Boris Johnson transport manifesto would mean minimum 15% bus fares increase for Londoners
A spokesperson for Ken Livingstone said:
‘The transport manifesto announced by Boris Johnson today would mean a huge 15% minimum increase in bus fares for Londoners. A single bus fare on Oyster would have to go up from 90p to a minimum of £1.05 and a weekly bus pass from £13 to £15.
‘Boris Johnson announces in his manifesto he will design and bring back a replacement Routemaster with conductors. Even to replace the bendy bus routes with buses with conductors on buses would cost £108 million a year - not the £8 million a year falsely claimed by Boris Johnson. This would require a 15% increase in bus fares in London.
‘To replace all London's 5,000 double deckers and bendy buses with his new bus would cost £600 million a year and require almost doubling bus fares.
‘Differences on transport policy have now become totally clear in this election and every Londoner can now be totally clear that Boris Johnson's policy means a minimum 15% increase on their bus fares.'
Notes to editors
The cost of Boris Johnson's bus policy
At an annual salary, and add on costs such as national insurance, pension, recruitment, uniforms etc the cost of each conductor is around £40,000 a year. Three shifts are required to operate heavily used bus routes so the cost of conductors per bus is around £120,000 per bus.
On the Vanessa Feltz show on 28 February Boris Johnson pledged to at least replace the approximately 400 bendy buses in London with buses with conductors. To replace 400 buses would need about 1,200 conductors to operate the routes - a cost of around £48 million.
However, that is not the full cost of Boris Johnson's proposal. A bendy bus has 50 per cent more capacity than Boris Johnson's proposed new bus. So to have the same ability to carry passengers 600 buses would be required and approximately 1,800 conductors - a cost of £72 million. So Boris Johnson underestimates the cost of the conductors alone by £64 million.
But that might be the least of the problems. It is unlikely that any bus manufacturer would agree to design and produce as small an order as 600 buses, compared to 5,000 double deckers and bendy buses in London. If they did the cost per bus would be astronomical - each bus would cost around £600,000. That gives a total cost for the buses of £360 million - or about £36 million a year if a bus last 10 years. The cost might actually be higher, or it is likely that no manufacturer at all would be prepared to produce them, given the smallness of the order.
Therefore the total cost of Boris Johnson's limited bus scheme would be about £108 million a year. That would require a more than 10p increase in the fare for every single bus journey in London.
But in his transport manifesto Boris Johnson does not limit the pledge on conductors to only replacing bendy buses. Producing extra buses over and above 600 would increase the likelihood a manufacturer would produce them but cost up to £120,000 for conductors per bus. The minimum cost of Boris Johnson's bus policy would therefore be £108 million, requiring a 15% increase in bus fares, and if may be considerably higher.