Sadiq Khan's plans for a "managed decline" of the bus network

How does he square this with

  1. being a member of so-called "Labour", the party that used to claim they fought for jobs for working people and fought for public services, and
  2. having a job that, in its own title, requires him to provide transport for London?

it's it removing busses from central london areas heavily serviced by tube lines, and directing them to areas not serviced by tube lines?  There's absolutely no need for busses on Oxford St.

It's funny how dyed in the wool Tories are so keen for socialist policies to be pursued absolutely.

Bus use down 25%. Significant upgrades needed. Speeds in central London no faster than walking.

Tube use down 40% before massive capacity added by Crossrail. 

The obvious answer is to move those people on to the Tube making it cheaper. When the Tube was full it made sense to encourage people off it with price differentials. 

Preposterous to be downgrading any form of public transport at present fgs.

There are some invaluable bus routes that fill in gaps in the tube network. I use one to get from London Bridge to Liverpool St in the morning, compensating for the fact that there’s no good tube link from south of the river to Liverpool St (a gap that is becoming more obvious now that the Spitalfields area is really hitting up as an office location). 

I love the bus too. It's faster in central London than the Tube but also you don't have to go down 100 steps into a dirty hole in the ground with bad air, and be trapped there without the option, which you have on a bus, of just getting off and walking if there are delays. Also, you can sit up top at the front of the bus and pretend to drive it. 

QED - if you just started walking you'd be there in the same time or prob there faster if you took a Santander bike.

Agree it's not ideal but taking away all the money from a utility that gets all the Tory donors' serfs into work will have that effect. 

Note that Boris's £355k routemasters (total cost £212m) are also not fit for purpose as their crappy engines are basically diesel with a token hybrid functionality, and many of the bendy buses continued running fine in Brighton until their emission zone did for them. So all the salty teared Tories might want to think on that as they bemoan the loss of the 69 from Silver Spoon Crescent to Toffee Nosed Terrace. 

I've spent 17 years in London as a non-car owner. I take tube and buses all the time. 

There are too many three quarters-empty buses in central London (zone 1) that contribute to road congestion. In zone 1 walking is often as quick as taking the bus. The hopper fare means that the idea of people taking one bus to the edge of zone 1/zone2 and then getting another bus is much more realistic. There is a need for new thinking and changes to be made.

I think we will see more buses terminating on the edges of zone 1.  This is already happening SOTR and I imagine north too.

It means more changes and for me means I cycle much more.  It's a PITA if you're drinking though...

What rob said. 
Loads of empty buses running, lots of alternatives anyway in most cases

meanwhile the rest of the country gets by on a bus every fortnight if you are lucky 

When the Tube was full it made sense to encourage people off it with price differentials. 

They didn't put prices up to get people off it.  They put prices up to spend money on bringing it vaguely into the 21st century and generally it is massively improved.

I use one to get from London Bridge to Liverpool St in the morning, compensating for the fact that there’s no good tube link from south of the river to Liverpool St

Apart from the Northern Line to Bank and a walk or changing to the Central Line to go one stop to Liverpool Street.

I think we will see more buses terminating on the edges of zone 1.  

With the expectation that they then get the Tube? 

So their fare goes from £1.60 each way to £4.50?

Strutter, the outcome of a manged decline of the bus services is not going to be that buses terminate ten minutes from where people want to be. 

Zone 1 is six miles wide by 4 miles tall. Many people who would have previously been able to use the bus to get where the needed to be are going to have get on the tube now or get a new job closer to home. 

The bus service in London is arguably OTT at the moment.  It is stupidly cheap and regular compared to the rest of the country.  That is great ofc but is it really necessary on top of the tube system?  I would have thought focussing buses on local areas and encouraging modal exchange with the tube for longer journeys is the best way forward.   Yes dirt cheap buses are great but it is perplexing to the rest of the country that they have to pay twice as much for a far inferior service.

Guy why do you think it is acceptable for Labour to make the bus service worse and then ask people currently reliant on that service pay three times as much to complete the same journey by switching to underground trains halfway through?

 

I am just being realistic-  the frequency of empty buses in London is astonishing and not sustainable.   Of course I agree all public transport should be publicly run so that other parts of the county can get something close to an affordable reasonable service but the London bus service is so far ahead of everywhere is it is unsustainable.    Londoners actually laugh at the number of empty buses rolling past.

good q amit

y do u think it’s acceptable 4 the tozzas 2 royally fook our country up 4 c.7 years so that everything is way more expensive, we r as a country less secure, less wealthy, less important, all round weaker and the future is bleaker?

I think that you may have misread what I wrote AITS.

I was just saying that if you’re going from London Bridge to Liverpool Street at peak times then a pedestrian will often beat a bus because traffic is pretty bad at various choke points.

I think it makes more sense to scrap most long distance cross london buses and buses in zone 1 and use the sums saved to make travel into and around zone 1 on the tube cheaper ,especially as the tube plus Elizabeth line is now someway under capacity.