Gradual Frequency changes, shortened destinations, reduced capacity. Truncated routes. The Hopper Fare was not effective, useful but not as good as the Fares Fair that Ken Livingstone ran into trouble with during the GLC days.His innovations on Fare structures was the only time that Car use fell (by 12.9%) in a very short time and stayed that way for the duration.It was flawed and should have been amended but ended up as a political bout in a court which did no-one any favours, especially Bus users, slamming the whole innovation into full reverse and leading to huge cuts which were only reverse when Livingstone became Mayor and introduced the Bus Plus scheme which started to arrest the decline by increasing frequencies, capacity and improved cleanliness and quality.Some current cuts are based on usage data, but much is sadly bent to suit cost saving but either way, ends with a reduced Public Service that gradually becomes less reliable to the user or passenger. So the spiral of less users begins again. Whilst the Covid and subsequent recession in many quarters is a current dip and largely and adverse one, with a swelling population and serious overdensification in Greater London and local industrial and workplaces not being factored in to regeneration it will only be a short blip in the timeline. Most will have to travel to make a living, most things cannot be produced by an app at home and sooner or later total dependence on importing from afar will become unviable as well as impracticable.But it is the complete myopic short termism for the long term that is the emerging problem.Now with the Elizabeth Line opening many routes in Central London are facing complete extinction or heavy cuts.Passengers will be expected to walk and not to simply 'Hop on a Bus'Poor terms and conditions for Bus workers compared with those of the Underground. Under LTE and the LTPB they had near parity and shared high quality facilities for all.Massive stress loads for drivers from the encouragement and lack of enforcement from those Cyclists, E-Scooterists and even Pedestrians who simply will not comply with road regulations and basic etiquettes, making their job much harder yet they are 'probed' or reprimanded it they dare complain about these issues as it clashes with the policymakers ideology.Reduced indoor maintenance facilities, rendering many depots as a daily battle to maintain and provide quality in often adverse conditions increasing safety at work issues for staff and engineers, resulting in high turnover and hard to replace skilled staff. Selling off of infrastructure like depots resulting in huge increases in dead mileage and thus energy costs and leaving no infrastructure space or future proofing capacity for local service enhancements and future services. The 'dead' mileage now used by Bus operations is huge compared with 15 - 20 years ago and even more going back to 35 years ago. A waste of energy, time and wear and tear.Removal of stability of location bases rendering investment pointless and unviable. Many bases are now more like short term military bases with temporary facilities.Very poor staff facilities compared to 30 years ago. No sports clubs, social clubs or welfare, which retained staff morale, longevity and stability.Last weeks incident at Potter Bar very indicative of this. Potters Bar had a large fully facilitated Garage, Now reduced to unsuitable basic facilities not really practicable for Buses and staff.Purchase of Green vehicles but with no real advantage. Reliance on China for batteries with huge environmental and toxic implications. High cost of recharging with energy that has to come from somewhere. Unreliable and still uncertain service life makes their carbon footprint huge by comparison to buses that could last decades and were superior in their huge percentage of recyclability...on a par with Dr. Who!The recent LB/TfL press statement that declared Hybrid Buses as even less clean than Euro 6 diesels underlines the mire. Operators were forced to switch at huge costs to both them and the public purse, but TfL were repeatedly warned of the technical shortfalls and that it no longer had the resources to make longevity of service life the factor that makes a huge and genuine difference to the environmental value.The one vehicle type that did address future proofing and regeneration in it's design, is likely to be removed from service as the current Mayor 'dislikes' the generic name of the type. That's how myopic and small minded political (of all sides) meddling has become.LRT (then TfL) started with a fantastic world leading pedigree and heritage from Technical innovation to exemplary standards of comfort, but have allowed politics and a culture within to erode almost all those advantages to the point of a shambles.
Raymond Havelock ● 1201d