Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008′s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts. In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself [...]

Andrew Gilligan has an interesting article in today’s London Evening Standard, trailing a PolEx report that won’t be available until tomorrow, suggesting that a highly effective boat service could be set up for £30m. I will look for the report tomorrow, but in the meantime I make three points. Firstly, Gilligan says Yet this would [...]

I am told that bus ridership using PAYG Oyster in 2007/8 was 344,979,000. If you will allow me to assume bus ridership has remained level and remains level after the price increase for that segment from £1 to £1.20, it raises around £69m. That happens to be about the cost of scrapping the WEZ. Before [...]

No, really. The Daily Mail is criticising the government for (apparently) considering implementing means testing free bus passes for over-60s because of the cost and, more particularly, the way the cost falls on local authorities. It would seem that, by arguing for universal provision rather than means testing, they are criticising the government for being, [...]

On some routes, bendy buses are a good idea. Despite it being relatively quiet because of the school holidays, people want the bendies back on the 507. But we did. Repeatedly. I rather doubt this will have much electoral impact as lots of the people on the 507 are coming from outside the Greater London [...]

Figures for satisfaction with London Transport are out (see p30/31 of this PDF), I see from the inimitable Tory Troll. Method Satisfaction (%) London Buses 80 London Overground 79 London Underground 79 Croydon Trams 86 Dial-a-Ride 88 London River Services 87 PCO – Taxis 85 PCO – Minicabs 81 Victoria Coach Station 78 As a [...]

Yesterday saw the Progressive London Conference at Congress House in London. All in all, I thought it was pretty good. There seemed to be very few nutty lefties there and I was pleased that there were a few people there I knew and recognised from my CLP, from blogging, from uni and around and about [...]

My friend, Ewan Watt, has tagged me for ten predictions for 2009. Luke Akehurst, who Ewan also tagged, has some interesting predictions. Mine are: There will be an attempt to ‘test’ Obama militarily within his first year of office There will not be a General Election in the UK There will not be a go-ahead [...]

TfL have responded to my Freedom of Information requests about bendy buses, specifically the 507 and 521 routes. The questions and their responses follow below the fold, but the key points are: The proposed replacements for 18m bendy buses are 12m single deckers. Operators have been asked to submit bids for 12m single deckers and [...]

Building Oyster technology into mobile phones seems like a good idea. Just about everyone is permanently wedded to their phone. However, I have a couple of slight issues with it. Just about everyone also always carries their wallet or purse and an Oyster card – the size of a normal credit card – is hardly [...]