In an email reply on behalf of Ken Livingstone from Kevin Austin, Head of Transport, the Mayor has stated that he believes all school children should use public buses to get to school, simply because they are free.
In response to an inquiry by a Canning Town resident about why the Mayor does not implement US-style yellow school buses in London (a policy put forward by Policy Exchange and the Conservative Party), the Mayor's office responded that such a scheme was not "cost effective" and it was more "effective to allow children to travel free on the existing bus network."
However, parents of children cannot travel free, and two bus journeys a day equates to around £40 per month. There are many families that simply cannot afford that sort of extra expenditure. As the Mayor offers no solutions for them we presume he thinks they should put their 6 year olds on to public buses alone.
It seems for the Mayor that cost effectiveness is more important than the safety of school children.
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2 comments:
Quite apart from how utterly vile it is to be caught up in a herd of schoolchildren on public transport... (and yes, I was on the dishing out end of the vileness back when I was at secondary school)
Way back lost in the mists of time I had a 15 mile 3 hour round trip to get to school involving a council mini bus, the tube and a bus and I don't doubt that there are plenty of children having to undertake similar journeys now. A yellow bus scheme would have been immensely more sensible, although it might have got me to my alma mater on time rather than allowing me to miss registration every day for 7 years....
I love your Blog you do a fantastic job.
I have a question for you have you seen the TFL posters in the tube. They are huge take up a whole trackside billboard and say YOUR in blue capitals with the words transport For London running through it.
I lived in China for a while and it reminds me of the communist propoganda posters.
However I would like to know (i) how much it cost to make these posters (ii) how much revenue they are taking away from the tube by using space that could be used by advertisers and (iii) what is the point of these posters as I see none at all, unless it is them trying to get over a subliminal message.
Hope you can see them and find out
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