Christian Wolmar, on Boris, in the Guardian today:
He genuinely supports cycling, but does not realise that in order to make London a cycle-friendly city, cars and other motorised vehicles have to be made to run more slowly and at times be inconvenienced. There is a deeper ideological root to these difficulties. Tories have traditionally favoured private transport over public, but in London no such policy is feasible. Johnson will have to continue to pour millions into buses and trains because otherwise the capital will grind to a halt, and he knows it.
First comment:
Don’t care. As long as he brings the Routemaster back.
They’re still out there, boys and girls. In every sense.
Tags: 6 Comments
6 responses so far ↓
Yes, bring back the Routemaster and get Cliff Richard to drive it whilst The Shadows Morris Dance down the road in front! Let’s make Britain great again!
Woolmar styles himself as “Britain’s leading transport commentator” on his own website. It is a shame that this article self destructs in the second paragraph. If the drinking ban on the Tube is unenforceable because there are no guards he might like to explain how the smoking ban works and has always worked since its inception about 20 years ago. There weren’t guards on Tube trains back then either.
The main plank of Woolmar’s thesis is that Tories have traditionally favoured private transport over public. If Woolmar was a “leading political commentator” he would know that Tories favour what works. Johnson’s adoption of Hendy is typically pragmatic.
Clearly Woolmar and the other Guardian readers commenting haven’t spent much time on outer London council estates where every spare bit of land is covered with cars. Just so you know middle class, professional Londoners tend to maintain cars that they use at the weekend whilst using expensive public transport for commuting. Less affluent people tend to use cheap cars to make a living. Don’t Woolmar’s crowd have eyes? Woolmar & co might think it will be improving for these people to waste their lives queuing at traffic lights set to punish them but some of us feel that that is simply an evil waste of life.
Woolmar say “Johnson will have to continue to pour millions into buses and trains”. I would say no he doesn’t. Public transport costs are totally out of control in London and the smartest thing the Mayor can do is to turn off the tap and get costs under control. This recession is precisely the right time to do it. Woolmar might like to explain for instance why bus operating costs in London are more than twice those outside London (http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/tsgb/ 2007 Edition, Table 6.16, page 117).
“he might like to explain how the smoking ban works and has always worked since its inception about 20 years ago”
Kings Cross.
“Although smoking was banned on the subsurface sections of the London Underground in February 1985 (a consequence of the Oxford Circus fire), the fire was most probably caused by a commuter discarding a burning match, which fell down the side of the escalator onto the running track “
Phil Taylor @ 10:09 pm
“Woolmar might like to explain for instance why bus operating costs in London are more than twice those outside London.”
Well, not being a transport economist myself, might I suggest:
1. You compare like-with-like. The point of comparison should be between LT and other urban PTEs, rather than LT versus all operations outside London. That reduces the difference significantly.
2. As the footnote to that table shows, it “includes depreciation of vehicles”. Notice anything about the LT bus fleet, especially when compared to some out in the sticks?
3. A similar differential is found in many other costings comparing the Capital with the Provinces. I think it may have something to do with all those awkward things like London weightings, recruitment, earnings, congestion, land-values …
4. Ever tried to catch a bus in a small provincial town after 7pm?
5. Ever noticed something about the frequency of services and coverage of routes in Greater London, especially when compared with Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh?
So: on one side of a postcard, assess the consequences (economic and electoral) of your proposal to “turn off the tap and get costs under control”.
Cllr Taylor’s generalisations on class use of differing transport modes is pretty interesting: I’m thinking of inviting him on my daily trip on the 177 Thamesmead – Peckham bus, linking outer and inner London boroughs, and I’ll challenging him to spot the middle class people using this ‘expensive’ public transport. And it strikes me as an interesting definition of expensive, too. If he can point me to a private car that can get me from Thamesmead to Peckham for 90p, I’d be grateful. I was going to say that I’m glad Cllr Taylor isn’t writing Boris’ transport policy, but having read ‘Way to Go’, I’m not sure he isn’t.
Christian Wolmer appeared on the Radio 4 programme “The Long View”
“Jonathan Freedland presents the series that looks for the past behind the present. He explores the parallels and differences between current attitudes to airport expansion and the controversy and debate that surrounded railway expansion in the mid-19th century.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fpxkd