Boris Johnson’s (Un)Fare Deal

London’s Mayor claims today, “In tough times it is very important to be able to bear down on fares as much as possible.”

The problem is, he isn’t. He’s putting them up.

He’s just announced another big fare rise, his fourth. It means a single bus journey by Oyster is fifty per cent more expensive under this Mayor, jumping from 90p to £1.35 in the space of just four years. The Conservative mayor’s press operation dragged the media to Finsbury Park to make a grand announcement that fares are still rising.

Boris Johnson has been caught off-guard by the demand for a fares cut because his values have prevented him from understanding the squeeze that ordinary Londoners are feeling. In tough times like these, Londoners can’t afford a mayor who is so out of touch that he is raising transport fares but thinks it’s okay to have a second job paying £250 000 a year – an amount he calls ‘chicken feed.’

The fact that he has adjusted his fares rise at all today is down to pressure; but under enormous pressure from Londoners for a fares cut, the Tories have come up with a fares rise.

So what does it mean?

The weekly zone one-to-four travelcard is up twenty-one per cent under a Conservative Mayor – from £34.60 in 2008 to £41.80 in 2012. And a weekly zone one-to-six travelcard has risen twenty per cent in four years, breaking through the £50 barrier from £44.60 in 2008 to £53.40 in 2012.

Most strikingly, the top line of those bus and tram fare rises is clear. A weekly bus and tram pass up is up forty-five per cent under Boris Johnson – it was £13.00 in 2008 and will be £18.80 in January. That’s an additional cost of £301.60 a year. The headline figure of a fifty per cent rise in the single Oyster bus fare says everything we need to know about out-of-touch Tory values.

Many fares are actually still rising by exactly the same amount as they were already planned to, before the last-minute Tory panic today.

Pay-As-You-Go oyster Tube fares are still rising by the same amount this year. Some of these are very high. A zones 1-2 single tube fare is still going up by eight per cent this year – up thirty-five per cent since 2008. All child single fares in zones 1-6 are still rising by 7.1 per cent this year – and a striking fifty per cent since 2008. The zones 2-6 single fare is still going up to £2.60 and, again, by fifty per cent since 2008.

The Tories will try to argue that they have to raise the fares to pay for investment. But they have actually underspent their capital budget. Furthermore, every year Boris Johnson raises more in fares revenue than he says he will. That’s excess profit over and above what he says he needs or even expects. The latest figures on that are quite staggering. Last week we revealed that in the first six months of this year alone the additional surplus in the transport budget was £206million. Meanwhile hard up Londoners feel the pain of the Tory Mayor’s fare hikes.

Because I have been arguing now for a fares cut for several months now, we have worked through the detail of London’s transport budget and have proved clearly that there is space for a real fares cut, as opposed to Boris Johnson’s latest overall fares rise.

We need to put that to work by putting it back in peoples’ pockets. But Boris Johnson’s press stunt today still doesn’t do that.

As this fare increase completely fails to meet the demand for an overall fares cut, I will be setting out a real fares cut that genuinely addresses Londoners’ real needs, based on the new information we have about the growing excess profits in the transport budget.

A Fare Deal requires change, vision and action at City Hall.

* Join Labour’s campaign for a Fare Deal. Sign up to take action this January here: http://www.kenlivingstone.com/3jan