Tag Archives: Boris Johnson

What’s Ken’s equivalent of the Congestion Charge this time?

Ken Livingstone’s first term as Mayor of London is intrinsically associated with the Congestion Charge. An unpopular idea at the start it is now impossible to imagine London without it. The quid pro quo for it was the investment in London’s buses, now almost without exception modern and disabled-accessible. The plan was visionary, bold, determined and – viewed over the medium term – right.

Fast forward to 2012 and Ken’s re-election bid next year and what has he got? The problem this time is that Ken does not look like the radical outsider he did in 2000. This time he is the institutional one, against Boris the buffoon who many still love despite his policy inadequacies. While Ken may struggle in the character stakes, he could partially make up for it with eye-catching policies… but what could those be?

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Boris denies snorting particulates off London’s roads

This video of Green AM Jenny Jones having a go at Boris Johnson is worth watching, not least because of Boris losing his rag and refusing to answer the AM’s questions (and also denying snorting the particulates off the roads).

The essence is that London has apparently found a trick to get around air pollution problems – sticking particulates onto the roads, to prevent them being inhaled by pedestrians. But the solution – spraying Calcium Magnesium Acetate (CMA) twice a day (more on how it works here) – is costly, and hence is only being done on the streets where pollution monitoring stations are located. As Jones is right to point out, this is no solution to London’s air quality problems and is just a way for London to avoid a hefty fine from the European Commission for breaching air quality standards.

An additional irony to all of this is the very idea comes from an EU-funded pilot project in Austria and Italy, although admittedly there the CMA application is done in winter time when it has de-icing properties too…

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Time to revisit plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street

It remains one of my most-read blog entries – a quick 2006 post on why Oxford Street without buses is actually very pleasant, and I thought back to it having read that Boris has announced Boxing Day will be traffic free on Oxford Street.

But now, with elections for Mayor of London a little over a year away, isn’t it high time to revisit the issue in more depth?

The basic problem is this: the street is a major shopping street, but is also a major route for buses going east-west. How reconcile the two, also now given new purpose given London’s air quality problems?

The Liberal Democrats developed a reasonably nuanced policy on this in 2005, but that involved a tram running down the street, something that in today’s restricted financial environment there’s going to be no way to achieve. So what could be done?


How about a plan in two parts? The easiest stretch to pedestrianise – permanently – would be between Duke Street and Regent Street, shown here on the map in green, as there are alternative bus routes via Wigmore Street / Margaret Street.

The parts shown in orange are more complicated – as far as Orchard Street in the west and as far as Tottenham Court Road station in the east. Here a partial solution would be to create better, higher capacity bus terminals at each end of the stretch, possibly with a reduced price, special underground fare on the central line between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road (via Bond Street, Oxford Circus).

Another option would be to push for every weekend to be traffic free, with buses only during the week, and all buses on these routes to be lower-emitting hybrid vehicles?

I’m sure there are votes to be won with this policy, and even shopkeepers could be in favour if it were approached sensitively. Which candidate for mayor is going to be ready to run with this one I wonder?

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The bullshit bus? New routemaster unveiled

BBC London lunchtime news had a gleeful report of the unveiling of the new prototype Routemaster bus today, the latest stage in the New Routemaster saga I’ve blogged about here and here. This is a screenshot from the TV report:

There are five interesting things from the report.

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If a camel is a horse designed by committee then what’s this contemporary Routemaster?

At attempt to return to the past always gets the Brits drooling. Let’s get back to times when Britain ruled the waves!

This was essentially the sentiment behind Boris Johnson’s promise to get a new Routemaster bus onto London’s roads by 2011 2012, replacing the bendy buses he made such a fuss about. It’s time to restore a London icon was the refrain, and the original design proposals that I previously blogged about did at least look a bit like the bus of old.

But shock of shocks: the realisation that no manufacturer makes a front engined bus chassis, that an open back would require a conductor at all times, and that hydrogen power is not yet adequately advanced means that the plans have been changed quite a bit, culminating in the unveiling of the final design a few days ago – as shown in this Youtube film:

More from the Mayor’s website here.

The engine has now been moved to the back, the characteristic bonnet has been removed and the only two aspects of the traditional Routemaster – the curved rear and back entrance – remain. Only the back does not even have to be open all the time.

Interestingly the bus actually has 3 doors and 2 staircases – a welcome innovation… But where else in the world are there double-deckers like that? In Berlin of course – the MAN Lion’s City DD… This irony has of course not been noticed by ‘design critic’ Stephen Bayley who is quoted thus in a sycophantic and ill-researched BBC article about the new bus:

It proves the old rule that if you want things to stay the same, they have to change. And it was designed for London, unlike the hated and insulting bendy-bus, which was designed for Berlin

No Stephen. This bus has not been designed with London in mind. It’s a standard chassis, probably built in Sweden, with a slightly amended body on top of it and some odd bit of 1950s history bolted onto the back, making the bus work more like a Berlin double decker than a London one. It’s a horrible mess, designed with the heart rather than the head. And who’s to say it will even be on the roads by 2012?

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Crossrail and multi level governance

RER at Châtelet-Les Halles, CC / Flickr

RER at Châtelet-Les Halles, CC / Flickr

Rumours of tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson rumble on, as covered today by Alex at Labour List. I don’t want to comment on Boris vs. Cameron as such; others are better placed to debate that. I just have 2 small remarks.

First, Britain has had more than a decade of devolution now, a little less for London. Yet why do we still assume that parties at each level have to stand for the same things? It’s implicit in the way Boris vs. Cameron is reported that they must eventually agree. Why? It might not be very stiff-upper-lip British to air conflicts in public, but if Boris reckons he has London-wide Tory support for what he stands for then he would be negligent to not stand up for those views. I also wonder how this sits with Cameron’s claim to devolve power to local communities? I assume he reckons no conflict with a parish council is going to end up tarnishing his image, while a conflict with Boris will. It’s post-modern smooth over political substance – typical of Cameron.

Second, why, oh why, would anyone seriously want to oppose Crossrail as Next Left alleges that Cameron does? OK, the line does not serve too many Tory constituencies, but London is projected to grow over the next few decades and the London transport network is already horribly saturated. Why can we not even manage to get behind one high speed, high capacity line? After all Paris has just five similar lines (RER), each with 10 carriage trains, some of them even double-decker. The hub station alone – Châtelet-Les Halles – handles almost half a million passengers a day on its RER platforms. Anyone who has ever tried to take the Central Line at peak times must clearly see that more east-west capacity is vital.

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