Quote Horatio Yed="Horatio Yed"Tfl make healthy profit on the buses but lose heavily on the Underground.
They have/are building and investing in the Overground trains, increasing frequency, rolling stock, even building tracks and stations vastly improving the network especially for those south of the river.
The bendy bus is a nuisance (i'm an ex london bus driver), it's expensive and in the tight congested roads of london wasn't fit for purpose and i can say and see that first hand.
The boris bus (for all you people concerned with job creation) is a crew bus between peak times, so every bus as an extra person with a job on board.
Cycle lane investment, and future further improvements, the (completely voluntary) boris bike scheme is a slow burning money maker.
When Ken was in charge he had a rule of if a bus company won a new tendered route that they had to put brand new buses as part of the contract also bus companies couldn't have a bus beyond 10years old on the road in London, looks great for the public but costly. Boris scrapped that saving money and unnecessary wastage.'"
What?
Did you read this on the previous page?
Quote Horatio Yed="El Barbudo"Ken wouldn't have introduced a new Routemaster (that actually isn't a Routemaster at all), he liked the bendybuses that Boris is scrapping rather than allowing to see out their service before replacement.
This is the Routemaster superbus that was supposed to be private funded but ended up being paid for by the TfL traveller, estimated at £180m by the time they're all in service, but don't hold your breath as the costs are going up and very few buses appearing.
TfL is having to pay for and own the buses because the operators don't actually want them and will henceforth charge for just operating them ... oh and TfL will pay the extra for conductors required.
Then there's the £15m that TfL paid out for the dead-duck cable car across the Thames (for which TfL refuse to publish the fares they take, but it can't be much, it's only attracting 300 passengers a day).
Again, this was meant to be privately financed but the £15m was paid by TfL travellers in addition to the £6m pa in operating costs ... only the profits are private.
Boris has also doubled (yes, doubled, in one price hike) the cost of renting a Boris Bike ... as I recall the doubling was about inflation x 30.
The scheme is going to be rolled out to Western suburbs but Fulham and Hammersmith and others are going to have to fork out £2m apiece (because Barclays can't afford the £50m they said they'd put in for sponsorship and have only stumped-up £13m).
So, apart from just splashing the cash in a profligate manner, Boris also has to toe the Coailition line and reduce costs hugely ... hence price rises.
As I recall, when Ken refused to increase fares, Maggie abolished his council.
So, all in all, I think that transport was top of Ken's list for keeping.'"
TfL have never worked at a profit, whether over or underground, the massive subsidies they have always received saw to that. TfL are not there to make a profit, they exist to regulate and fund the PRIVATE operators of the bus fleet and ensure the rail fleet operates at something like efficiency
Between 1997 and 2004 I worked closely with TfL and all the LtB operators on the drive to clean up exhaust emissions of their fleets in the capital. This included the design of particulate traps and catalysts for new buses and also a massive retrofit programme for the existing fleet. The retrofit programme included re-powering to more modern diesel units, even on Routemasters. That programme was fully-funded by TfL.
When a new bus was specified on a particular route, the existing fleet wasn't scrapped. The operators were all national companies. All that happened is the older buses were shipped out to the provinces where air quality wasn't such a problem.
