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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Pidgeon on London’s expensive new buses - £1.6 million each
January 30, 2011 5:27 PM
• [Jan 30] Caroline Pidgeon MLA writes: LAST week at the Transport plenary I pursued the issue of the Mayor's 'new bus for London' and whether it provided value for money for Londoners.
When the Mayor got elected he made it very clear that he would take bendy buses off our streets and he would bring in a new accessible routemaster bus with a conductor on board so that passengers could hop on and hop off. Most people thought that bendy buses would simply be replaced by these new buses.
However, I have uncovered that the Mayor has spent £7.8 million on developing his new bus and the reality is that all we will see on the streets of London by the time of the next election is 5 buses. Each bus will cost around £1.56 million compared to a regular double decker which costs around £190,000.
In addition, the hop on-hop off platform will only be in operation with a conductor at peak hours, Monday to Friday. So the rest of the time, the back doors will be closed and it will operate like every other double decker in London - just with three doors instead of two!
The cost of getting rid of bendy buses cannot be overlooked either. Some of the contracts were due to carry on beyond 2012 so I have no doubt the Mayor will be having to buy the bus companies out of their contracts to run these buses - at yet more cost to Londoners.
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