NY Yankee
Member
This is a political blog, but since most of the debate pertained to transportation, I posted it here:
Ken Livingstone has made transport fares one of the key issues of the election, promising to cut them by 7% this year and freeze them in 2013. From 2014 they would not rise above inflation. Figures released by the House of Commons library in January showed the average transport fare in London had risen 26% since 2008, when Boris Johnson was elected, with bus fares up 50%.
Johnson is committed to yearly increases of the inflation rate plus 2%, although the popularity of Livingstone's pledge a recent YouGov poll found 82% of respondents supported it seems to have spooked him. In the press release launching his policy on driverless trains last week Johnson promised to "hold fares down", giving no further detail.
At the same time he has aggressively characterised Livingstone's fare cut plan as representing a £1.2bn cut in investment, using strikingly Labourite language:
The choice at this election is between investment in our transport system - or cuts in investment at the worst possible time.
Livingstone defended his proposals against such accusations to my colleague Andrew Sparrow in January. His key point was that "in a budget of £8bn if you can't find the money to have a 7% fares cut, you are breathtakingly incompetent". And he rejected a Channel 4 FactCheck analysis that there was no surplus that could be drawn upon to pay for the fares cut. A February 2012 Transport for London board paper highlighted by Livingstone last week (see page one, paragraph two) showed a total £338m surplus in Transport for London's operating budget. Livingstone puts the cost of his fare cut at £270m for the first year.
Livingstone has also posted a video featuring comedian Eddie Izzard explaining his fare cut policy. It is a lot better than a previous one featuring Stephen Pound MP.
Last week Johnson launched his transport policies with an eye-catching pledge to introduce driverless trains on the London Underground within a decade, something he partly justified on the ground that the move would "reduce the bargaining power of the union bosses intent on bringing London to a halt".
Livingstone said that the non-driving staff who would work on these trains instead ("train captains") would still be able to strike. "In other words it doesn't solve the issue of industrial disputes, which is what seems to motivate this convoluted policy from the Tories."
There have been far more tube strikes during Johnson's four years in power than Livingstone's eight. Reaching a no-strike deal with the unions was one of the promises Johnson admitted not being able to keep in his recent assessment of his own record in so far. He is lobbying the government to change strike laws to mandate a minimum turnout of 50% in strike ballots.
Livingstone is essentially promising to return to his former policy of "negotiating with the workforce", which saw, as he put it recently, "the number of shifts on the tube lost due to strike action ... cut by 98%."
Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate, has also hit out at the transport unions, saying: "Londoners need a mayor who will stand up to the unions, not by refusing to meet them until the eleventh hour but by engaging with them, looking the likes of Bob Crow in the eye and being tough but fair with them."
Johnson has proposed a new private-sector funded airport to the east of London, nicknamed "Boris Island", something the government announced in this year's budget it would now consult on. He says this would increase prosperity and the number of jobs in the capital and contribute to the regeneration of east London, while its noise levels would be low because flight paths would be over the Thames Estuary and the North Sea.
By contrast he is firmly opposed to the building of a third runway at Heathrow, saying this would be an "environmental disaster" and promising "it will not be built as long as I am mayor".
Livingstone has said he thinks an a new airport in the Thames Estuary would be "devastating for west London and threaten 114,000 jobs", and would end up downgrading Heathrow "to a regional feeder airport". He calls for investment in high-speed rail as an alternative to air travel, and the construction of two further phases of Crossrail. If more airport capacity is needed "and there is no other alternative", Livingstone says other airports outside London, for example Stansted, should be expanded instead.
Johnson's most visible move as mayor has been the introduction of the cycle hire scheme, first proposed by Livingstone but now completely identified with Johnson to the extent that the cycles are known as "Boris bikes". (We discussed this earlier.) He has overseen improvements to the above-ground local train services (the "Overground"), introduced the Oyster card on national rail services, and made the Freedom Pass for older people valid 24 hours a day. He took "bendy buses" out of service, introducing instead a handful of dramatic new vehicles styled after the popular old Routemaster buses; he says 600 of these will be in service by the end of his second term, each costing no more than "an existing hybrid bus". One of his first policies was to ban drinking on public transport; protest parties on the Underground took place on the last night alcohol was allowed, but the ban now seems widely observed. He scrapped the western extension to the congestion charge and got rid of Livingstone's proposed £25 charge for the most polluting cars.
Johnson pledges to reduce tube delays by 30% by 2015 (Transport for London says delays are already down 40% since 2007-08), to continue construction of the Crossrail east-west rail link and the extensions to the Docklands Light Railway in the east and the Overground linking it up in the south as an "orbital" railway by late this year as well as expanding the cycle hire scheme east and west and "exploring expansion" to the south.
He wants to introduce a new code of conduct for 11-16-year-olds who have free travel, launch a strategic review of London's road networks, including a £50bn "congestion-busting fund" to tackle black spots, and continue to upgrade various tube lines in order to increase capacity. He also promises to construct a new tunnel from Greenwich to Silvertown and to "examine the feasibility" of a new pedestrian bridge between Vauxhall and Chelsea bridges.
Both Johnson and Livingstone have proposed that the mayor takes control of National Rail services within London, and both have proposed returning the age older people can get the Freedom Pass to 60.
Livingstone's most high profile and radical policy as mayor concerned transport: the congestion charge for vehicles entering the city centre. During his time in office, he oversaw a modernisation of the transport system, especially the bus network, and introduced the Oyster pre-pay travelcard. A two-tier payment system evolved, with fares for those using Oyster kept relatively low while cash fares increased hugely, in a move which targeted tourists instead of locals and pushed more people into the arms of the quicker Oyster system.
Livingstone today says he would not bring back the western extension to the congestion charge or allow drinking on public transport again, and announced in his "transport manifesto" (read the full document here) that he would not bring back the £25 a day "gas guzzler" charge for the most polluting vehicles either, saying that would be too expensive to implement.
He would leave in place the existing eight new Routemasters introduced by Johnson, "but we are not buying any more, not at £1.3m each", he told the Guardian in January (that price had risen to £2m each by the time his transport manifesto was published see Johnson's view of their price above).
Livingstone also promises to "start preparatory work" on a cross-river tram scheme originally planned to run from Camden in the north, across Waterloo Bridge, to Peckham and Brixton in the south, which was cancelled by Johnson in 2008 due to lack of funding.
The Labour candidate also says he would roll out the cycle hire scheme "far more widely", mentioning south London, altering it so it was "a far less expensive scheme". He says he would review the contract with Barclays which he calls "the cheapest sponsorship deal ever" and would require sponsors to make the scheme more attractive to a wider range of Londoners. Staying with cycling, he would review major junctions, trial a cyclists-only green traffic light phase, redesign the cycle superhighways, expand the "Greenways" cycle routes, extend the Freedom Pass to allow older people to use the cycle hire scheme for free, and work with boroughs for consistent cycle lanes across the capital.
He promises better bus services in the suburbs, and says he will "get a grip" on tube delays, freeze the congestion charge for the full four years of his term, and "build the case" for Crossrail 2 and the South London line to Victoria, and extensions to the Docklands Light Railway and Croydon tram. He would make a third of all tube stations accessible to those who can't use steps by 2016, start a campaign for more courtesy on public transport, including trialling "keep your feet off" designs on buses, introduce a system to allow drivers to get information on their phones about where the nearest parking spaces are, campaign for rickshaws to be banned, and link up pedestrianised spaces in central London so people can walk in a pleasant environment from Bank to Oxford Street.
Livingstone would also campaign against the proposed route of High Speed 2, and for a route "that doesn't demolish hundreds of London homes". And "if it is not too late by May" he would negotiate with the International Olympic Committee to ensure the maximum possible access for black cabs to the Olympic Route Network. Livingstone says he will announce plans to cut air pollution separately at a later date. His campaign has also focused heavily on the 7% fare cut discussed above.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/apr/03/boris-johnson-and-ken-livingstone-live-hustings-transport-london
I'm obviously not familiar with London politics, but I get the impression that Boris Johnson is not a popular guy. Livingstone seems like a socialist (I mean that in a good way) and Johnson seems like a conservative. I think congestion pricing is a bad idea. It makes driving so expensive that it forces people to use the Tube, and the system is already past capacity. In addition, London is simply too expensive.
Ken Livingstone has made transport fares one of the key issues of the election, promising to cut them by 7% this year and freeze them in 2013. From 2014 they would not rise above inflation. Figures released by the House of Commons library in January showed the average transport fare in London had risen 26% since 2008, when Boris Johnson was elected, with bus fares up 50%.
Johnson is committed to yearly increases of the inflation rate plus 2%, although the popularity of Livingstone's pledge a recent YouGov poll found 82% of respondents supported it seems to have spooked him. In the press release launching his policy on driverless trains last week Johnson promised to "hold fares down", giving no further detail.
At the same time he has aggressively characterised Livingstone's fare cut plan as representing a £1.2bn cut in investment, using strikingly Labourite language:
The choice at this election is between investment in our transport system - or cuts in investment at the worst possible time.
Livingstone defended his proposals against such accusations to my colleague Andrew Sparrow in January. His key point was that "in a budget of £8bn if you can't find the money to have a 7% fares cut, you are breathtakingly incompetent". And he rejected a Channel 4 FactCheck analysis that there was no surplus that could be drawn upon to pay for the fares cut. A February 2012 Transport for London board paper highlighted by Livingstone last week (see page one, paragraph two) showed a total £338m surplus in Transport for London's operating budget. Livingstone puts the cost of his fare cut at £270m for the first year.
Livingstone has also posted a video featuring comedian Eddie Izzard explaining his fare cut policy. It is a lot better than a previous one featuring Stephen Pound MP.
Last week Johnson launched his transport policies with an eye-catching pledge to introduce driverless trains on the London Underground within a decade, something he partly justified on the ground that the move would "reduce the bargaining power of the union bosses intent on bringing London to a halt".
Livingstone said that the non-driving staff who would work on these trains instead ("train captains") would still be able to strike. "In other words it doesn't solve the issue of industrial disputes, which is what seems to motivate this convoluted policy from the Tories."
There have been far more tube strikes during Johnson's four years in power than Livingstone's eight. Reaching a no-strike deal with the unions was one of the promises Johnson admitted not being able to keep in his recent assessment of his own record in so far. He is lobbying the government to change strike laws to mandate a minimum turnout of 50% in strike ballots.
Livingstone is essentially promising to return to his former policy of "negotiating with the workforce", which saw, as he put it recently, "the number of shifts on the tube lost due to strike action ... cut by 98%."
Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate, has also hit out at the transport unions, saying: "Londoners need a mayor who will stand up to the unions, not by refusing to meet them until the eleventh hour but by engaging with them, looking the likes of Bob Crow in the eye and being tough but fair with them."
Johnson has proposed a new private-sector funded airport to the east of London, nicknamed "Boris Island", something the government announced in this year's budget it would now consult on. He says this would increase prosperity and the number of jobs in the capital and contribute to the regeneration of east London, while its noise levels would be low because flight paths would be over the Thames Estuary and the North Sea.
By contrast he is firmly opposed to the building of a third runway at Heathrow, saying this would be an "environmental disaster" and promising "it will not be built as long as I am mayor".
Livingstone has said he thinks an a new airport in the Thames Estuary would be "devastating for west London and threaten 114,000 jobs", and would end up downgrading Heathrow "to a regional feeder airport". He calls for investment in high-speed rail as an alternative to air travel, and the construction of two further phases of Crossrail. If more airport capacity is needed "and there is no other alternative", Livingstone says other airports outside London, for example Stansted, should be expanded instead.
Johnson's most visible move as mayor has been the introduction of the cycle hire scheme, first proposed by Livingstone but now completely identified with Johnson to the extent that the cycles are known as "Boris bikes". (We discussed this earlier.) He has overseen improvements to the above-ground local train services (the "Overground"), introduced the Oyster card on national rail services, and made the Freedom Pass for older people valid 24 hours a day. He took "bendy buses" out of service, introducing instead a handful of dramatic new vehicles styled after the popular old Routemaster buses; he says 600 of these will be in service by the end of his second term, each costing no more than "an existing hybrid bus". One of his first policies was to ban drinking on public transport; protest parties on the Underground took place on the last night alcohol was allowed, but the ban now seems widely observed. He scrapped the western extension to the congestion charge and got rid of Livingstone's proposed £25 charge for the most polluting cars.
Johnson pledges to reduce tube delays by 30% by 2015 (Transport for London says delays are already down 40% since 2007-08), to continue construction of the Crossrail east-west rail link and the extensions to the Docklands Light Railway in the east and the Overground linking it up in the south as an "orbital" railway by late this year as well as expanding the cycle hire scheme east and west and "exploring expansion" to the south.
He wants to introduce a new code of conduct for 11-16-year-olds who have free travel, launch a strategic review of London's road networks, including a £50bn "congestion-busting fund" to tackle black spots, and continue to upgrade various tube lines in order to increase capacity. He also promises to construct a new tunnel from Greenwich to Silvertown and to "examine the feasibility" of a new pedestrian bridge between Vauxhall and Chelsea bridges.
Both Johnson and Livingstone have proposed that the mayor takes control of National Rail services within London, and both have proposed returning the age older people can get the Freedom Pass to 60.
Livingstone's most high profile and radical policy as mayor concerned transport: the congestion charge for vehicles entering the city centre. During his time in office, he oversaw a modernisation of the transport system, especially the bus network, and introduced the Oyster pre-pay travelcard. A two-tier payment system evolved, with fares for those using Oyster kept relatively low while cash fares increased hugely, in a move which targeted tourists instead of locals and pushed more people into the arms of the quicker Oyster system.
Livingstone today says he would not bring back the western extension to the congestion charge or allow drinking on public transport again, and announced in his "transport manifesto" (read the full document here) that he would not bring back the £25 a day "gas guzzler" charge for the most polluting vehicles either, saying that would be too expensive to implement.
He would leave in place the existing eight new Routemasters introduced by Johnson, "but we are not buying any more, not at £1.3m each", he told the Guardian in January (that price had risen to £2m each by the time his transport manifesto was published see Johnson's view of their price above).
Livingstone also promises to "start preparatory work" on a cross-river tram scheme originally planned to run from Camden in the north, across Waterloo Bridge, to Peckham and Brixton in the south, which was cancelled by Johnson in 2008 due to lack of funding.
The Labour candidate also says he would roll out the cycle hire scheme "far more widely", mentioning south London, altering it so it was "a far less expensive scheme". He says he would review the contract with Barclays which he calls "the cheapest sponsorship deal ever" and would require sponsors to make the scheme more attractive to a wider range of Londoners. Staying with cycling, he would review major junctions, trial a cyclists-only green traffic light phase, redesign the cycle superhighways, expand the "Greenways" cycle routes, extend the Freedom Pass to allow older people to use the cycle hire scheme for free, and work with boroughs for consistent cycle lanes across the capital.
He promises better bus services in the suburbs, and says he will "get a grip" on tube delays, freeze the congestion charge for the full four years of his term, and "build the case" for Crossrail 2 and the South London line to Victoria, and extensions to the Docklands Light Railway and Croydon tram. He would make a third of all tube stations accessible to those who can't use steps by 2016, start a campaign for more courtesy on public transport, including trialling "keep your feet off" designs on buses, introduce a system to allow drivers to get information on their phones about where the nearest parking spaces are, campaign for rickshaws to be banned, and link up pedestrianised spaces in central London so people can walk in a pleasant environment from Bank to Oxford Street.
Livingstone would also campaign against the proposed route of High Speed 2, and for a route "that doesn't demolish hundreds of London homes". And "if it is not too late by May" he would negotiate with the International Olympic Committee to ensure the maximum possible access for black cabs to the Olympic Route Network. Livingstone says he will announce plans to cut air pollution separately at a later date. His campaign has also focused heavily on the 7% fare cut discussed above.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/apr/03/boris-johnson-and-ken-livingstone-live-hustings-transport-london
I'm obviously not familiar with London politics, but I get the impression that Boris Johnson is not a popular guy. Livingstone seems like a socialist (I mean that in a good way) and Johnson seems like a conservative. I think congestion pricing is a bad idea. It makes driving so expensive that it forces people to use the Tube, and the system is already past capacity. In addition, London is simply too expensive.