cent of the increase in budget for this year, appears as yet to offer no targets and fit no strategic plan towards environmental mitigation or improvement. It is clearly in some sense an environmental project but it appears not to have been selected or prioritised or designed against environmental targets.

The cycle hire scheme has also swallowed up most of the increase in the 2009/10 GLA group environment budget:

The GLA group environment spend for 2009/10 has increased by £64 million compared to 2008/09 but programmes designed to combat climate change have increased by less than £1 million. Of the £64 million increase, £52 million will be spent on start up costs for the new cycle hire scheme.

The Mayor’s cycling programme makes up more than half of the GLA group total budget:

An example of one of these environment programmes is the TfL cycling programme. It has a budget of £111 million for 2009/10 and makes up over 50 per cent of the total GLA group environment budget. Within this programme, £52 million is for the Mayor’s new cycle hire scheme. Despite TfL’s current plan to launch the scheme in less than a year, it is still working on the programme’s expected environmental outcomes.

Boris Johnson said in his transport manifesto that the cycle hire scheme would provide ‘a genuinely sustainable alternative to the car and encourage more Londoners to cycle’. Market research for TfL suggests that less than 7 per cent of cycle hire scheme users will come from people who previously would have used a car. The research indicates that 39 per cent of cycle hire scheme users are likely to be people who previously walked, 30 per cent from underground users and 24 per cent from bus users. These figures indicate that the scheme is only likely to have a minimal effect on car usage and as a result CO2 emission and air pollution levels.

A lot of wonga, then, for little beneficial effect on the environment.

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Cast your minds back to 30 July and the launch of the Mayor’s £140m (at the last count) cycle hire scheme:

Mr Johnson said: “I think this is a fantastic day for cycling and a fantastic day for London. It will be a wonderful way of getting people out of their cars and breathing the fresh air”

A last-minute crisis of confidence, shortly before the launch (which had already been delayed from May) ensured that only guinea pigs Pioneers were able to use the scheme; potential users had to sign up in advance and purchase a key rather than being able  to turn up at a docking station, swipe a credit card and go. Casual users would be able to use the scheme four weeks later, according to TfL.

Well, four weeks later and there’s still no sign of casual users having access to the cycle hire scheme. Why might that be? Two weeks after the launch, casual use had been put back to:

mid-September at the earliest…

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s transport adviser, said: “Probably the first couple of weeks of September is what we are looking at. We always knew there would be a few teething problems and that is what we are working through.”

The London Cyclist website has collated “a ton” of problems, including docking stations not releasing bikes and freeing space for others to be returned, shortages of bikes at main stations, an overloaded call centre and cyclists having their accounts frozen, so they cannot hire a bike.

Indeed, Tfl Commissioner Peter Hendy was himself a victim of the continuing operational problems. An IT professional made the following observation:

And now the point, if you are going to invest so heavily in projects and PR, by launch date ensure that you have the simple stuff organised. A website that can handle and accept customer details is easy these days and there is no excuse for it not working. The fact it doesn’t means all money spent on the schemes PR is lost, I now think it’s a badly organised mess, and I’m writing about it on my blog… bad PR. How many others are too?

Still, the Mayor’s own website was trumpeting that the cycle hire scheme was a roaring success due to the numbers who had signed up, despite comments such as these from dissatisfied customers:

FOR Goodness sake – DONT JOIN – not worth the money.What a complete shambles – keys that don’t work, helpdesk that say they cant help and just there to listen, no bikes where you want them, no docking stations available when u want them, a map sent out with your keys that shows docking stations – where none exist – so far I have found 5 just in my area that aren’t there, the shambles has cost me in excess of £18 for tube fares because of no bikes, has made me miss trains and be late for meetings due to no docking stations.Keys that wont let you take a bike if one is there, docking stations that wont let you dock – no green light – call centres that take AGES to answer – and are absolutely helpless to help …. I really wanted this system to be succesful but the management should be fired – if I set up such a system and provided such customer service in my industry I would be. Trip to Montreal ???? Obviously didn’t learn anything – it works there ….. London totally, totally let down …… I am fed up hearing about ‘teething’ troubles – if as was said they only to be expected why wasnt a contingency plan put in ??? Now I remember why I don’t bank with Barclays …. !!

and…

I am trying to use the Boris/Barclays Cycle Hire but feeling I must soon give up; there is a MASSIVE lack of bikes everyday around Waterloo station. Most days I walk all the way to Blackfriars, having checked 5 docking stations, before finding a bike or end up getting a bus.

There really needs to be trailer loads of bikes waiting at Waterloo otherwise this isn’t going to work. Returning to Waterloo in the evenings I have missed trains due to lack of docking stations. Again there need to be trailers constantly removing bikes.

All the information must be available at ‘bike control’ so they can see where the problems are & should act on them!

A real shame as I was hoping to use these bikes everyday. Please pass this to Barclays Bike Hire people as they have made sure not to supply an email address!

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My brother in law, a Home Counties commuter into London* sends me this, the latest snippet in the ‘what the hell is Tom doing writing to the Standard’ pile:

Of course I’m not actually writing the the Evening Standard, they’re pulling letters out of comments posted on their stories online which aren’t actually from certifiably insane dribbling lunatics.

Nevertheless, this has provoked a rather unpleasantly toned email from an architect, accusing us, as far as I can see, of being a bunch of anti-development NIMBY Luddites.  Considering I’m in favour of a) dense, textured cities b) tall buildings c) new railway lines d) light rail e) investment in well designed social housing and f) redesigning city roads into streets for pedestrians and cyclists you’d have hoped Mr. Diamond might have taken the time to work out what he was actually attacking, but no matter.

* As a doctor, before anyone thinks he might work in something embarrasing like a merchant bank.

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Well, we made it to Wembley Park with 8 minutes to go before the first public service of the new Met Line S-Stock and even eventually realised we were on the wrong platform.  A quick scoot over the bridge got us to a fairly busy Platform 1 a couple of minutes before the train drew in:

As it happened, we ended up standing next to a door which two lads were evidently keen on opening extremely quickly – one was videoing it, in fact:

Doors opening

What this meant was that it’s quite possible that my son, who leapt between the opening doors as soon as they started to move, was the first public passenger on the S-Stock.  He didn’t seem too bothered with this claim to fame, preferring to join a couple of other lads in surfing the bendy bit:

Indeed, the whole bendy ethos of the train prompted at least one punter, boarding at Harrow-on-the-hill, to remark ‘hey, it’s just like a bendy bus’.  You can see his point:

Lack of seats?  Check.  Poles?  Check.  Slightly garish lighting?  Check.  It is definitely reminiscent, although announcement-phobes will be pleased that the PA wasn’t too intrusive.  There are surprisingly large numbers of transverse seats, a Metropolitan Line only feature.  On the District Line S7 stock we will apparently lose our rather nice bays of facing seats in the middle of the car.  Note the cantilever seats attached to the wall only – aids cleaning and helps the spacious, uncluttered feel of the cars:

Ride is OK, A-stock is these days fairly bouncy, but the new trains are smooth apart from just occasionally when they jerk quite noticeably, enough to throw you off balance.  Track?  Suspension?  Can’t be sure, really.  What is noticeable is rocket-like acceleration which just keeps on going – the fast trains in from Metroland are going to be quite something when the whole system is up and running.

As for the famous air-con, perhaps it was starting the day with a trip on the ‘fridge on wheels’ (h/t @darryl853) that is the London Overground Class 378 but it didn’t seem that effective in countering the muggy, sweaty conditions on Saturday.  Perhaps it got better later on, we were on the first trip off the depot after all, and it was certainly better than the A-Stock we got back from Moor Park.

Overall a positive impression.  Now to see how far Boris dares to go in suggesting that the trains are a) his idea and b) the start of ‘Air Conditioning on the Tube’ rather than the welcome extension of what is now normal practice on many suburban and outer suburban London rail routes.  People are already asking why the Metropolitan Line, mostly outside and with no deep level hot tube sections is first to benefit – the answer is straightforward (they’re replacing the oldest trains in the country and air con is only a workable proposition on sub-surface lines) but will the PR and spin leave people expecting the unobtainable?  That would be a shame, for the pride in the hard work that’s gone into getting the S Stock rolling was evident on the faces of the mostly LU family men and women (and kids) on the first run.  This was their day, not the politicians’ and their spinners.

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I snuck out for the first public run of the S-Stock this morning.  Here are some pictures.  First impressions of the new air-conditioned Underground trains later.

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Just a snippet that suggests that Boris’s PR-driven attempts to put clear blue water between himself and the multiple personality disorder currently masquerading as the country’s central government need keeping a close eye on:

Grassroots social activism took a further hit yesterday when it emerged that mayor of London Boris Johnson’s £4m incubator fund designed to help small voluntary and community organisations win public services contracts has been scrapped. Jeremy Crook, of the Black Training and Enterprise Group described the decision as a “real blow”:

“Many Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic organisations need practical support so that they can work together and compete for contracts on a level playing field with the better resourced private sector … A cut in the fund is understandable in the current climate but to wipe out the fund altogether means the voluntary sector cannot compete on equal terms.”

Well, that needs investigating some time – here’s the link:

A £4m fund to help voluntary sector organisations win public sector contracts has been scrapped two months before it was due to open.

The Mayor’s Incubator Fund, which was to be run by the London Development Agency, was intended to help charities build bidding capacity, put together consortia and manage cash flow.

…

Peter Lewis, chief executive of London Voluntary Service Council, said the fund had been “innovative and forward-looking”, and would have helped the voluntary sector to support the most deprived people in the capital.

“At a time when the delivery of public services by voluntary and community organisations is being trumpeted as a core part of the big society, it is astonishing that the LDA has cut this fund,” he said.

I’m sure Boris was a fan of volunteering at one point.  Anyway, here’s the LDA explaining [PDF] Boris’s support for the scheme, which seems genuinely to be one of his own plans:

Late last year, the Mayor announced the Mayor’s Incubator Fund (MIF) in recognition of his commitment to the Third Sector. The MIF aims to funnel support to the sector to increase sectoral capacity to engage with the LDA’s commissioning process. This will ensure the sector’s continued work with local communities in the delivery of a range of programmes.

Here’s the LDA’s Chief Executive explaining to the Assembly why the MIF was a key part of bolstering the voluntary sector and allowing it to stand on its own two feet:

Dee Doocey (Chair): I would like to continue on that. I would like to talk about the voluntary and community sector. The draft Economic Development Strategy states that “projects requiring prolonged resourcing or subsidies are unlikely to be cost-effective and can prove detrimental to economic efficiency” and “many of the measures in the Strategy, such as the return on investment and export growth, are not appropriate for the not-for-profit sector”.
My concern is that I think a lot of the people working particularly with the very disadvantaged communities are going to be disproportionately affected by this decision. What is going to happen to them? Are they just going to be cut loose and they will never be in a position, no matter how much they want to, to be able to satisfy the criteria that has been set?

Peter Rogers (Chief Executive, London Development Agency): I think there are two issues and it would be stupid of us to come here and have you question us on this every time we come without taking some cognisance of what you are saying. What we are proposing in our investment plan is, notwithstanding the drastic reduction in funding, we are proposing a Mayor’s incubator fund to grow and almost create new models of delivery within the voluntary sector; equally, working with local authorities to do the same, create an opportunity to do that.
We have also set aside some money within that fund to capacity build within the third sector. So, we are not throwing it away but what we are having to do is re-scope the volume of the investment. Again, it comes back to: is it going to be continual subsidy or is it intended to create successful thriving organisations? We operate on the latter, not on supporting lame ducks.

Hmm?  We’re apparently now reduced to neither supporting lame ducks nor creating successful thriving organisations and a ‘drastic reduction in funding’ has progressed to the stage where we can’t even afford stuff Boris announced last year.  Not looking good for the Big Society, Boris.  I think Dee Doocey needs to ask the question about ‘cutting loose’ again.

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One of Boris’s promises that is never actually going to happen was this one:

I also want to improve the Tube. In the short-term, we must look again at air-conditioning on the Tube.  It is incredible that we can make mobile phones as small as credit cards yet still not work out a way to get air-conditioning on the Tube. I want to see air-conditioning on new trains on the sub-surface lines, like the Hammersmith & City Line, Circle Line, Metropolitan Line and District Line. I will order TfL to re-investigate getting air-conditioning on the deep lines, like the Northern Line, Jubilee Line, Bakerloo Line, Piccadilly Line and the Victoria Line.

OK.  Well, it’s two years into the short term and what’s happened thus far is that TfL have stopped handing water out at Tube stations in hot weather but nary a sight have we of an air-conditioned tube train in service, not counting the ‘air-cooled’ new Victoria Line stock.  Now, a year ago we had Boris take the usual credit-for-nothing-to-do-with-him PR boost from this story about the first S-Stock sub-surface train for the Metropolitan Line, on the occasion of it moving down south for testing and it now seems that public service is upon us, with reports of the new trains running in passenger service from tomorrow.

Also, this just appeared on my indications and warnings board:

PASSENGER SERVICE MEDIA EVENT MONDAY, 2nd AUGUST 2010
The following paths will be available for S8 stock to convey passengers in connection with a media event on the above date. These paths will run in passenger service between Wembley Park and Watford, calling at Wembley Park, Harrow-on-the-Hill and then all intermediate stations between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Watford.

Train No. 402 402 402
Neasden Depot (F) 10 25 (empty) 12 53 (empty) 14 33 (empty)
Wembley Park (pfm 1) arr 10 31 (entrain) 12 59 (entrain) 14 39 (entrain)
dep 10 33 13 03 14 41
FL FL FL
Harrow-on-the-Hill (pfm 3) 10c40½ 13b10½ 14 47½
LL LL LL
Northwood 10 51½ 13 22 14 58½
Moor  Park 10 54½ 13 25 15 01½
Watford South Junction 10/56½ 13/27 15/03½
Watford arr 11 02 13 32½ 15 10
Pfm No. 1 2 2
dep 11 08½ 13 38½ 15 18
Watford South Junction 11/13½ 13/43½ 15/23
Moor Park 11 15½ 13 45½ 15 25
Northwood 11 18½ 13 48½ 15 28
Harrow-on-the-Hill (pfm 6) 11 30 14 00 15 40
FL FL FL
Wembley Park (pfm 6) arr 11 35 (detrain) 14 05 (detrain) 15 45½ (detrain)
dep 11 37 (empty) 14 07 (empty) 15 47½ (empty)
Neasden Depot (N) 11 43 14 13 15 54

Now, given that the Mayor will turn up to the opening of an envelope if there’s a camera there, the chances of a ‘media event’ involving an air-conditioned Underground train *not* involving Boris are frankly too low to worry about, so I’ll put folding money on this being Boris’s Great PR Push to pretend that he’s met his manifesto commitment.  Frankly it’s not hard to meet a manifesto commitment when the trains were already under construction, and I trust the gentlemen of the press invited along for the occasion won’t just mechanically churn out a slightly rewritten version of the TfL press release to give the impression that he has.  What’s that, Skippy?  I’m a naive, trusting bastard if I think that?

Anyway, if anyone wants to turn up at Wembley Park at 10:31, 12:59 and 14:39 and, if he’s there, point out to Boris and friends that he’s literally done nothing but sit back and let TfL carry on with what Metronet had started, feel free, if nothing else you’ll get a nice, cool ride on a shiny new train that’s been on order for the best part of six years.  Tell ‘em I sent you.

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Further to the poke we had yesterday at the Victoria Line, Ross Lydall in the Standard confirms what I suspected – the recent Victoria Line problems are traceable to the introduction of the new 2009TS tube stock, and faults on the new fleet are running, currently, 23 times higher than the old 1967 stock.  Of course this is represented a shock horror outrage, and it is, insofar as repeatedly inconveniencing people while telling them that the cause of their inconvenience is a Good Thing that will make their lives better is a bit rich:

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor of London’s Transport Director, said: ‘Londoners have heard a lot of talk about investment on the Tube, but now they can see and experience the reality of the upgrades that they have been promised.

‘The new trains are a fantastic, state-of-the-art addition to the Tube network, which – along with signal upgrades – will transform the journeys of those using the Victoria line.’

Well, hmm.  I’ve not experienced the new trains yet, but reliable sources indicate, without wanting to go Gilligan over this, that the windows are too small, the walls are too thick, there aren’t enough handrails and the seats are uncomfortable compared with the marvellous stock they’re replacing.  The saving grace (and this is true of the Class 378s on Overground, too, with their bendy bus ambience) is the extra capacity on a packed and uncomfortable route, but if they also can’t actually move people reliably, then people are going to lose confidence in the ability of TfL (the Victoria was a Metronet project, so TfL have been running it for two years now) to actual fulfil its promises.

However, early life failures are a fact of railway life, the reliability curve is known as the ‘bathtub curve’ for a reason, and normally the initial failure rate falls rapidly as the miles are racked up and engineers come up with fixes.  Much the same criticisms were made of new more complicated trains on mainline commuter rail, which replaced ultra-reliable simple EMU stock.  They’re doing fine now.

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Anyone else pissed off about the sheer amount of branding Barclays have purchased for their £5m a year?  Is that really value for money?  Someone else who’s exercised about it is Justin McGuirk, who’s excellent Guardian piece also includes this tribute to the Mayor’s liking for getting the rich to pay for his vanity projects:

[T]he man who condemned the Stratford Olympics site to a hideous 115m-high sculpture – precisely the kind of vainglorious ego trip the Olympics can do without – based on a 45-second chat with Britain’s richest man in the cloakroom at Davos.

That’s a detail I wasn’t previously aware of.  Nice to know these things are thought through and consulted properly, as befits a man with an accountability agenda.  Whoever the next Mayor is, they need to take a long, hard look at the privatisation of public space (those effing enormous billboards on major roads, for instance) otherwise all the talk about beautifying the city and clearing away clutter is in danger of looking as insubstantial as a fart in a hurricane.  They can start by taking on the More London people and their nannying, unwelcoming attitude.  As ever, unaccountable abuse of power is a problem regardless of whether it’s wielded by private or public hands.  The difference is that the public hand is usually connected at some point to a ballot paper.

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From Liberal Conspiracy, I note that the Government is now being quite open about their intention of Porterising central London:

The Government recognises that some households, particularly in very high cost areas, may have to move as a consequence of these measures. In London, some households may need to move from central London to outer London Boroughs or neighbouring local authorities which are not impacted by the overall caps.

There could also be knock-on impacts for outer London boroughs that could be faced with an increased number of new Housing Benefit customers needing access to additional services such as schools and health care.

So, Boris, as Mayor of London, is faced with having to cope with the consequences of a policy his own party are pushing on him, which affects outer boroughs where he allegedly draws his support from, putting stress on transport links at the same time as he’s sucking up to inner London motorists and putting up fares, housing at the same time as he’s cutting affordable housing provision, as well as the non-GLA functions such as schools and health care in those areas, while strengthening the one-party states in Central London that provide Boris with such shining talent as Kit ‘Weapon Fatcat’ Malthouse.

Just to keep up the fun quotient, those same boroughs are also seeing cuts in their funding in areas like transport and enterprise grants along with Michael Gove’s mad plans to remove education from LEAs and hand it to pompous journalists and other Dunning-Kruger asshats, which means there’s likely to be extreme difficulty in providing suitable education facilities for the unfortunate kids who’ve been wealth-cleansed from the posh bits of the city – note that there’s *already* pressure on outer London’s primary schools due to basic demographics even before the  pipsqueak got his claws on education.  Gove’s plans are Policy Exchange at work again, of course, so we can expect that to be filed under ‘fail’ before too long.

To cap it all, the boroughs, now largely Labour-led, are showing signs of unease about the increasing centralisation of powers proposed by Boris’s Policy Exchange fundies.  It’s adding up to something of a perfect storm – Boris is no longer being seen as the fresh face, clean broom, outer London-friendly, listen-to-the-boroughs candidate, but the Whitehall-diktat, power-hungry, dump-the-poor-on-outer-London screw-the-boroughs candidate.

Oh, and the Victoria Line keeps breaking down.

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