Boris Watch

This is just turning bizarre.  Large, blond bloke Boris talks to large, blonde woman Vanessa (he really goes for the tough gigs, doesn’t he), and completely reverses direction on his policy of reintroducing conductors.  Last time he talked to Vanessa he told us it would cost £8m a year and they’d be proper conductors.  He’s changed his mind now.

He said: “What we are not going to do is have the old-fashioned conductor because you don’t need them. What you do need is a figure of authority in uniform to help people to keep order and you know, to help people on and off the back [of the bus], and that can almost certainly be done by transport PCSOs [police community support officers].”

Whaaaaaat?  Reintroducing the jolly old conductor was a fairly prominent part of the transport manifesto, I seem to recall.  ‘More conductors, fewer consultants’, ‘only £8m’, etc.  People certainly remembered it.

Now we find that it’s ‘almost certainly’ going to be a PCSO?  A ‘transport PCSO’, to boot.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the transport PCSOs TfL has been funding are part of the British Transport Police, whose beat is entirely the railways (I know that because I once asked that as a question at a school ‘Meet the Police’ Q&A).  See here for Boris’s recent £6m investment in 50 of them.

So, they won’t come from the BTP.  There are already policemen associated with the bus network:

TfL has a unique partnership with the Metropolitan Police Service’s Transport Operational Command Unit which it funds, at a cost of around £70m a year, and which has over 1,200 uniformed officers dedicated to the bus network

*Already funds*.  I get it – Clever Boris has discovered a way out of his value-for-money/manifesto commitment pickle.  He’s going to use the existing police budget.  Never mind that they’re already out there working (on schemes like the very successful BusTag operation) and only last May concluded a review of the way they operate.  Never mind that they’re already out and about on the buses, presumably where they feel the policing needs is highest rather than because of the design of vehicle operated on the route.

Of course, there’s no net increase in policing here, but if the Routemaster does appear in quantity, there’ll be a sharp reduction in the flexibility that the TOCU can use in policing the network, since they’ll have to devote permanent resources to the few Routemaster routes, leaving other routes including, deliciously, the remaining bendy ones, with less cover, unless he finds some more money.  I can’t see that resulting in a revolution in passenger safety.

Finally, the Routemaster competition looks even more like a waste of time.  Remember, section 2(c) of the design requirements reads:

The bus must be operated with a second crew member

Not a policeman.  A crew member.  Which the Mayor now says isn’t needed.  Boris is tearing up his own rules on live radio.  What a farce.

“It will certainly be considerably lighter than the existing vehicles, and that will not only be saving the fuel we use in probably a hybrid engine but it will also make less noise,” he said. “It’s absolutely vital we go ahead.”

How much lighter, Boris?  Discovered a new lightweight battery design, have we?  Current hybrids are about a tonne heavier than the diesel equivalent, remember.

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