Ken Livingstone has accused Conservative rival Boris Johnson of massively underestimating the cost of reintroducing conductors to the capital’s buses.
Speaking on BBC London radio today Mr Johnson said: “It’s absolutely true that if you are going to bring back a Routemaster, or have a new Routemaster, you would need a conductor with them. I have looked at the expense of that. It would cost £8million to have conductors on each of these buses per year”
Mr Livingstone’s campaign have dismissed the figures as “rubbish” claiming the real cost of re-introducing such conductors would be £108 million a year.
A spokesman for the campaign said each conductor “would cost around £40,000 a year once salary and add on costs such as national insurance, pension, recruitment, uniforms etc was taken into account. £8 million would therefore only pay for about 200 conductors.”
In a statement released tonight Mr Livingstone said: “If Boris Johnson can’t even tell whether a policy costs £8 million a year or £108 million a year this shows he is completely unable to run London’s transport system.”
“Boris Johnson should withdraw his claim that it would only cost £8 million a year to reintroduce conductors on London’s buses as it is completely false. He must admit that it would cost well over £100 million a year and involve huge bus fare increases.”
Fortyniner Dweet says
Both Livingstone and Johnson seem more than a bit daft – stuck in a 1950’s time warp, eh? A new and improved Routemaster should be designed to use either a one-person or two-person crew, depending upon route and time-of-day considerations.
You do this by installing a separate front stairwell behind the driver’s seat, a larger user-friendly front door, and a set of automatic rear doors at the platform allowing entry into the cabin or rear stairwell only upon a successful oyster card scan. In that way the coach could be used either way. Its called “options”. You Brits used to “specialise” in them. This should be a no-brainer considering the smaller roadway footprint Routemasters enjoy over evil bendies. Join the 21st Century bus world by successfully celebrating (and maybe even importing) your heritage!