And they’re off

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.

Wither our dear bus already?

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.

A crusade against corruption, or simple self interest?

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

From little acorns

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.

Sunday service

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

The upper carapace of this wonderful onion

Photo: secretlondon123

After almost falling onto the stage and recovering his composure with a joke that it was “a last-minute booby trap, a final throw!” Boris explained his suprise (perhaps echoing ours) at the result:

“I can’t believe I am the only person in this room who, you know, sometimes in the last nine months thought that I would never actually ascend that brilliantly constructed Richard Rogers – or is it Norman Foster? Sorry – staircase to the upper carapace of this wonderful onion.”

So this is Boris in his own words, his acceptance speech in full:

“Thank you very much Mr Meyer, Anthony Meyer [returning officer] that is. I want to thank you, I want to thank the police of course, and my wife Marina and my family, and my utterly brilliant campaign team, the Conservative GLA candidates — some of whom were extremely unlucky tonight — and of course the thousands of Conservative activists, the ward captains and knocker-uppers who did such an amazing job today, and indeed yesterday, rather.

This has been a marathon election as you can tell with a record turnout and I think it has been good for politics and it has been good for London.

I want to thank Sian [Berry of the Green Party] and Lindsey [German of the Left List] and Alan [Craig of the Christian Peoples Party] and Gerard [Batten of the UKIP], who have sometimes joined us for hustings, but mainly I want to thank my two colleagues in the strange triumvirate who have been trundling around London’s church halls and TV studios violently disputing the meaning of multiculturalism and the exact cost of conductors. On which point I think I’m going to declare victory.

And I want to congratulate you Brian on your great common sense and decency with which you put your case and I do hope that it is not the end of our discussions about the police.

And as for Ken, Mayor Livingstone, I think you have been a very considerable public servant and a distinguished leader of this city.  You shaped the office of mayor. You gave it national prominence and when London was attacked on 7 July 2005 you spoke for London.  And I can tell you that your courage and the sheer exuberant nerve with which you stuck it to your enemies, especially in New Labour, you have thereby earned the thanks and admiration of millions of Londoners, even if you think that they have a funny way of showing it today.

And when we have that drink together which we both so richly deserve, I hope we can discover a way in which the mayoralty can continue to benefit from your transparent love of London, a city whose energy conquered the world and which now brings the world together in one city.

I do not for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city but I do hope it does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted after 30 years with the greatest, most cosmopolitan, multiracial generous hearted city on earth in which there are huge and growing divisions between rich and poor.

And that brings me to my final thank you which is of course to the people of London.

I would like to thank first the vast multitudes who voted against me - and I have met quite a few in the last nine months, not all of them entirely polite.

I will work flat out from now on to earn your trust and to dispel some of the myths that have been created about me.

And as for those who voted for me, I know there will be many whose pencils hovered for an instant before putting an X in my box and I will work flat out to repay and to justify your confidence.

We have a new team ready to go in to City Hall. Where there have been mistakes we will rectify them. Where there are achievements we will build on them.

Where there are neglected opportunities we will seize on them, and we will focus on the priorities of the people of London: cutting crime, improving transport, protecting green space, delivering affordable housing, giving taxpayers value for money in every one of the 32 boroughs.

And I hope that everybody who loves this city will put aside party differences to try in the making of Greater London greater still. Let’s get cracking tomorrow and let’s have a drink tonight.”

Day one, act one, scene one

The votes are in, the counting over. At five minutes to midnight, after a day of the sort of drama that only the process of counting crosses pencilled in on sheets of coloured paper can bring, returning officer Anthony Meyer (‘Meyer’, how unbearably apt) pronounced that London has a new leader.

The people of the financial capital of the world, a centre of arts and culture, learning and science, the home of time itself, have come together and voted in record numbers, for a man with a single purpose; a politician with a particular plan; a mayor with a mission. That man is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, his plan:

To create a new bus for London, with a rear corner open to the outside air carrying on-board a man or woman able to collect tickets and known as a ‘conductor’.

“We should on day one, act one, scene one, hold a competition to get rid of the bendy bus.

“It’s not beyond the wit of man to design a new Routemaster which will stand as an icon of this city.”

This is a plan so bold that it requires a written record of its progress. Welcome then to the Wonderbus, a journal of London’s fantastical voyage to build a new large road vehicle capable of carrying numerous persons. The road we’ll travel will have both hills and valleys for sure, but along the way with luck and a good wind, we might just learn a little more about Boris and perhaps London too. So fish out some change from your pockets and prepare for the cry.

All aboard!