Filed under: Transport
Medway campaign poster on Boris fantasy island
The debate over airport expansion in London has rightly concentrated on the plan for a third runway at Heathrow and its potentially damaging environmental consequences. However, for the citizens of east London, a more immediate concern is the noise and nuisance caused by flights into City Airport following Newham council’s decision to give planning permission for an increase of flights from 80,000 to 120,000 a year. So I was pleased to move a motion at last week’s Mayor’s Question Time which called on Boris Johnson to show leadership on the issue by initiating a review of the impact of flights into City Airport. The motion received cross-party support and was passed unanimously by the London Assembly.
The depth of local feeling on this issue was made clear at the Mayor’s “Environment Question Time” event in Ilford in January, where I was on the platform as chair of the London Assembly’s environment committee. During contributions from the floor, speaker after speaker complained about the disturbance suffered by those living under the City Airport flight path. In reply, Boris told the audience that he felt their pain, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it. The planning authority in this case was Newham council and he had no powers to intervene.
But Boris’ expressions of regret were the purest hypocrisy. Under his predecessor, there was a clear and robust policy on City Airport expansion. Ken Livingstone’s administration had urged Newham council to reject City Airport’s application for an increase in flights on the grounds of environmental impact and noise. If the council did not agree to this, the Mayor’s position was that the government should call in the application and convene a public inquiry, and that the Government Office for London should prohibit Newham from granting planning permission pending a decision by the Secretary of State.
One of Boris’ early decisions as Mayor was to overturn this policy. In July 2008, in a letter to Newham council, he paid tribute to “the contribution London City Airport makes to London’s world city status, and the benefits the airport offers to the City and Canary Wharf”. In light of that, he continued: “I offer support for the expansion sought by London City Airport…. I shall therefore be writing separately to the Government Office for London, withdrawing earlier objections, and confirming my support for the current proposals.”
So while Boris was bidding for popular support by opposing airport expansion at Heathrow, he was giving it the green light in east London. To cap it all, Doug Oakervee, the architect of the Mayor’s plan for a new airport in the Thames Estuary, has declared himself unavailable to defend that proposal before the environment committee, suggesting that Boris’ fantasy island is dead in the water. The Mayor’s lack of any coherent strategic policy towards airport expansion in London is plain to see.
Published in Tribune, 5 March 2010
March 5, 2010
The Economist has just published an article (“Ordeal by Water“, 20 February) based on Policy Exchange’s proposals for an expansion of commuter transport on the Thames. The author would have been advised to cast a more critical eye over the report on which the article is based, along the lines of Adam Bienkov’s well-informed post on the issue.
The Policy Exchange report, entitled At a Rate of Knots, asserts that the current Transport for London (TfL) subsidy to Thames Clippers amounts to a mere 14p per passenger journey compared with 33p for buses. This struck me as an unbelievable claim, since an earlier report by the London Assembly, London’s Forgotten Highway, had quoted a TfL figure of 69p. So I tabled a question about it to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
The Mayor replied that the most recent monthly figure from TfL is 56p per passenger journey, four times the level of public subsidy claimed by Policy Exchange. He explained the discrepancy between the two figures on the basis that it was “likely that the Policy Exchange figure has been arrived at by dividing the TfL contract payment over the whole of the Thames Clipper operation, i.e. both the supported and the commercial elements”.
In other words, Policy Exchange got their sums wrong.
I take the view that there is much scope for the Thames to play a greater role as a transport highway – but as a means of moving freight rather than passengers. This would have a positive environmental impact by reducing the number of HGVs passing through London. However, if the case is to be made for increased public subsidies to underpin a large-scale expansion of passenger transport on the Thames, it requires more than a dodgy dossier based on faulty arithmetic.
February 22, 2010
Boris Johnson started the year by hitting Londoners with record public transport fare increases of up to 20 per cent on a single bus journey and 18 per cent on some outer London tube fares. These are the biggest real-terms fare increases in the history of Transport of London.
The direct result of the London Mayor’s decision will be a big, late-recession hit on the finances of public transport users (especially those on lower incomes who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on travel).
People are rightly pointing out the injustice of public sector workers being urged to forego pay increases while Boris wades in with a massive 20 per cent hike in their bus fares. And what do commuters get for their increased fares? The Mayor who promised “more bang for your buck” is actually proposing a reduction in bus services by eight million kilometres. This is on top of his decision to start reducing the number of London’s police officers (455 fewer by 2012/13) and firefighters (16 less during 2010-11).
This is all in contrast to his natural, instinctive defence of those “masters of the universe”, the investment bankers on whom we have become dangerously dependent. Appearing oblivious to the public revulsion at the bonuses, excess and peril in which they placed our economy, Boris went in to bat for the City (leading figures from which helped fund his election campaign).
Obama has come out so strongly in favour of re-regulating financial services that the Tories nationally have realigned themselves with the United States government. But Boris is still “instinctively anxious” (David Cameron had to deny a split over the issue) and continues to warn somewhat hysterically that bankers could leave London in their thousands. This claim looks more dubious by the day as big firms cut their year-end payments as a result of Alistair Darling’s reforms and the property market looks up.
How Britain and the world emerges from the economic crisis and what regulatory shape our financial services take is set to be a key battleground in the coming months. Will Boris Johnson continue to rail against any Government action and increased regulation? The same City figures who financed his bid for the mayoralty also fund the Tory Party and may expect similar levels of support.
It’s clear that, in the capital, the Tory Mayor had no more hesitation in clobbering the travelling public with massive fare rises than he had in jumping to defend the financial services from any kind of Government action.
Is this what we can expect from the Tories nationally? In opposition, they have taken a populist line in support of Obama’s proposals. But let’s watch this space.
First published in Tribune, 31 January 2010
January 29, 2010
Boris is right to suggest that government ministers should get out of their cars (Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2009), certainly in central London. But he’ll have more trouble persuading his fellow Tories to use public transport than he cares to imagine.
While the quotation attributed to Margaret Thatcher that anyone who travelled by bus was a failure in life may be apocryphal, it accurately reflects the philosophy of Tory politicians, many of whom are hooked on their perks such as taxi expenses. Here at City Hall, Brian Coleman has become notorious for his use of taxis, both as London Assembly Member for Barnet & Camden and as Chair of the fire authority LFEPA. Indeed Boris’s own expenses claims for taxis last year didn’t look too good either.
Maybe Boris needs to get his own house in order before he starts telling colleagues in parliament how to go about travelling when carrying out their political responsibilities.
September 1, 2009
The black cab is one of London’s most famous icons. Along with Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and the Routemaster bus, it regularly features in stock footage for films set in the capital and retains a nostalgic appeal for many people, particularly visitors to London.
However, figures from Transport for London show a different side to the story. They reveal that, in 2007-8, the 21,000 black cabs in London produced almost the same amount of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) as the capital’s 46,000 private hire vehicles (PHVs) and even more of the emissions (PM10 and NOx) that are responsible for air pollution. So it is quite clear that black cabs have an adverse environmental impact, both on climate change and air quality, out of proportion to their numbers.
When Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London the annual licensing inspection for cabs was tightened up and in October 2007 an additional mid-year test was introduced. Nearly 40 per cent of cabs failed the test, with excess emissions a major factor. Despite this, Ken’s successor, Boris Johnson, has scrapped the mid-year inspection for black cabs – while retaining them for the less-polluting PHVs.
When I raised the issue of the pollution caused by black cabs at Mayor’s Question Time this month, Boris admitted that emissions of small particulates (PM10) were especially problematic for Londoners suffering from respiratory illnesses and said this issue needed to be “addressed”. But he refused to consider reinstating the twice-yearly checks.
The reason is not hard to find. Some of Boris’ most effective allies during his mayoral campaign were black cab drivers. According to his campaign office, they distributed over seven million receipts with the slogan “Back Boris” to their passengers – a figure equivalent to the entire population of London. In exchange, Boris made a number of promises to the cabbies, including the abolition of the six-monthly test.
It was not as though Ken had treated black cab drivers badly. He gave them exemption from the congestion charge, the right to use central London bus lanes and an increased night-rate tariff. But, unlike Livingstone, Johnson appears happy to sacrifice Londoners’ health and the struggle against climate change for short-term political gain.
Black cabs are a permanent and necessary part of London’s transport network and no one is proposing to replace them with PHVs. However, as things stand, for the eco-conscious Londoner who needs to use a taxi service, a licensed private hire minicab is the greener option. Black cabs need to clean up their act. The Mayor should take a lead on this crucial issue and do everything he can to reduce emissions – rather than pander to drivers’ convenience in pursuit of electoral advantage.
Published in Tribune, 31 July 2009
August 3, 2009
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