The London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that the review of bus services in outer London will take five years to complete. The review for inner London, where bus use is falling, is already done and dusted, so this news is yet another example of how City Hall is failing miserably when it comes to London’s greener boroughs. We managed to fight an entire World War in five years, so taking half a decade to run the numbers on a bus service, which already has ample computerised documentation available, with a myriad of time tables, measured ticketing information and closely recorded employee activity, is a scandal that must be challenged.
City Hall and Transport for London will have to learn to work smart to meet the ever increasing public transport demand in boroughs like Barnet. Communal transport is the future and private taxi companies are already ahead of the game with their ‘Share & Ride’ services.
To combat the wastefulness of large buses carrying few passengers, apart from during crush-hour, we need more, smaller Hopper style buses, even mini buses that whizz about where and when people need and want them.For those, who are happy to pay a small fare uplift, Hail & Ride services are ideal in quiet backwater neighbourhoods, where regular large scale communal transport is not viable. Such services have already been running successfully in many cities – including parts of London, for years.
Coupled with a London wide flat fare system, this would be twice as fair, and would also cause such increased uptake in passengers, that it would practically pay for itself.
Taking five years to get this going is nothing short of an admission of either incompetence or complacency. Whatever it is, we expect better for our hard earned tax money.
Once upon a time when rubbish was rubbish, life was simple. You bought stuff and whatever you didn’t consume in some fashion, you threw in the bin. The Council sent it to landfill or to the incinerator. There was nothing more to know.
If you want the answer – and if you happen to be in London, just take a 20 minute tube ride from Tottenham Ct Rd to Bromley by Bow. You’re now in Olympic Park territory. Anish Kapoor’s bright red Orbit Helter Skelter sticks up above the trees, you pass a futuristic looking school with exciting murals emblazoned on the walls. You realise that you don’t actually know much about Bromley by Bow.
In my time I have sat on wobbly plastic chairs / stood in soggy puddles / leaned on rough brick walls for hours-on-end in a multitude of polling stations across the land, at a variety of elections for all manner of Councils and Governments, as a teller, collecting voter numbers on behalf of a pick-n-mix bag of political parties.
As I write, Extinction Rebellion are hosting their final meeting in Berkley Square, to celebrate the return of the nightingale. Down the road, parliament are still at sixes and sevens about Brexit – yes, funny old world we live in.
Parliament has been Brexit-browbeating the people for a thousand days. And so, fed-up we got up, and marched. Bloodied, but unbowed. I kept reminding myself that I am campaigning to become an MEP candidate for London, while at the same time taking to the streets of that very city, alongside over one million other Europeans, passionately trying to rescue the UK from crashing out of the EU.
Somewhere last week, someone said