PQT 4 March - Report of the proceedings 3

Transport

Tony Arbour

The next topic is transport. The question comes from Ms Louisa Russell.

Can Ken please put the ‘Rich’ back in Richmond by integrating the overground rail scheme in the welcome Oyster Card?

The Mayor

Four years ago TfL offered all the 11 train operating companies in London £25 million – we paid for the whole thing – to introduce the Oyster readers and integrate it so that everybody could use the Oyster Card indiscriminately whatever mode of transport they were on. The train operating companies said they did not have the staff in place to plan this, so we employed architects and engineers to go to every station and draw up a plan of where you put the entrances and the gates and all that. Then when we sent them the plans, I think it was South West Trains who came back to us and said ‘Can you pay us to employ staff to read the plans?’ All they have done is go through every excuse possible. The Government has been squeezing them. We have all been denouncing them, but these are private companies. It is like going into WHSmith and telling them they should run their business differently. It is an awful lot of guilt tripping.

What I think they are doing is they make so much money from the fines at that interface between the TfL ticketing system and theirs where a lot of innocent people get caught again and again and again that they are deliberately dragging their feet on this. I say to them that they are mad because we took over the old Silverlink franchise in North London and we are now trying to persuade the Government to let the Mayor’s office let the southern franchise, which is the area south and east of you, and when we put the Oyster readers in on the North London Line the ticket revenues went up 20%, the scale of evasion had been so enormous. Although they are fiddling around with this, we would all be better off if we had that. We have to keep on. It might get to the point where everyone should protest and just not pay their fares unless they are prepared to introduce the Oyster system that allows people to travel conveniently.

Tony Arbour

Can we have your questions on transport?

Participant

Mr Mayor, first of all thank you very much for the great improvement you have made with London’s transport. Something I would like to make a point about is since the last century I have noticed that Oxford Street is being used by normal people using their car when they are not supposed to. As far as I know, the only vehicles allowed in Oxford Street are buses, cycles and taxis, yet more and more people are using their cars which makes the traffic unbearable, especially in the peak times. Is there anything you could do there? The sign at Marble Arch which says it is only for cycles is so inadequate you can hardly read it. Cars are not allowed to use Oxford Street unless they are crossing it. They go along Oxford Street all the time. Please can you do something about this, perhaps creating a penalty system and with the money collected we can buy something much bigger?

The Mayor

I think all the political parties are now committed to the long term solution of removing all traffic from Oxford Street and having a tram that runs from Marble Arch to Centre Point. This cannot be done before the Olympics. Westminster Council is signed up to this too. We want to remove all traffic except buses and reduce the number of bus routes going through, perhaps getting down to one bus with an interchange at either end so people can get off and change quickly. It is quite a bit of construction work at Marble Arch to get rid of that horrible one way system. It means getting something done around Centre Point, which is another ghastly little part of London. It will most probably be in stages. We will slowly start to move some of the bus routes out. We might even mortify people and put a couple more buses down Wigmore Street and so on, and get to that being a world class shopping street. It should be a rival to the Champs Elysées or Fifth Avenue, but it is so grubby. There is an all party consensus on this so I am confident that we will get there.

Tony Arbour

Thank you very much. I would like to ask Roger Evans, who is Chairman of the GLA Transport Committee, for his views on this.

Roger Evans (Assembly Member)

Thank you Tony. Quite clearly, if you are driving in a street where cars are prohibited you should get a fine for that and a prosecution. If you are driving in Oxford Street you should probably be certified as well because you will be stuck in amongst the buses and you will take forever to get along there. Oxford Street appears to be the fantastic storage space for buses that our depots have not been. It is wall to wall buses from one end to the other. I think the Mayor is right that all major parties are now agreed we need to do something about it. We need to re route a lot of those buses away from Oxford Street and put in some form of transport that can get shoppers from one end to the other and that is actually moving. That will encourage people to go there and bring the street back to life again.

Participant

Quite frankly, as far as the cyclist is concerned, I have been cycling in London since the 1940s, and it is a joke at the moment and getting worse and worse. Quite frankly, the Mayor and his team have done absolutely nothing for the cyclist. It is becoming more and more dangerous.

The Mayor

When I was elected, the cycling budget in London was £5 million. I think this year it is now £35 million. The only roads that are controlled by TfL are the red routes and 95% of all the roads in London are controlled by the boroughs. If we have a borough that is pro cycling we get a lot done; where there is one that is not, not very much happens. We have now announced that all the proceeds from the £25 Congestion Charge for gas guzzling vehicles will be used for the next stage in our cycling revolution which is cycle super highways so that people can come right the way through into central London without always being in competition with other traffic. We want to get cycling that links up and serves suburban town centres. At the moment, about 2% of all journeys in London are by cycling and we want to get that up to 10%. If that sounds difficult, the truth is that in Copenhagen 40% of all journeys are done by cyclists. It is a smaller city, a bit flatter. Berlin is at 10%. We should clearly be able to get there and we are going to spend a lot of money to do it.

Geoff Pope (Assembly Member)

I do not know where all the money is going. It is certainly not going into the most important cycle route in this area, which is the segregated route along the A4, one of the most important routes from Chiswick to Hounslow. That is a TfL road, so it cannot be blamed on Hounslow Borough. Those of you who know it, first of all the cycle tracks change colour every hundred yards or so, they are very uneven, the footway is smoother, and there are even bollards in the middle of the track. Why isn’t some of the money going into improving existing cycle tracks? It is no good pouring new money in if we do not make our existing tracks work.

Tony Arbour

I think that was a rhetorical question. I say that as someone who cycles to the station every morning. I am greener than they are.

Participant

Can I congratulate you hugely on what you have done with Trafalgar Square first off? I think it is marvellous. Also with the Oyster. I live by Gunnersbury tube and having that on the overground is absolutely fantastic, so well done. I am also an inveterate cyclist. I used to cycle with my son to school and it was virtually impossible because I would be on the road as I am supposed to be, and he would be on the pavement. It was really dreadful. I have been on several working parties with the local schools on school travel plans. There are school travel plan advisers. I have also been on the working party on the A4 corridor, which came to a dreadful halt.

What I would like to ask is, as you have quoted Europe, why on earth do you not look at Europe and instigate the kind of traffic facilities that cyclists in Europe have? They can turn left at red traffic lights when there are no pedestrians, and they can go through traffic lights when it is safe and there are no pedestrians. Please can you stop this nonsense in Holland Road where you can find it is dangerous to be on the road but you can instantly be fined for going on the pavement, but cars that go through red lights get no fine whatsoever. I would like to know what you are going to do about that.

The Mayor

I will go back and take all those points up because they all seem eminently reasonable. Holland Road where?

Participant

Between Notting Hill Gate and Shepherd’s Bush.

The Mayor

We will go away and have a look at that.

Ian Hancock, Hanworth Constituent

In view of the problems you have had with the West London Tram and the local councils, do you think we should go over to a trolley bus system like they had to do in Leeds?

The Mayor

I suspect we would have exactly the same problem if we move towards a trolley bus because you are dedicating a particular part of the road to one particular form of traffic. What disappointed me about the West London Tram was that I inherited this scheme and there was 70% support for it, and then people started campaigning against it, much like the Congestion Charge – ‘doom and gloom’ ‘there will be rat running’, ‘our life will become hell’ – and slowly the support was whittled away and I think both for and against were in the low forties. There is an awful lot of doom mongering about these changes. The same happened with the Croydon Tramlink – ‘doom and gloom’ – and now everyone in South London wants it extended. I had a very nice debate with Boris Johnson (Conservative Mayor candidate) this morning about how you get across South London, and the best way would be to carry on extending what was the Croydon Tramlink so you would have a South London tram network, take over some of the underused rail lines we have, linking it up to Sutton and over into Crystal Palace and so on, and perhaps even getting out here. I actually think a really good orbital tramlink across South London would be ideal.

Participant

The question I would like to put is about congestion charging, in particular the fact that bearing in mind so much of the traffic is local in London, are there opportunities you see for extending congestion charging to individual parts of London and town centres? Perhaps some of the Assembly Members would also like to comment.

Tony Arbour

Let us ask Darren Johnson, who is the Green Mayoral candidate – sorry I beg your pardon, who is the Leader of the Greens on the Assembly.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member)

Neither, but I have been both at times in my illustrious political career. Firstly, on the Congestion Charge issue, obviously there are traffic problems outside of central London and the current congestion charging zone. We need to look at road pricing mechanisms. I think we need more sophisticated technology and that is what TfL really needs to be pushing for in this next term to make sure we have some sophisticated road pricing technology so that in different parts of London we can deal with congestion and traffic reduction as well as charging extra for the most gas guzzling and polluting vehicles, which is certainly one of the Mayor’s initiatives that I do support.

The one issue I would just like to pick up quickly as well is the issue of the trams. The lady before talked about learning lessons from Europe on cycling. I think we need to learn lessons from Europe on trams as well. They are an absolutely integral part of the public transport system in virtually every European capital. It is a crying shame we do not have them here in London to that extent, and I think it is a crying shame that the Mayor has wimped out of the West London Tram issue. We do need a tram in West London, we do need a cross river tram, but the Mayor has shelved plans for half of that as well. I think it is a crying shame that we are missing out on a tram network for Greater London.

Tony Arbour

Thank you very much. You do not often hear the Mayor described as a wimp. Maybe we will see a lot more of that.

Participant

Given that it is generally accepted that we are reaching a tipping point, as you say, in carbon emissions, and given the fact that congestion levels in central London have really not changed sufficiently since pre charging levels, would you consider raising the charge from £8 to £10 in the future?

The Mayor

The numbers of cars coming into the zone was cut by 70,000. It is still 70,000 down. The reason congestion has come back is because Thames Water, 30 years late, has finally decided to renew all the Victorian water mains and is working its way out from the centre of London. It will get to Richmond in about 15 years’ time.

Tony Arbour

They are already here, I’m afraid.

The Mayor

They are doing it already are they? They are starting where the mains are leaking the most. If we did not have congestion charging, London would be gridlocked. We are trying the experiment of a £25 charge for band G vehicles which produce over 225g of carbon per kilometre. The average family car is under that. I suspect that will work, but we do not know, any more than we knew whether the first one would work. Although it does not dramatically reduce the emissions, about a fifth of the cars of owners inside the zone are band G. I have to say that of all the places in Britain where you do not need a four wheel drive, the central London is the one.

We have ringfenced that money, and depending on how many of them are still mad enough to pay £25 a day, it will raise £30 50 million. That money is set aside for the next generation of cycling and pedestrian schemes, so there is a real long term benefit which would cut carbon emissions by half a million tons a year.

Participant

I thank you for your efforts in making transport almost excellent for London. My problem area is the bus services. I have travelled from Chiswick to West Hampstead by bus, from Chiswick to Enfield, etc, etc. My observation is that most of the drivers do not know how to park properly at the bus stop. 80% do not know how to start and stop the bus totally. Each time they start everybody has to stand like this. Some people fall when they move off. I used to wonder whether they are properly training the bus drivers. I used to ask myself whether they are getting job satisfaction in this area. I used to ask myself whether they are really interested in the job or just doing it for fun. It has really gripped my imagination why this is so. Also, if you ask a bus driver ‘Please can you lower the step’, they get annoyed, especially in the first three months of their service. After six months they adjust and then they enjoy driving. But if you say ‘Please lower the step’, they get annoyed. Why is this so? Are they not properly trained? Also, maybe they should organise a programme for the new generation of drivers to have a lesson from passengers.

The Mayor

It only seems like Lewis Hamilton is driving your bus! When the bus services were privatised they slashed the wages, the long term drivers left, and there was a turnover of a third a year. We have increased the wages and more drivers are staying. They all have to take a BTEC course and we are hoping that the standards gradually improve. I do think they have improved a bit. There are still bad drivers, but you need to report them. We have people employed to get on the bus looking like ordinary travellers, who we call ‘mystery passengers’. You would be great. They know the driver and then they assess their driving. If you would like to do that… I do not know what it pays.

Tony Arbour

There is a new career for you.

This is another opportunity again to use your keypads.

Are you in favour of replacing bendy buses with a 21st century version of the Routemaster?

Damian Hockney (Assembly Member)

You cannot do it by law anyway because the European Union will make it too expensive. European Union rules dictate that you cannot have the Routemaster back.

Tony Arbour

We will give you your chance later Damian.

• Yes (76%)
• No (23%)
• Undecided (1%)

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