Friday, January 05, 2007

Livingstone's words versus London's reality

In a letter in this morning's Telegraph, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has said the "Ninety five per cent of Tube journeys in London are not paid for in cash." If this is true why is it that on average less than fifty per cent of the machines in stations are Oyster machines? If so many of us use Oyster cards why is Livingstone and TfL so actively promoting the use of cash still?

Livingstone goes on to say that his "policy remains to have the lowest possible fares for Londoners". If this is true why do we Londonders have the most expensive transport system of all the world's capital cities?

2 comments:

Tony said...

Maybe the ratio of machines has something to do with cash journeys being so much more expensive.

I do believe in all sincerety that his policy is to secure the lowest possible fares for Londoners. The lowest possible fares that can bear the cost of his disjointed transport system and trade union ransom demands that pass for wage settlement negotiations.

Maybe he is trying to model London's transport system on that of Havana?

Giles said...

It might explain though why most of those cash ticket machines are closed or otherwise non-functional.

I live in Tower Hill and every day I see long queues, presumably of tourists, waiting to buy their eye-wateringly expensive tickets. They are the real victims of this policy - what must they think of this dirty, crowded, rude and expensive city?