I thought it might be a useful exercise to place on record in this blog the questions which I addressed for Channel 4 television in their recent Dispactches programme about the first year of the London mayor, Boris Johnson.

I must emphasise that, since I am not a registered elector in London, I have no interest in his reputation as Mayor, nor do I have a vote in the Mayoral elections. I am not anti-Boris out of political conviction or for the sake of it.

I just think that he is wrong on bendy buses. Wrong against the best interests of the taxpayer – both in London and indeed the rest of the country; wrong against the best interest of the passengers on the routes concerned who will experience a slower and poorer journey; wrong against the interests of the other road users on the route, who will experience more congestion on the routes concerned because the number of buses will be higher; and wrong from the environmental point of view, since the higher number of buses will consume more fuel, emit more noxious substances and contribute more carbon emissions into our atmosphere; and finally he is wrong, because the Mayor should not interfere in decisions about, or determine, which vehicle type should be run on bus services in London: he should stick the mantra of his own party in the House of Commons, “leave it to the professionals”.

This is not a trivial point, because political interference in the type of buses operated will increase the political risk of leasing or buying buses for service in London, and ultimately increase the leasing costs, so placing even more demands on the taxpayer in these straightened times.

The first question that Channel 4 asked concerned our estimates of the cost of replacing bendy buses and why these costs are necessary. In particular, why will the number 38 bus cost £3m a year to replace? Why will we need more buses?

My answer was:

1. The total replacement figure is around £12m to £14m a year in operating costs, depending on what assumptions are made about providing the same level of capacity.
2. The 38 is one of the busiest bus routes in London, running for 8 miles across the centre from Victoria to Clapton – the traffic conditions and the number of passengers on the route mean that it can take an hour and 10 minutes in the peak to cover those 8 miles.
3. You need more buses to provide the same level of capacity, because a ‘bendy’ carries 149 people, whereas a double decker carries around 90 – 40% lower. Also, boarding times on the double decker are approximately  20% slower, so the journey takes longer, and therefore needs more buses to provide the same level of service.

Next, Channel 4 asked about TfL’s estimate that it will cost £12m a year to replace all bendy buses. Do you agree? Is this significant? If so, why?

Our modelling suggests that this number is probably broadly right, especially if demand has stopped growing or is now falling because of the recession. As to its significance, it depends what you mean by significant. In the context of the total public funding for London bus services of over £600m, it’s not very much. However, given that the Mayor wants TfL to reduce its spending, and that public spending generally is going to have to be cut in years to come, it makes no sense to makes bus services less efficient and more expensive to operate.

It’s also worth pointing out that the £12 to £14m is considerably greater than the total budget available to some local authorities in other parts of the country to support all their public transport.

Next, Channel 4 asked us about fare evasion, pointing out that TfL suggested that some £5m of the extra costs would be recovered from reduced fare evasion.  We were asked whether we agreed or whether we thought that this was an overestimate.

I replied that I thought that this was an over-estimate, since it would would imply that about a quarter of the revenue on the bendy routes was not currently being collected. Since only 3% of passengers pay cash, 29% travel free anyway and 50% have a travelcard or a period bus pass, this would imply that nobody holding an Oyster Pay As You Go card ever paid, and that simply is not true. In any case, even if it were true there are cheaper and more cost effectuive ways of recovering that revenue through increased enforcement.

Next Channel 4 asked what other impacts there would be from replacing bendy buses… congestion? emissions? Other?

There will certainly be higher emissions – on the 38 for example, you’ll be running over 20 more buses on the route, just to carry the same number of people – and that’s more fossil fuel being burned and more emissions if you compare like with like.

The extra peak buses also mean that there will be more vehicles on the already busy roads, and they’ll be spending more time at stops, so probably increasing congestion.

Next came the vexed question of accidents to cyclists: Boris has said that bendy buses cause more congestion and ‘wipe out’ cyclists … your view on this.

The official figures show that, over the three years to 2007/08, there were two fatalaties and 57 serious injuries resulting from accidents between buses and cyclists in London. As the table shows, none of the fatalities and five of the serious injuries resulted from collissions with bendy buses.

Subsequently, the Mayor claimed that analysis undertaken by TfL showed bendy buses were involved in 36% more collisions serving similar areas per vehicle km. However, that differed from what TfL told the Channel 4 FactCheck web site last year:

“A breakdown compared collisions on all 12 bendy bus routes to collisions on 15 selected non-bendy routes.

“These selected routes tended to cover busy inner-city areas rather than the quieter suburbs. The number 43, for example, which goes from London Bridge, through Holborn, to Wood Green, or the number 8, which goes from Bow in the East End, along Oxford Street to Victoria.

“It’s not necessarily a scientific study, but it would seem to be a more accurate representation of the kind of routes bendy buses serve.

“According to this breakdown, bendy bus routes threw up 5.6 collisions with pedestrians in 2006/07; non-bendy bus routes 5.17.

“Collisions with cyclists were 2.62 on bendy buses; but 2.78 on non-bendy routes.
David Brown, TfL’s Head of Surface Transport, told the GLA last year, “The incidents that take place are both random, to do with the road networks themselves, and to do with weather conditions. They are not related to the type of vehicle that is operated on those roads.”

“Overall, there were more bendy bus collisions – which could be to do with anything from a pedestrian, cyclist or vehicle to a lamppost, building, street sign or tree.

“There were 153 per million miles, compared with 117 for non-bendy buses. But cyclists and people made up a small proportion of these. Luckily, it’s far more likely to be an inanimate object that gets over friendly with the bus.

Next, we were asked how bendy buses score against accidents involving the old Routemaster, and the answer we gave was:

Changes in routes mean that data isn’t directly comparable, but according to other figures TfL gave Channel 4′s FactCheck web site, between January 1994 and September 2007 there were 0.05 fatalities per million km operated by bendy buses and 0.08 fatalities per million km operated by Routemasters.

And this does not allow for the number of accidents inside buses, especially on staircases on double deckers: going up and down stairs on a moving vehicle is dangerous, especially the straight stairs that TfL specifies on its modern double deckers.

Lastly, we were asked once again about the new Routemaster, since before the election you calculated the cost of bringing in Routemasters would be £110m a year. Do you still stand by this figure … and if so could you explain how you calculate this.

If you have already replaced all the bendies with ordinary double deckers, then clearly the cost of moving converting them to Routemaster operation would come down – but you’d need to recruit and train over 500 new conductors, which would cost around £60m a year, and there’d be a cost penalty for buying low numbers of specially designed buses. So we think another £75m or so, even after the £12m spent on replacing the bendies.

But that assumes that a new Routemaster could be built at all, given currently safety and product liability regulations, and then whether the authorities would permit its entry into service. The product liability laws are particularly important, since they mean that manufacturers could be liable if people fell off the open platform.