Posts by Tom

Mashed up Met Police crime maps go online

What's really new?

The Met have had a crime figures website for a while, in fact it's linked as 'Detailed Crime Figures' off the new one. What's new - the whizzy Google maps stuff and the coloured areas for the hard of thinking, plus it goes down to subward rather than ward level. What's missing - quite a lot of types of crime (anything except burglary, robbery and vehicle crime) and per-month comparisons so you can see trends instead of being mislead by statistical spikes from one year to the next (June 2007 had twice as many murders as June 2008, but that doesn't mean the murder rate has halved).

A cursory glance shows that crime is reducing, on the whole, nearly everywhere, but that the 'high' category covers a huge range of possible values. The boundaries are entirely arbitrary, in fact, and some explanation of how they're set would be nice.

The main problem with it is comparing dissimilar areas using the crude measure of crimes per x people - the West End is a crime hotspot on this, presumably because it's got a lot of robbery crimes committed against people who are visiting, rather than locals (pickpocketing, in other words). This skews the figure a bit, because the resident population is relatively low. It indicates a crime problem, but not one that local residents need worry about overly or one that should affect house prices (which are astronomical there anyway).

Also, it's mid-August now, and neither site has figures for July up yet...

Boris boots Transys off Oyster contract

Bus fares in London

In point of fact, bus fares were £1 in central London in 2000 and are 90p now. In that time my income has about doubled. So yes, I do think I'm getting a good deal.

"It is you who are subsidising me"

Quite, and a good thing too. If season tickets were more expensive than daily ones, people would buy daily ones, and you'd have to employ armies of ticket sellers to sell them...

Oyster is at least partly to do with keeping ticket issuing costs down, which in turn keeps fares down, which encourages public transport use, which increases fare income, which keeps fares down, etc., etc.

Stuff and nonsense

@Equivalency Dalek - you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

"And who on earth pays on a bendy bus anyway?"

93% of people, apparently. Evasion is accepted by both sides to be 3 times greater on a bendy, but it's nowhere near everyone.

It's better under Oyster:

a) because people who use it almost universally think it is, and being exposed to the thing frequently means their opinion isn't just reflected some politician or bit of journalism - they actually know something about it. Try telling your friends, if you have any, that Oyster is being canned but it's OK because we've had paper travelcards for years so they can have one of them. Most of mine would think I'd gone mad, either because they've had paper travelcards needing frequent replacement or because they just use PAYG - explain to someone used to the simplicity of touching their card on a reader and having it topped up automatically that they now have to buy and carry round a load of tokens and this is somehow equivalent - you'd be lucky to keep your teeth.

b) because people not paying is not just a problem of revenue but one of associated overcrowding and anti-social behaviour - when Oyster (and extra staff) were introduced on Overground trains ridership went up, takings went up, ticketless travel went down and more crucially people felt safer. Obviously these things are interconnected - more people use the trains because Oyster is cheaper and easier, there's reassurance in being on a busy train rather than in a carriage empty apart from some yobs and the staff at the stations deter casual fare evasion so the yobs are less likely to be on the train in the first place. Result of investment: people switch from cars, there's less crime and you can demonstrate a clear need for the shiny new trains being built and the more frequent services planned. Win/win, and Oyster PAYG is a key part of it.

c) I'm going into London with my son in a minute to go shopping - I'll use the £3 Oyster bus cap. Under your idea, if I unfortunately ran out of money I'd have to find someone's boss (mine's in Basingstoke) and blag some money off him? Not all journeys are to work, after all.

d) because all sides and practically everyone unfortunate to live near one recognises that Oyster on rail services is a serious deficiency - it's extremely annoying being cast back in time and having to queue up at the bloody machine when I've got an Oysterful of cash I could pay in a second with if there was a reader - taking the tube or Overground is so much more convenient it ends the argument there, even though for me it's twice the walk - I have to allow the extra time in case the crap SWT ticket machine's got more than one person at it.

Improvements

Not wanting to sound like the Ken Liberation Movement, but things have really changed a lot in London's public transport - the Tube, being idiotically part-privatised, only came under proper democratic control recently, so that's where the least improvement is visible. However, new trains are being built and tested right now, the Jubilee has had a seventh carriage added and new signalling systems are being introduced to increase capacity, starting on the Victoria Line, so it's not all doom and gloom there, either.

Elsewhere most of the action is unsurprisingly in the Olympic/Docklands bits of the East End, with the DLR extensions (Lewisham, City Airport, Woolwich, Stratford) plus a load of other bits and pieces for the Olympics, like much more frequent services along the North London Line from Camden to Stratford.

Finally they're building a whole new line from Dalston, under the Thames along the old East London Line and linking into various southern rail routes, which is already well advanced and may even open early.

That's just the bits underway now - Crossrail and Thameslink construction is just starting up, and that's another huge leap in capacity. Me, I just enjoy the frequent, bus service at prices way below those in other parts of the country (90p a trip).

There's nothing wrong with bendy buses, either.

Customers

Millions of customers. It's revolutionised public transport in London.

Whether it's worth £100m a year is debatable, as is the PFI structure in a scheme that's continuously changing as the network expands, but reintroducing an 'old-fashioned' system would be ludicrous at this point. £100m is roughly the estimated staff cost for replacing single-crew bendy buses with two-crew Routemasters, let alone employing people on the rest of the bus fleet and tubes. Scrapping it would be hugely unpopular (the slowdown on boarding buses, for a start) and I can't see anyone seriously proposing it.

Boris Johnson bans boozing on London transport

Ridiculous idea

3 quid for 200 yards? If you're going to take extreme cases publicised in the Sun and suggest that's somehow normal, you can expect to get shot down. A more accurate figure would be the ten mile journey I can take across town with the Overground for a quid. That's around 1p for every 200 yards. Into town at peak times? £2.50 for six miles or so, about 5p for every 200 yards.

Public transport in London isn't particularly expensive, although it rapidly might become so if Boris carries on the way he's started. Silly idea, over-nannyish, authoritarian, hurriedly implemented. Who says New Labour is dead? I think it's John Reid putting a blond wig and a funny voice on, personally.