On the buses

This is the longest time I have spent in Britain since I left these shores five and half years ago and I feel like a bit of a tourist "at home". Seeing how much some things have changed and how little others have. And of the things that seem to have changed wondering how much is down to the changes I have made myself in that time. People here seem more confident and open than I remember - but is that really them or me? There's a lot of Polish spoken on the streets and that is clearly independent of any changes I have made. And London's buses have got a whole lot better. They are frequent, clean, relatively graffiti free, have a simple and cheap fare and payment structure and many routes have real time information systems showing when the next bus is due. Also, some real thought seems to have gone into redesigning the routes so that instead of being like spokes of a wheel radiating from a central hub, there are also many radial services that link outlying suburbs. For example nearly all the suburbs around Kingston now have direct links to the hospital (1.5 km out of town) rather than requiring a trip into Kingston and then out on the bus that happens to pass the hospital. That requires real attention to user needs. When you cross the greater London border and try to use the buses there you can see the difference in quality and service. They cost twice as much, are infrequent and often don't turn up. My first day in London I was just outside the GLC boundary - I checked the bus times - one at 8.30, the next at 10.15 - (obviously meeting public demand for transport in the morning) and the 8.30 bus didn't show up until 9.20. What level of customer commitment does that show? What level of customer loyalty can they expect? No wonder the road was snarled up with single occupancy cars all the way into Kingston.

Much of the reason for the improvement in London's buses can be directly attributed to the commitment of Ken Livingstone. Londoners voted him out of office earlier this month-largely over allegations about cronyism, nepotism and corruption among the black community groups that were being financially supported by City Hall. Now London will be run by a Tory Mayor. Ironic in a sense since it was the Tories who abolished the GLC, claiming there was no need for a strategic city wide authority. British tribalism is hard to explain to foreigners. My Labour friends and acquaintances think Boris is going to destroy Ken's achievements in building a pluralistic and tolerant London with a much improved public transport system. I rather think he might he might have achieved a change in zeitgeist in London, rather like Thatcher did in Britain. A change that is so profound that Boris, like Blair will have no choice but to continue in the path of his predecessor. The colour of the party may have changed but I rather the main policies and discourses are set in stone 'till the next the crisis forces a fundamental rethink.