Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

[knutstransport]

Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

Leon Daniels (Managing Director, Surface Transport, TfL) Wrote:the bus network in London runs at a deficit currently of about £600 million a year. That is the difference
between the revenue received and the cost of the operation. The reason for that deficit is that successive
Mayors have had as a matter of policy to have a comprehensive bus service running across the network across
Greater London to and from places just over the boundary, where everybody should be within 400 metres of
their nearest bus stop, to run that service all day - and, if possible, all night where there is demand - and to do
so at a cheap fare. Successive Mayors have in one form or another had this as a policy because they believe
that this provides mobility for all members of society, people going to and from work, going to and from school
and further education and people looking for work. I am reminded that more than half the passengers on our
night bus network are travelling to or from work. The price of that, of course, is that a combination of
affordable fares and a comprehensive service means that it runs at a deficit.

https://www.london.gov.uk/moderngov/docu...mi.pdf?T=9

In prospective the budget for all the 'Northern Hub' rail improvements including electrification is £600m and that's being spent over a few years, not all in one year.

[busesdotorg1920x]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!
This is ridiculous, services around the country where people have to walk further to get a bus are being cut and London has £600m a year in subsidies! And only 400m to catch a bus! I have to walk 1.5 miles for my nearest bus service after mine was cut, and that is an hourly service to nowhere big!
With just over a quarter of this you could finish the plans for completing the GWML electrification (the 4 parts which were deferred).
They should streamline the London bus system a bit more, an example of this would be combining the 22 and 414 routes to create one through route from Putney Common to Maida Vale, cutting the 22 at Hyde Park Corner (where people can change onto other buses or the Piccadilly line, or even walk!) I think they are starting to do things like this, like how they cut I think the 89? and changed the 13 and 139.
EDIT: Looking at the first page of the paper I see why, I know the corridor the 14/414 run along can get very busy! Maybe a solution to this would be short workings on the 14 between Putney Bridge and Piccadilly Circus, replacing the 414/22 services there then running the 22 as I stated above? Of course this is just a fantasy, but it reduces numbers making it less confusing and also 'streamlines' services, something London needs to do more.

[knutstransport]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!
DfT figures for average subsidy per passenger journey (2014/2015):
London - 23.5p
English metropolitan areas - 12.1p
English non-metropolitan areas - 15.0p

[busesdotorg1920x]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

(15/04/2017 14:59)knutstransport Wrote:  DfT figures for average subsidy per passenger journey (2014/2015):
London - 23.5p
English metropolitan areas - 12.1p
English non-metropolitan areas - 15.0p

So in another average city the subsidy per journey is just over half of London's...

[busesdotorg1920x]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

(15/04/2017 14:59)knutstransport Wrote:  DfT figures for average subsidy per passenger journey (2014/2015):
London - 23.5p
English metropolitan areas - 12.1p
English non-metropolitan areas - 15.0p

So in another average city the subsidy per journey is just over half of London's...
Last time I went to London half the buses were empty at around 11am and that was right in the centre (9,14,19,22,38: pretty much every service had 6-10 passengers). Note that this was in both directions.
Where I commute to, around 2 hours from London, lots of services are operated as frequent as other services in London and tend to have more passengers for most of the day, with almost every double decker bus being full during peak times!

[busesdotorg1920x]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

(15/04/2017 21:10)Dentonian Wrote:  Unless you live in a very rural area, 1.5 miles is very bad. Millions of people (me included) are not physically able to walk such distances on a regular basis. Last stats I saw, the average household in the UK was indeed 400 metres from a bus stop (served by at least 12 buses a day; 5+ days a week), and TFGM had a target that 90% of all households should be within that distance. This was largely achieved until recently, but has now slipped to about 87%. In contrast, the average household in the UK is 2.7km from the nearest Rail (heavy or light) stop.

I have to admit I do live in a very rural area, but having three buses a day in one direction and two buses in the other wasn't enough to get people to use them so the subsidy was cut!
Rail stations are a whole other issue, the nearest station is 15km away as the crow flies!

[knutstransport]

RE: Subsidy for TfL bus services is £600m a year!

(15/04/2017 20:54)Dentonian Wrote:  That said, passenger numbers are dropping off-peak especially, due to reduce Concessionary passengers; exhorbitant fares and deteriorating punctuality. This morning (Saturday 1000hrs) the bus I caught was 16 minutes late with no traffic on the road!

It's possible there was a problem with the bus, the scheduled driver phoned in sick and a replacement had to be sourced or that the bus had problems getting down a road on the route due to parked vehicles.