Finally, some action from Boris on a new Routemaster for London. No designs to see yet, but an official launch of the anticipated competition with a list of must haves for London’s new bus.

“I made a commitment during the election campaign to hold a competition to design a brand new bus for London, based on the much-missed Routemaster.  This competition is the first step in making that commitment a reality.”

The contest has been opened to two groups of entrants, ‘professional designers’ who will conceive an entire vehicle, to or the man, woman or child on the street who ‘uses buses every day’ and may have thoughts on specific festures for the new double decker. Successful participants can win anything from a £25 voucher for London’s Transport Museum to £25,000.

The contest has been opened to two groups of entrants, ‘professional designers’ who will conceive an entire vehicle, to or the man, woman or child on the street who ‘uses buses every day’ and may have thoughts on specific festures for the new double decker. Successful participants can win anything from a £25 voucher for London’s Transport Museum to £25,000.

Boris says the Routemaster ranks alongside ‘Nelson’s Column, Tower Bridge, The London Eye and our city’s ubiquitous black cabs” as an icon for the capital. The rules of entry also give us some concrete must haves for the new bus. These include the some familiar features:

• The design must be for a red double-decker bus with at least one internal staircase.
• An open platform at the rear near side corner.
• The bus must be operate with a second crew member.

Plus some new additions not present in the original:

• At least one other entrance/exit with closing double doors.
• Low floor.
• Wheelchair ramp.

There’s also a list of numerical specifications:

• Maximum length = 13.5m (original was 8.4m to 9.1m)
• Maximum width = 2.55m (2.44m)
• Maximum height = 4.42m (4.36m)
• Maximum number of axles = 3 (2)
• Minimum passenger capacity = 72 (72)

The deadline for designs is 12:00 noon British Summer Time (BST) on 19 September.

After proposing the return of our Routemaster, Boris Johnson has another equally desirable whim for London.  The new mayor’s advisors want to make the capital more liveable by unearthing it’s lost rivers.

There are over a dozen waterways other then the Thames running through London, most of them however, have been transformed into little more than sewers. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Fleet which rises in Hamstead, flows though Kings Cross and gave its name to the street which was built over it. Another fairly well known is The Tyburn, running from South Hampstead, through St James’s Park to Vauxhall, this leant its name to the ‘Tyburn Tree’ gallows which originally stood by the river’s banks. Another Hampstead river is the Westbourne which flowed through Kilburn, become the Bayswater rivulet then the original Serpentine in Hyde Park before running under the now lost Knightsbridge which gave it’s name to the area. These days the Serpentine is fed by water from the Thames instead and the only sign of the Westbourne that can easily be seen is a large iron pipe running over the platforms in Sloane Square Underground Station.

Less famous in our time but of great importance to the Romans is Walbrook which runs from Finsbury, then under the London Wall, emerging into the Thames beneath Cannon Street station.  

South of the city, the Effra was converted into a major sewer by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, it originates by Crystal Palace flowing through Brixton to meet the Thames near Vauxhall. Lost underground for their entire run are the Falconbrook from Balham to Battersea, the Neickinger from Southwark to Shad Thames. Two rivers ‘channelised’ but already receiving attention are The Wandle, aboveground for most of it’s run from Waddon and the subject or restoration plans by Wandsworth Borough Council; and the Quaggy in Greenwich and Lewisham , subject to re-naturalisation plans since 1990, including restoration in Lewisham town centre.

One of the mayor’s advisors has even touted the possibility of turning Fleet Street into a waterway in the style of a Venetian canal. 

In addition to the rivers, plans first touted by Ken Livingston to link Primrose Hill to Trafalgar Square with a tree lines promenade have been repeated by the new mayor’s advisor Sir Stimon Milton. The scheme would see Portland Place and Regent Street turned into something resembling Barcelona’s Las Ramblas.

Further reading:

• The story of London’s neglected waterways can be read in N.J. Barton’s The Lost Rivers of London: A Study of Their Effects Upon London and Londoners, and the Effects of London and Londoners on Them.

Despite Boris rephrasing his policy on a new Routemaster for London, from a commitment to an ambition, a grandstand appearance has already been arranged for the iconic bus.

Alongside the likes of David Beckham, Leona Lewis and our blond bombshell mayor, a Routemaster will be the star of the show in Beijing, as the Chinese city hands over the Olympic baton to London in this summer’s closing ceremony. Unfortunately, the bus seen by 90,000 fans in the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium, will be a trusty old AEC Routemaster on loan from Transport of London. 

The Games arrive in London in 1,500 days – but will a new bus?

Photo by Rooney

A month in the job and today was the day of Boris’ first regular press conference, an event that under his predecessor happened once a week, but which the new mayor would rather keep a little less often to allow him to spend more time ‘out there’ amongst Londoners.  On the subject of Ken Livingston, he reserved praise for the ex-mayor’s appointment of an environmental officer, a move he intends to follow.

The questions kicked off with the Tube alcohol ban, following Saturday night’s ‘last round on the underground’ parties. 17 arrests were made on the night, when 50 staff were abused and spat at, three of whom were assaulted. Johnson said the party was “anthropologically misunderstood”, but to be honest he had little to defend. The moment that people began hurling abuse – and saliva – they won the anti-alcohol argument for the Mayor. Boris’ hopes that the move will become self-policing smacks of a little too much optimism however and won’t cheer many of the Underground staff. 

Talking of whom, the Mayor reiterated his belief that a no-strike deal by Tube workers would be in the best interests of London, but doesn’t expand on the plan’s progress.

He was, meanwhile, more than happy to elaborate on language schools and his desires for Latin and Ancient Greek to be properly recognised in the Government’s language school programme.

More apposite for this journal, Boris replied to a question from the Financial Times on the progress of replacing London’s bendy buses, with a statement that it was a two step process, first losing the unloved Mercedes single deckers, before introducing a new ero of Routemaster. For the sake of London’s bus users I hope there isn’t two much of a gap between step one and step two.

Less than a month in and already doubts have been cast over the likelihood of London seeing a new Routemaster.

We all remember the Mayor’s pre-election promises to start the process of creating a new bus on ’day one, act one, scene one‘ of his term in power. Boris himself said these plans were not ‘beyond the wit of man’, but now his director of transport policy, Kulveer Ranger, has taken the most tentative of steps to suggest that the double decker is not a certainty.

Ranger is an ex-DJ, former Tory parliamentary candidate, management consultant and Spurs supporter, who has in the past warned of Conservative leader, David Cameron’s “aristocratic tinge”. In his new role as part of Johnson’s City Hall team he added a list of caveats to the introduction of the Routemaster II.

After repeating earlier announcements that a competition would be held to find a new design, he went on to state that the policy would be reconsidered if no bid appeared good enough. In addition he failed to narrow down the cost of the project, which currently stands somewhere between £8 million and over £100 million. Finally, he prevaricated on the question of whether conductors would be present on the new vehicles, despite Boris’ previous promises.

Perhaps it might turn out to be beyond the wit of man – or at least one man – after all.

Boris has appointed Tim Parker as the capital’s ‘First Deputy Mayor’ (you may remember that Johnson is collecting quite a number of deputies) on a salary of just £1.

If Parker’s name doesn’t ring a bell, let the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, Bob Crow, refresh your memory:

“Tim Parker has a reputation as a private-equity asset- stripper and has been dubbed the Prince of Darkness by unions that have encountered his methods in the past.”

Crow’s opposite number at the GMB union, Paul Kenny, added:

“This is a scary moment for London’s commuters.”

And our dear ex mayor, Ken Livingstone, concluded:

“The appointment of Tim Parker as first deputy Mayor shows clearly the path of decline  of London represented by Boris Johnson’s administration.

“Mr Parker’s record as a downsizing cost-cutter is the exact reverse of the management of large-scale investment projects London requires.

“His record of brutality and heartlessness towards workers in his own companies is totally unsuitable for dealing with the  complex communities of London.”

Parker’s time at the AA resulted in around 3,500 job losses.

Boris Johnson has written to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to call for a limit to the number of terms a Mayor of London can serve.

In his letter to Hazel Blears, Johnson states that “It’s about time that the Government changed the law to give Londoners a mayoral system which is accountable and open.”

Is the new Mayor fighting ‘cronyism, misconduct and corruption’ or merely planning ahead for the next election? By 2012 the Londoners who cast their votes in support of Boris might have grown tired of him as Olympic costs spiral further under his leadership and election promises go unfulfilled. Meanwhile most of the weariness of Ken Livingston’s two terms may have ebbed away. Perhaps Boris is attempting to insure himself against his most powerful opponent.  

Photo: Bruno Girin

Boris does indeed seem to be keeping to his election night promise to run London as ‘new Boris’, because he yesterday announced the laudable but disappointingly sensible policy of abolishing City Hall’s freesheet, the Londoner. What’s more, some of the £2.9m (according to the Mayor’s team) that used to go into producing the capital’s own version of Pravda will be directed into a new tree-planting programme.

Ten thousand trees, perhaps a drop in London’s ocean of six million but a welcome drop, will be interred in areas which can benefit from them most. So get ready to see more of our lovely, hardy old London Plane near you.

Strangely The Londoner, whose byline is ‘News from the Mayor of London’ hasn’t yet reported the new policy. In fact there has been no Mayor’s Message for a few months now, a development that looks certain to continue.

Tuesday night and another party for our new Mayor, as Boris attended the radio industry’s annual gong-fest, the Sony Radio Awards.

Johnson joined a few hundred producers, presenters, managers and agents in the (somewhat warm) Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel on London’s Park Lane, to hand out the Radio Academy’s Community Award. A little lacklustre, the Mayor did at least find fun in the fact that the winner was Lights out London, by Capital Radio.

It was a deservedly great night for the BBC World Service, which picked up four golds, for Newshour (The News & Current Affairs Programme Award), World Have Your Say (The Listener Participation Award), Owen Bennett-Jones (The News Journalist of the Year) and the brilliant Bangladesh Boat Project (The Multiplatform Radio Award) which deserves all the plaudits it gets, for a clever use of Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps and more.

Elsewhere at the ceremony, Chris Moyles’s parents were brought on stage to present their son with his Breakfast Show Award. Unfortunately Moyles didn’t have the grace and wit to make the most out of the surprise, but instead fell back on his standard self-indulgent, churlish fare.

More heartening was a wonderful thank-you to the BBC’s departing Director of Audio and Music (that’s radio to us normal people). Jenny Abramski is leaving the Corporation to chair the National Lottery Heritage Fund and her old commercial foe Ralph Bernard presented her with a Special Award and a loving tribute to 39 and a half years of working in radio.

While Simon Mayo picked up an extremely well deserved gold for Speech Broadcaster of the Year, Jon Ronson and Geoff Lloyd were robbed of the glory that should have been theirs in the Feature Award and Music Personality categories.

Finally, the Academy’s special Gold Award went to a familiar voice on Radio 2 and the Light Programme before that, Brian Matthew, who closed the night with a funny but moving speech. 

No substantial Boris news this weekend, more a case of little tapas style platters than a full main course. So here’s a brief tasting menu:

New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s came to London on Friday, he brought with him advice and a crystal apple as a gift symbolising the city with which London often competes. In turn Boris gave Bloomberg a piece of London Underground tat, a shirt emblazoned with the Tube map. If Johnson really wanted to give the impression of having bought a gift as an afterthought on the way to the meeting, why not go the whole hog and plump for some petrol station bought flowers or those shell-shaped Belgian chocolates every newsagent sells? The Herald Tribune summarised Bloomberg’s advice Johnson as these three simple tips:

1. Take the time to build a solid team, even if the press is on your case to speed things up.
2. Do the hard, controversial things early. If you’re lucky, they’ll work out in time to help with re-election.
3. Be yourself. Don’t worry about being flavour-of-the-month.

The New York Mayor also gave a lesson on obfuscation, suggesting that when dealing with journalists “you don’t have to match your answers to their questions. If you don’t give the right answers to their questions, they asked the wrong questions.” This from a politician of the country that’s trying to bring democracy around the globe.

Johnson has angered the art world by supporting a campaign to place a permanent statue of Battle of Britain hero, Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The space, intended for an equestrian statue that was never created, currently holds specially commissioned sculptures decided by a competition that are replaced every 18 months. This year’s shortlist includes Tracey Emin, Anthony Gormley and Anish Kapoor (pictured).

The LA Times reports that Los Angeles’ top cop Bill Bratton isn’t coming to London, despite recent rumours. Bratton, who has in the past offered advice to Ken Livingston, said: “I have had no conversations with Mr. Johnson, I have not spoken with any members of his administration and I have not been approached to act as an advisor.” That’s a no then.

The new Mayor’s father, Stanley Johnson, is interviewed in The Sunday Times today about his ambitions to succeed Boris as Henley’s constituency MP. Johnson senior gives his son some guidance on how London transport could be improved: “You get on the Underground train and what do you hear? ‘This train terminates at Stanmore’. What complete garbage. Terminate is a transitive verb. You ‘terminate’ someone’s life. I will ‘terminate’ this conversation.” He goes on to boast that when he wrote his novel ‘Tunnel’ the channel tunnel hadn’t even been built, as if the concept had never occurred to anyone else before.

The Sunday Mirror reports that the junior Johnson broke the law as he cycled to work on Friday. Boris was caught jumping 6 red lights, mounting a pavement and failing to stop at zebra crossing.

Finally, the Mayor will today attend The Global Day of Prayer event at Millwall’s The Den, where he is expected to ask churches to help him cut crime.

Tapas image by Freddy