Ticket office closures have rightly focussed attention on staffing levels at Tube stations. There is a current commitment to ensure that all Tube stations are staffed during operating hours. This is important not only because it works to reduce crime, but it also improves customer confidence, meaning they are more likely to use public transport even in off-peak hours.

This blog has a particular interest in Kensal Green and for historical reasons staffing levels here are particularly sensitive. While London Underground (LU) insist that the station is always staffed, the way this is organised off-peak means it is less than effective and in many ways a waste of time. LU must recognise that staff are only helpful if they are visible and pro-active in helping passengers.

Boris is busily closing a number of ticket offices, something he specifically said he would resist before his election. This activity is going to lead to 800 jobs being lost at LU. As it happens I don’t disagree with closing ticket offices per se and indeed Ken’s proposed programme of closures was in many way more significant. I don’t see it helps to have ticket offices selling very small numbers of tickets open for the sake of it. The difference between the two plans, of course, is that Ken was proposing re-deploying staff not required at the ticket office to the gateline. They could then help passengers and staffing levels overall would not drop. Boris for his part would probably say that Ken was in a much more favourable financial climate than the one we face at the moment. Like many of Boris’s arguments this is superficially attractive but given he’s just given away £55M annually to users of the WEZ alone its obvious that if there is a problem, its of his own making.

Staffing is important – it reduces crime, but more importantly gives customers the confidence to use public transport at times when stations may not be overly busy, in the early morning and late at night. Its no coincidence that when Ken Livingstone’s administration took over the running of the former Silverlink franchises to form the Overground, ridership soared adding an average of 250,000 journeys per month from 2007/8 to 2008/9. In no small part this was due to proper staffing of the stations, neglected under the previous regime.

Signs are though that this lesson is being forgotton. As well as Boris’s indecent haste to have the ticket office staff out of the door, leaked memos have shown that ‘always manned’ doesn’t sometimes mean what it says. Anecdotal evidence suggests this problem isn’t getting any better.

That brings me to Kensal Green. This is interesting for two reasons – firstly its my local station and I’m therefore keen to ensure its stays safe but over and above that the station has a somewhat unfortunate history and was the scene of a horrific murder a few years ago. A murder which led to Ken Livingstone’s pledge that stations would be manned during operating hours.

But what does ‘manned’ mean? Well in off-peak hours at Kensal Green not an awful lot. I should at this point say I have nothing but praise for the LU staff that are present during the day. Always helpful and available for customer queries they are everything that you would expect. That changes late night when the LU staff are replaced by a private security firm. The standard appearance of the station is then for the ticket gates to be open and not a staff member in sight. If there are staff present they are hiding where none of the passengers can see them, possibly in the ticket office with the blinds pulled down. I was so suspicious that I placed an FoI request with TfL to confirm that the station is always manned during operating hours. They replied:

I can confirm that from our records there have been no occurrences where this station has been left unmanned.

I’m happy to take them at their word, but I’d really like to know what the staff are doing as late at night as they are not anywhere to be seen. Without being visible they are pretty useless. In particular having the gates open encourages ticketless travel. Whilst I understand the reasons for this, in that private firms cannot perform the fare enforcement role, it means a key way of preventing crime isn’t enforced. London Underground should change its policy for Kensal Green and ensure that the station is visibly staffed with directly contracted London Underground staff. The current situation is unsatisfactory and although it may fulfil the spirit of the ‘always manned’ pledge, the reality is that it fails to fulfil the spirit of it. Given the history we deserve better.

Did you hear that? You’d need finely attuned hearing but I think that’s unmistakable sound of a dog whistle emmanating from City Hall in the direction of London’s suburbs. It’s widely assumed that discontent in Outer London was the cause of Ken defeat in 2008. While the data on that is somewhat mixed, its undoubetdley the case that people outside of Zones 1 and 2 were assiduously and successfully courted by Boris last time round. Some of the tactics he used last time will not work this time, in particular financial circumstances have forced him to clobber Outer London with more than its fair share of the recent fare increases. I tend to think however that Boris is starting along the process of defining a narrative around quality of life to again divide and conquer. Ken has made a bright start, but is again showing signs of getting distracted with side issues that will very quickly overwhelm any good work he does. For success he must concentrate on the job in hand, defining a vision for all Londoners that rejects Boris’s devisive approach.
 

I had an entertaining night out on Wednesday. It’s probably a refelction on the poor state of my social life that it was to Boris’s ‘Let’s Talk Transport’ consultation in Greenford. Abandoning any pretence at balance, the panel there was composed of three Tories, a local entreupneur (who I think only spoke 2 sentences the entire evening) and, as a sop to the near half of Londoners that don’t share Boris’s politics a token Labour politician, Julian Bell, the leader of Ealing Council. Much as I am unimpressed by Boris’s policies, there’s no doubt he comes across as a class act at these public events, or at least he does if you’ve not seen him much before. He can be funny and engaging although he does have a real tendancy to fall back on his standard stump speech once he gets going. This ranges across areas such as Venezuela (and Ken’s love of it), how much crime has fallen (at the same time forgetting how he derided the reliability of crime stats when running for office), and how he’s frozen the Council tax 2 years running (not mentioning that he’s more than made up for it by hiking up fares). I’ve seen it a couple of times and, I think, even if I was impressed by the policy positions I’d be tired of the rhetoric now.
 
Not that there weren’t firsts last night. Boris arrived at the event by bus, imagine that! I’d wager that the first time he’s been on one for quite a while, and by the way being pictured next to the cardboard cutout of his uncessary new bespoke one doesn’t count. His story was slightly spoiled by Julian Bell pointing out loudly that under his leadership the cost of his bus ride he’d just taken had risen substantially in the past 2 years. It may just have been me but I think I also may have spotted the beginnings of a narrative he’s fashioning for the 2012 Mayoral election, specifically directed at the ‘burbs.
 
There’s no doubt Boris is facing a problem with Outer London. Traditional wisdom says support there swung it for him in 2008. His problem now is that many of the things he promised then haven’t been delivered. Holding down fares? No such luck. The suburbs have, if anything, been hardest hit by fare rises. Orbital bus services? No real progress there at all and with TfL strapped for cash its unlikely anything further will be delivered at all. The things he’s going to be able to point at re-election time – WEZ removal, de-bendifiction, Crossrail continuation – are no more impactful in Outer London than in Zone 1.
 
Two strands in the recent time have pointed to a new strategy in development to try and change the narrative and deflect from his failure to deliver. Firstly the flurry of activity last week on a non-existent strike and  “driverless” Tube trains. Let’s be perfectly clear this was nonsense from beginning to end. There was no strike planned and there are no driverless Tube trains. It nonetheless had an air of plausibility about it for anybody without a burning interest in railway infrastructure as Boris was predictably vague on the details. Taking to YouTube he de-cried the unreasonable behvaiour of the workers on the imaginary picket line. He’s been helped further now by ASLEF refusing to meet him – “I tried to work with them, but they wouldn’t speak to me”.  This is just the kind of red meat that Tory supporters lap up – no one with a blue rosette ever lost votes by attacking Unions. A clearer dog whistle to his base would be difficult to find.
 
So far, so Tory. More interesting I think is the theme he appears to be developing around quality of life. Dave Hill reported last week a casual remark from Boris in relation to cycling:

What we want is to create, in as much of London as possible, a village atmosphere – a village atmosphere where people feel they are going to be safe on these big, clunking blue [Barclays cyle hire] bikes or on their own bikes, to cycle through the city.

Boris specifically picked up the theme again at the transport consultation proudly declaring “I want to put the the village back in the City”. Once looks like an off-the-cuff remark, twice in quick succesion looks like a strategy being honed. And call me cynical but that looks like a phrase whittled into shape via a focus group.

Now its easy to laugh at these things isn’t it? A commenter on my Twitter feed asked whether he’d inadvertantly missed the word ‘idiot’ out of the sentence and I myself dismissed it as ‘meaningless Estate Agent bullshit’. On reflection I think its more important than that. Don’t get me wrong it’s still meaningless but as a theme it has the potential to speak strongly to Outer Londoners many of whom feel only marginal affinity with those of us that live in Zones 1 and 2. Much as I like Inner London and its where I live, you’d be hard pushed to describe much of it as villagey. In many way the attraction of Inner London is that it doesn’t have many of the unfortunate side effects of living in a small, clostrophobic village. I’m not sure the people I know who live further out necessarily think that way and if he can develop the narrative into a broader quality of life theme he may be onto something. It entirely possible its one of number of themes he’s going to be road testing over the next couple of months – but the confluence of these two topics together marks a new harder, political edge at the start of the New Year.
 
What of Ken? Well he’s made a good start, like Boris, concentrating his efforts on Outer London with a tour of every borough in the city starting with Merton this week. His work around the fare rise at the turn of the year identified a key weakness in Boris’s armour and not a day goes by with out some transport misfortune being laid at Boris’s door and him being urged to ‘Get A Grip’. Sad then that old distractions have reared their head once again. Leading the news Wednesday night and on Adam Bienkov’s blog the following morning was Ken’s participation on Press TV, rather than any campaign announcement. Now it should be pointed out that Press TV is an officially licensed TV channel in the UK that has to comply with all the same due impartiality and other broadcast rules that the BBC or ITV do. Ken isn’t even the only person of note to have appeared on the channel – the venerable Andrew Gilligan was on there for a while, something he’s tried to explain away a great length. Nonetheless its connection with Iran makes it controversial, and Ken’s explanation that he’s on there because it’s the only channel that gives the Palestinian cause a fair go will do him no favours. Important as it is, the Mayor has next to no influence over the Middle East conflict and Londoners will rightly question whether they want a part-time Mayor/part-time Columnist (Boris) or a part-time Mayor/part-time impromptu Foreign Minister (Ken). With all his faults and damaging policies they may well conclude the former is the least worst option. Ken needs to turn to volume down on the side activites (and that includes japes likes his appearance with Lutfur Rahman) and develop a set of policy that will unite Inner and Outer London and concentrate on the things we have in common. Boris is again going to try and divide us, Ken must take a different route.

I had been toying with buying an iPad but they are very expensive and I’m not sure they represent good value for money, despite me generally being a bit of an Apple fanboi. Specifically when I looked at what I would do with a sub-laptop device it was mostly for reading. With a backlit screen the iPad isn’t ideally suited to long period of reading, so I decided to buy one of the new Kindles from Amazon. In the short time I’ve had it I am very impressed.

OOBE done right

The first thing to note is that the out-of-box experience (OOBE) for the Kindle is pretty impressive. In the box you get the device itself, a small ‘Getting Started’ guide (the full manual is on the device), charge lead (micro USB) and that’s it. No surplus ‘Health and Safety’ or warranty crap – a small forest of which you seem to find in every Apple box. The printed getting started guide was just in English, but I’m assuming you’d get that in whatever language matches the Amazon site you ordered on.

If you have the 3G version (I do) it automatically attaches to the network. Attaching it to a wi-fi network is also trouble free. Most impressive of all the device comes pre-registered to your Amazon account which means you’re all set up to buy books with a couple of clicks. Some care required there I’ll wager. It’s possibly a little too easy to make a purchase, bearing in mind these are books (c.£7/£6) and not a song on iTunes (c.70p/99p). But overall the purchase experience is seemless and certainly rivals iTunes for ease of use.

Reading Experience

The screen is very readable and I have been able to use it for extended period without feeling tired. The E Ink display does a magnificent job of replicating the real book experience. The only place I’ve seen where it falls short at the moment is in the rendering of images and diagrams. I’ve subscribed to the Kindle version of The Economist and some of the graphs as part of that can be a bit difficult to decipher. This is party because many of them were designed to be in colour, but I think the display also doesn’t lend itself that type of diagrammatic information as well as text.

Hardware

The physical device itself seems pretty robust, although I have to confess its I find the keyboard quite difficult to use with its small keys. Maybe that’s because I have fat fingers, but whatever I can’t see me wanting to use it terribly often. The keyboard looks like its been built with robustness in mind, rather than ease of use. That’s fine as I’m not expecting to use it for anything other than a reading device but if you wanted to expand its use to other applications (see below) then that might be a drawback. As mentioned the charger is now the fairly standard USB-plug device (for want of a better term) that used for iPods and iPhones that comes with a cable that terminates with a micro-USB which is also now the industry standard. Battery life appears good. This is largely related to the fact that in stand-by mode, despite the screen displaying an image, power consumption is minimal due to the way that the E Ink display works.

Bits and Bobs

Click on the ‘Experimental’ menu item from the home screen and you get three options for extras. There is a web browser that you can use that works with both the 3G and wi-fi connections. The limitiation of the b&w screen, my inability to use the keyboard and the limited ways you can navigate around means I don’t think I’ll use that very often. But I was able to logon to my GMail account, which considering the 3G access is worldwide might come in useful when travelling. There’s also an option to transfer MP3 files across to the device from a computer. Again I probably have better devices for that but nice to know its still there. Finally there’s a text-to-speech option which I have not tried yet.

Overall

Overall, a very impressive device and at just over £100 for an entry level model good value as well. Even the 3G version isn’t that much more, and its important to note that this comes without the need for a contract or any payment for data charges. I’ll be glad to leave the heavy books behind the next time I’m on a plane with some serious reading time ahead of me.

The TfL Board on 22nd September is going to be asked to approve an extension of the Cycle Hire Scheme. By how much we will probably not know as TfL are now hiding behind commercial confidentiality to obscure the true cost of the scheme from Londoners. Apart from the fact that this project is now suffering from a severe lack of financial transparency, the business case produced by TfL shows it to be a poor investment. It is inconceivable that the Mayor’s political appointees to the board will have the courage to stand to up to him. It requires that the more independent members of the board take a stand and call a halt to the extension of this wasteful project and stop digging an even bigger black hole.

We saw a significant regression of public accountability at TfL this week. The board papers for the Finance Committee were published with a significant ommission. The currently approved project authority for the Cycle Hire Scheme has miraculously disappeared from the documents. Now you see it [p.7], now you don’t [again p.7]. Given the lack of information here its difficult to know what to make of that. However I think its safe to assume that this now been increased beyond the £81.7M that was previously in there. If it hasn’t why would there be a need to redact the current budget which can be seen in a number of other documents? A rise in the cost of the project would not be a surprise. We know that there are elements of the scheme that are now seriously dysfunctional. Re-circulation of bikes has become a major task and, without casual users on the scheme, this is set to continue to be a problem. The operational problems are not going away either with an unfortunate user recently being overcharged £900.

In a commercial organisation it would be highly irregular for any scheme with this many problems to be extended at this point. You’d look to solidify your current offering and not make the problem worse. TfL, no doubt driven on by the Mayor’s Office, are however proposing such an extension at the board meeting on the 22nd. How much extra is that going to cost you ask? That I’m afraid you can’t know now and I’m assuming at the same will apply at the board meeting itself. TfL have redacted all information concerning the budget uplift.

There can be no justification for this. Cycle Hire has become highly controversial due to the shambolic nature of the rollout and it is not acceptable for TfL to be hiding behind commercial confidentiality to obscure changes in the budget now or in the future. I have no confidence that the Mayor’s political acolytes (Steve Norris, Daniel Moylan) will do anything other than just wave this through. There are however more independent voices on the TfL Board that should take this opportunity to speak out. Can the representatives of the Cab and minicab trade on the board (and the trade unions) really justify progressing this scheme to their members? It’s time the TfL board stood up for Londoners and told the Mayor to stick his shovel, stop digging and take a lesson in transparency. Maybe this chap could give them a few pointers:

I believe Londoners should have a greater say on how their city is run, more information on how decisions are made and details on how City Hall money is spent. [...] I will aim to create a different style of government at City Hall by introducing a series of measures designed to make my Mayoralty more accountable, and spending more transparent [My bold].

Wonder who said that?

I wrote last week my first thoughts on the business case (BC) that TfL released to the blog through an FoI request. At the time there were two main outstanding question that were getting in the way of determining whether the scheme was a good investment or not:

- The budget had changed between the business case submission and launch of the scheme. Was this just an overspend compared to the BC or had there been an extension of its scope?
- Given there were substantial redactions (particularly around the scheme expenditure) how would it be possible calculate a new benefit/cost ratio?

Some additional research and examination of the BC and we have a good answer to both these now. These will resolve whether the scheme is now a good investment. However there are a number of unanswered question around how we got to a point where costs had escalated out of control but no-one asked the important questions about whether it was still a good use of public money.

What is the budget for the scheme?

This should have been an easy question to answer. Unfortunately the values in the BC were out of date and did not match the current project authority (PA) for the scheme. I am now convinced that the true value for initial project costs is the current approved figure of £81.7M not £54.1M. Crucially though the larger figure will still only buy the same project scope that was originally envisaged in the BC. This is important because it means the figure for benefits from the project should not change – you’re getting the same deliverables (and therefore benefits) but for a significantly higher cost.

The evidence for this comes from two sources. At February’s TfL board meeting the 3rd quarter report on the overall investment program was approved. This document correctly shows the initial project costs as £81.7M, it also describes the scope in exactly the same terms as the BC, with 400 docking station and 6,000 bikes. The matches what is in the last available project summary from the TfL Finance and Policy Committee.

How to calculate a new benefit to cost ratio?

I was reticent to just plug the new project costs in because (correctly) there had been a conversion on the costs to present values so they could be compared properly with the benefits. I speculated that this would not make much difference but wanted to look further. I am now also happy that we can just add the overspend in without any adjustment. Again there are two pieces of information to rely on here. Firstly all the project expenditure should be at present values anyway because its being spent now. Secondly, if you look at the actual difference between the net financial effect from the project (benefits minus costs) the difference between this at present values and inflated values is less than £1M. For the purposes of this we should be able to ignore the correction. Will the benefit to cost ratio be completely correct? Maybe not, but it will be close enough to make no odds.

So what’s the new benefit to cost ratio at the new budget? Well, as you recall from the article last week TfL have included a set of health benefits, and I am sceptical as to whether these should be included. Nonetheless to compare like with like we should include them. So here they are:

Benefit/costs ratio (without health benefits): 0.80:1
Benefit/costs ratio (with health benefits): 1.26:1

So assessing this purely as a transport project and whether we would get better a better return as tax and farepayers by spending this money elsewhere, this is a poor investment. We are spending a great deal of money and the return we’re getting is less than that investment. Imagine if a bank gave you the same bargain, you can have 80p back of every £1 you give us, not sure how many people would be queuing up for that. Looking at whether we should include health benefits, in happier times I would be minded to say that might be appropriate. However given the extreme pressure the transport budget is under I don’t think they should be included now. We have to make sure that we get value from every last penny and TfLs role is to run an efficient transport system not be an add-on to the NHS. TfL implicitly acknowledge this as the health benefits are not included in the main part of their business case process and are only included here as part of the sensitivity analysis.

Is this the end?

We’re assuming here that the costs won’t rise further. There’s no guarantee of that at all. Not having casual users in the scheme will have a fares impact and its clear that more money is being spent on re-circulating bicycles than was budgeted for. Otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing hire vehicles being used to transport bikes around the city. We don’t have sight of the contract with Serco but anybody who’s familiar with out-sourcing contracts will know that whilst you might be able to get a good deal in the initial negotiation, you often get taken to the cleaners on any extras on top of that. If the problems that Serco are managing with the scheme now are not covered, stand-by for significant increases in operating costs.

Bottom line is that the scheme is already a poor investment and should have been cancelled when the budget changed. Further cost increases will just make the black hole bigger still.

Next steps

I’m now interested in how we got to the stage of a project with a poor business case continuing on. I have lodged further FoI requests to try and clarify what process was gone through when the budget was raised and in particular whether the Mayor’s office were told this was now poor value and pushed on regardless because it fits Boris’s political needs. I have also appealed against various redactions in the original business case.

See for yourself

The full business case is here. If you see anything I missed or you think my maths is broken – then let me know.

From previous posts you’ll know I have been at TfL to release the business case for the cycle hire scheme. Its arrived this morning. Its probably going to take a little while to analyse over the weekend (yes, that’s how sad my life is), but here are a few thoughts after a quick speed read of the document:

1. It looks out of date.

If things change on your project, you should update the business case. After all if your costs rise, for example, the project you are sponsoring may well end up not being worth doing and at that point you should at least consider cutting your losses and stopping the it altogether. Unless the revision history on the document I have is wrong, the last time this was updated was January 2009 and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then.

For example, it indicates that the requested project authority is £54.1m, whereas the TfL Finance and Policy Committee minutes already show a PA of £81.7M. It’s possible that’s due to an extension of the scheme, however it currently means its impossible to determine whether the scheme is good value or not without knowing if there’s a component of overspend in that £81.7M or its all overspend. This is important when calculating the cost-benefit ratio and I will go into more detail on that later.

2. Its been subject to a substantial amount of redaction.

To an extent I expected this as there is a third part contractor involved and naturally TfL will need to consider their tendering position. However there are areas where I think it is unjustified. In particular there is a table that has been removed wholesale that models the overall expenditure of the scheme over the period of the business case. For a scheme such as this, given there is a substantial amount of public money at stake I think this is unjustified. I will be lodging an appeal on that specific redaction plus others.

3. Modal shift

A very interesting section is on the assumed modal shift from various transport form. They are in broad alignment with the number in the mayoral direction that Helen highlighted at Boriswatch. This means that the Mayor’s trumpeting of the scheme as a way of getting people out of their cars is nonsense. Most shift is assumed to come from walking with bus and tube coming after that, however there has been no allowance made for a loss in tube/bus fares as a result of this. I’m not sure I believe this to be correct.

4. Rail after-market

Given the problems at mainline stations a great deal of the use in the scheme is anecdotally in servicing the rail after market. Unfortunately that has not been accounted for in the business case and in particular any bike re-circulation costs will not be included. Its possible therefore that the operating costs are now higher than in the business case both for staff costs and for the provision of vehicles. The BC asserts that it would take 50,000 bikes to properly service this market, a truly staggering figure.

5. Operating costs

TfL assume that the scheme is broadly self-financing for operating costs over the 7 period of the contract let. Indeed the BC claims a small operating surplus. This was a real surprise to me as I had expected to see at least some on-going requirement for subsidy to operate the scheme. The BC assumes £119M in fares over the 7 years. Whether this is right or not will depend crucially on how long the cycle journeys are of course. The shorter they are (i.e. in the 30 min free period) the less the fare revenue. Again a detailed breakdown of the fare revenue has been redacted. Also if costs rise (because of additional re-circulation for example) then this could change.

6. Benefits

These are divided into infrastructure, journey time and health benefits. These total £84.6M, of which the health benefits comprise £31M. Whether you believe that health benefits should be recognised when determining if the scheme is good value I guess depends on whether you think TfL are providing just a transport service or a wider community service. I tend to favour the former, but I can see some logic in the latter. This is a key point however because if you have been following the numbers up until now you’ll have seen that whether you include the health benefits or not is key to whether the scheme is good value for money or not.

7. Cost benefit ratio

The BC offers two ways of looking at the cost:benefit ratio. Without the health benefits, dividing the costs by the benefits gives you a ratio of 1.36:1, including the health benefits give you a ratio of 2.14:1. So both positive – but there’s a problem. As indicated at the top I think its possible that the business case may not accurately reflect the cost of the scheme as the current authority is £81.7M not £54.1M. If we were to assume that original scheme will now cost £81.7M and no change in benefits (which I think is correct) then a different picture will emerge. It is going to be difficult to work out a specific CBR under these circumstances as there has been a conversion applied to the operating costs to bring them to present day values. Process-wise this is correct, and given the long term operating costs are neutral and project costs are all near term the effect of this should be minor. However without a detailed breakdown of costs over time (which remember has been redacted) I can’t measure with any precision what the effect would be. However I think I am on solid ground in say that with a project cost of £81.7M then the CBR would be significantly less than 1:1 without health benefits and possibly only marginally positive with them accounted for.

So blog readers I need help if anyone can find the info. Can anybody help me with what the current project authority in this document actually pays for?

The ability of casual users to make use of the London Cycle Hire scheme has been delayed again. TfL are now saying it will be the “end of the year” before you will just be able to just turn up and hire a bike without being a member. Supportive in public of Serco (the company running the scheme), the Mayor’s Transport Advisor Kulveer Ranger described this turn of events as a “fucking PR disaster” in private. No shit, Sherlock. Not allowing casual users onto the scheme is bad in itself – a key feature of the advertised scheme is not operating. Worse however it means one of the key assumptions that makes the scheme work at all (even for members) is now substantially undermined. Expensive and badly managed, the cycle hire scheme is now stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I tweeted last night:

davidmlondon: New cycle hire experience. Person ‘minding’ a docking point for friend who’d rung ahead to reserve it. Luckily there was just one more left.

It was a mildly amusing experience and reminded me of towels on deckchairs around Mediterranean swimming pools. Fortunately at the docking station concerned in St. John’s Wood there happened to be still a single free post. That saved me from having a full and frank exchange of views with the person concerned about how anti-social that behaviour might be.

It did bring into focus just how dysfunctional the cycle hire scheme has become. Today TfL announced that the casual use by non-members would not happen until the end of the year. This is poor in itself. One of the key reasons for having the scheme is that tourists or non-members could just pick up a bike from any station without having to pre-register. In terms of encouraging cycling, therefore the scheme has even less value for the moment than it had previously. I am skeptical that its going to do a lot to encourage non-cyclists even when working correctly. The current members scheme is only likely to attract already committed cyclists. TfL say they are concerned that casual users may overwhelm the system and given the well documented launch problems, its difficult to disagree. But there’s a more substantial problem now though – the scheme actually needs casual users to work properly.

If you look at the feasibility study for scheme, one of the key risks identified was:

[The] need for excessive re-distribution of bicycles, potentially increasing congestion and air pollution (albeit marginally)

You can see this daily around the city. Docking sites close to train stations empty first thing in the morning and points in the central zone fill up with bikes. Come home time the pattern reverses, so docking station in the West End (like the one above) empty and there is chaos at Waterloo as there are many more bikes than docking points.

But don’t worry there’s a solution to this – the study notes:

It is assumed (as it has been observed in other cities) that a proportion of the market, namely tourists, will then be able to use the bicycles for their trips throughout the day, thereby helping to re- distribute the bicycles across the central area

Oh dear. Essentially one of the important assumptions of the scheme is now flawed and will remain so for months. Expect to see more cars and trailers around the city ferrying bikes from location to location.

The management of this scheme has been shambolic from the start. Its now caught between a rock and a hard place, needing casual users to avoid excessive re-circulation of bikes but unable to accommodate them because of operational issues. The next few months are going to be very taxing for Kulveer and his colleagues at TfL.

The choice of candidates wasn’t ideal and the campaign not entirely riveting, but the different choices on offer to Labour members for their candidate for Mayor are now clear. Oona King has made great play of being the new kid on the block, but that’s been at the expense of developed policy ideas particularly in the area of transport. Far too often she has also forgotten that the real enemy are the Tories and not her fellow Labour members who may have just chosen not to support her. Ken is also far from being the finished article that can put right what went wrong leading up to his defeat in 2008, but some positive elements have appeared during the campaign. Because of this, his greater grasp of the problems London faces and his greater experience, he is the better choice for the Labour Party.

Ballot papers have been dispatched today to choose Labour’s candidate for the mayoralty. All in all its not been a terribly eddifying campaign so far and with just four weeks to go I would say it now stands little chance of getting any better. In many ways the initial shortlisting set the tone for the entire piece. Just two realistic candidates stepped forward to take the challenge and given the opposing wings of the party that they could be pigeon-holed as representing it was always going to be a bit testy. It would have been much better, I think, had we had a wider range of candidates to choose from. I am on the record here as indicating that I think Alan Johnson would have made a much stronger candidate than either of the two options that are currently on offer. You can’t obviously compel people to stand and he chose not to. But it did leave London Labour Party members with a restricted choice of directions that one observer characterised as a choice between a pisshead and an airhead.

For all that though we are where we are – and you can only choose between what’s put in front of you. In that case I am going for Ken and naturally, given I think he’s the better candidate, I’d recommend others do as well. There are three main reasons for going in that direction.

1. Transport is key

It may just be my bugbear, but I think that transport is key to any mayoral candidates chances of success at the election and in office. It is the thing that impacts Londoners every day of their working life and it is the area where the Mayor has most direct influence at present. Oona’s ideas in this area were late arriving and often impractical. She started with extra school buses (not needed) and an enhanced river service (nice but expensive and of limited use) and ended with suggesting London buses be allowed to carry bikes. The latter feels very much like an ‘eye-catching initiative’ that everyone knows is impractical but is thrown in to gain some favourable news coverage and make it look like she’s being bold. It’s true that some cities do have the facility to carry bikes on their bus transit systems (its quite common in the US) but none where the service is used so heavily as London. I’m just trying to imagine what the 18 would be like if someone tried to squeeze a bike on at peak times or held the bus to place it on a rack at the front/back of the vehicle. There’d probably be a riot.

Ken on the other hand has stuck to the knitting – and why not? His record in office speaks for itself. Boris would have plenty more time to spend in his office peeling grapes if he wasn’t so distracted opening (and taking credit for) transport projects started in the Ken-era, now coming to fruition. I am a passionate advocate of cycling but for all the benefits it can bring we have to be realistic that the majority of people are still going to rely on buses and tubes to get around London. The first order of business is to protect those services from cuts and enhance them where possible.

2. You should stick to the things you can change

Nobody thinks that the level of youth crime is currently acceptable or desirable. That both candidates want to reduce the level of teenage murders and stabbings is laudable and valuable for London. But the Mayor only controls a small number of the levers that can influence that problem. The Tories are suggesting they will give greater powers to the Mayor over policing. It may well be they think again on that if Boris is ejected in 2012, but even if they don’t policing is only part of the solution. Oona however made this a cornerstone of her campaign. As such, I think she’s left herself exposed in exactly the same way that Boris did in 2008 by promising to bear down on the problem only to find in office its more difficult than assumed. Ken may have rashly given the impression that he didn’t think there was a problem by blaming the media for scaremongering but I think he understands the complexity all too well.

And what on earth was the benefit to Oona of wading into a debate on whether the Freedom Pass should be means tested? The Mayor neither funds nor controls the Freedom Pass. In fact the only power the mayor has is a reserve power to ensure its not removed.

3. I am not your enemy

It’s a failing of intra-party elections like this that candidates inevitably tend to attack each other (even if its only in code) to get elected. After all they have to draw distinctions between each other to influence the electorate. The problem is that this gives the real enemy (the Tories) ample ammunition to use in the real election in 2012. All this is to be expected. However, my sense is that Oona’s campaign has stepped well over the mark in this respect. At some points I felt (and I’m sure other members felt the same) that I was being marked out as the enemy simply for favouring the other candidate.

More generally there’s been quite an unpleasant ageist undercurrent which I’m sure Oona wouldn’t support but has been allowed to emerge in her campaign. Where people are living longer we should be valuing their expertise at whatever stage in life they are at. To suggest, as has been the case, that someone is ‘over the hill’ at 65 when they may have 30 years or more to live and contribute to society is simply offensive.

So is Ken perfect? No, far from it but some positive changes have emerged. His campaign was launched in the suburbs and he’s continued to iterate on theme’s that the electorate in those areas will find compelling. There is a lot more to do but he has made a start at changing people’s perception of him as a Zone 1/2 mayor. Of course all of this could change overnight. No-one (except possibly Russell Crowe) does feuds better than Ken. One ill-judged remark and we could end up back in the same position as we were before the 2008 election with a never-ending stream of negative publicity that will allow Boris to capitalise. The basics are there now however and with thought and care we could end up with a sensible Mayor in City Hall and with it an end to the drift and confusion that characterised the current administration from day 1.

Don’t ever say this blog doesn’t tackle the big issues. It’s not sexy and most of us don’t really want to think about it, but refuse collection and recycling is probably the service people use most from their local authority. So I’ve done the thinking for you.
Brent’s current recycling service is poor and inefficient. In the new waste strategy the papers have predictably and regrettably focussed on a move to fortnightly collections for non recyclables. This isn’t the really story – the increase in recycling that’s also included is far more significant and could result in a significant decrease in waste sent to landfill.

I moved to NW10 from Haringey about 18 months ago and one of the first things that struck me about daily life here was how poor the recycling service was in Brent. Haringey’s severe deficiencies in some areas have been well documented and are not be glossed over, but much of the council appeared to function well. In particular the recycling service was pretty good taking a wide variety of type of refuse and on an average week by volume I could easily recycle more than half of what I threw out. It was a bit of a shock coming here where that dropped to usually a little more than 20% and sometimes less. No card or cardboard could be recycled, and very little pastic. What was more infuriating was how picky the recycling van was. Putting your rubbish outside in the green box but in a plastic bag so the paper wouldn’t get wet if it rained? Then I’m afraid we’ll ignore that completely and just leave it.

There’s a fairly simple reason for this which is that Brent, unlike Haringey opted for kerbside sorting. So the recyclables are split into bottles, paper etc. on the van, rather than later at a centralised facility. This creates two problems at collection time. Firstly its labour intensive at that point so anything that adds to that (like looking inside a plastic bag) can’t be entertained. Secondly the vans are specialised and therefore don’t have room to carry bulky card or cardboard. This means that simple things like the cardboard sleeves around the outside of pre-packed food are currently going to landfill.

Thankfully that looks all about to change. At the Council Executive meeting on the 11th, Brent went out to consultation on a new waste strategy that would vastly increase the amount of waste recycled from people like me. A move to sorting at a centralised facility rather than at kerbside would mean card and cardboard could be recycled for the first time and not only that but an expanded range of plastics. If your waste bin is anything like mine the vast bulk of it will now be able to be recycled.

This is obviously good news, so why do the only news stories I can find on this (here and here) pick out a move to fortnightly collections rather than an improvement to the recycling service? It is true that if Brent moves to the new scheme we will have alternating collections of refuse and recyclables. But if more waste is recycled then it absolutely makes sense to re-assess when materials are collected. Also missing from the general complaining about this is that food and organic waste (the stuff that goes off, smells and if not properly contained attract vermin) will still be collected weekly. While people will have to take care in sorting and storing waste is that really such an unreasonable request? Its notable that the national newspaper that has been at the forefront of campaigning against fortnightly collection and bizarrely even wheelie bins, is the one most vocal on the subject of the “nanny state”. I won’t link to it on this blog but you know which one its is – its the one that rhymes with ‘fail’. Surely if there is one thing that people ought to able to do with only minimal government assistance, it is to clean up after themselves. Taking reasonable care of your waste and some minor pre-sorting ought to fall into that category.

The story here is a good one and although it might not be immediately attractive to headline writers, Brent is going in the right direction on its waste collection.