Back in March 2008 I pointed out that there are 1,043,761 buffoons in London, and signalled the death knell to the London we know and love.
Twenty-five weeks on, how is Boris doing on those pledges?
First thing of note is that the Venezuelan oil deal brokered by Ken Livingstone has been scrapped. As a result, TfL does not have enough cash, and will raise bus and tube fares in January as a result. The Freedom Pass is still working for the elderly and the disabled, but for how much longer?
I’m not even going to think about the time and cost dedicated by Ken Livingstone’s office to broker the deal, the air miles flown to set it up, the carbon emissions to set it up, all down the pan because Boris believes that helping the Venezuelan capital Caracas to transform itself into a modern Capital City is not worth doing.
Here’s a quote from Boris on the subject of Bendy Buses:
“[Bendy buses] have twice as many collisions with pedestrians and cyclists than other buses.”
Boris Johnson, Conservative mayoral manifesto, 19 March 2008
According to “This is London” (Evening Standard, owned by the Daily Mail group), a consultation has begun into axing the Bendy Bus on routes 38, 507 and 521. There’s no sign of a consultation taking place on the bus, at any bus stops, or on Boris or TfL’s websites - only in this article from This is London.
Looking into the facts a little more, I have a few questions for our eccentric Mayor.
- If these buses are quite so dangerous, and are putting off cyclists, why have both the bendy bus and cycling seen massive increases in London in the last few years?
- Bendy buses work in other European cities, including places which drive on the left such as Dublin. Why is London different? Is it because London doesn’t spend the money adapting the roads?
- Bendy buses do not use every road in London, and stick to busier routes. Cyclists tend to avoid the main arterial routes, surely the number of cyclists put off by the buses is constrained?
- When are you going to start talking to London’s cycling groups about their perception of the buses? To save you time, they are busy campaigning against HGV vehicles, not bendy buses.
- How many people have been seriously injured by the buses, compared to HGV vehicles?
- How many people have been killed on a bike by a bendy bus? (I can answer this one - zero).
Bendy buses carry 149 passengers - about 60 more than a conventional double deck bus. This means that scrapping the bendy bus in favour of more standard buses will mean more crowding, increased costs (each bendy bus you take off the road will need to be replaced by more than one conventional bus, meaning more drivers, more fuel, more traffic, more carbon emissions…). Oh yeah, the bendy buses also speed up your journey by decreasing dwell times (the time it takes you and me to get on and off).
Back to the quote that bendy buses have twice as many collisions with cyclists and pedestrians. I still can’t find a reliable source for this, though TfL gave Channel 4 some figures to show that between January 1994 and September 2007 there were 0.05 fatalities per million km operated by bendy buses, and 0.08 per million km operated by routemasters. That’s fatalities - on the subject of collisions, Channel 4 unearthed something rather worrying from a political perspective:
Boris was able to massage the statistics his way, by comparing collisions on all 12 bendy bus routes to collisions on 15 carefully selected non-bendy routes.
We need a Mayor suited to London, who understands London, and has actually used a bloody London bus day in day out to understand what we’re all going through. Unfortunately, 1,043,761 “Londoners” spoiled it for the rest of us.
Posted by Ric on October 23rd, 2008 :: Filed under
Boris Johnson
