• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

Do you mean you did it for nothing?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

That is promising then. Finally, there is the tricky question of transparency. Members of the public might not be too bothered about this, but certainly our job is to try to hold TfL to account as Assembly Members, and as Labour Members we might be viewed as relatively more friendly to you than other Members.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

If it were just businesses I think you would have a perfectly valid point. I suspect that many of us will have had similar experience of our constituents who feel that TfL, despite the endeavours that have been made and despite some progress, of course, is still a desperately unresponsive bureaucracy. Do you agree that it is important that the Commissioner sets a tone for being very reasonable in their dealings with public representatives? Consequently, can I assume that we will not get into another situation of an unseemly spat between yourself and a London MP like Kate Hoey, who...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

You said earlier on that you were younger than Bob Kiley and had a sunnier outlook, which I suspect we could all say. How else would you hope to improve on Bob Kiley's performance as Commissioner?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

I do not think that you consulting widely is necessarily or at all supplanting local democracy, but it would certainly have been helpful to me to know that you were not consulting those local stakeholders who you have consulted on other changes to routes, for example. I just make the point that if you are not going to consult widely with all stakeholders, such as residents' groups, perhaps that should be clearly spelt out in letters that go to the people that are consulted.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

First of all, I congratulate you on your appointment. I was very happy you were appointed and I wish you well. One of the great successes of TfL has been the improvement in bus services. Some would say it has almost gone too far, and the example of Oxford Street is cited where you could walk along the roofs of buses from one end to the other without them actually having to move. It was an early win, but is it not the case that the harder bit now is to consolidate that and to focus on the things like...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

On this issue of transparency in style, I think the Assembly is naturally focused on what TfL does rather than how it is done and I think there is a large extent to which TfL is a black box because you do not know what is going on inside it if you are an Assembly Member. There are risks here. One of the things I discovered when I started to ask some questions was the almost complete impossibility 4 of obtaining information about internal audit within TfL, particularly TfL's street management, where I think there are big risks. I very...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

I want to raise the issue of public consultation. If I take bus route 29 as an example to which you have already referred, there are still issues at the Haringey end of that with regard to the narrowness of roads. What really annoyed residents was that they were not consulted. When I pressed [TfL] on this, the reason that was given was because it was such a long route and goes through so many different boroughs that it was not practical, therefore basically just the local councils and elected representatives were involved. I think that attitude has to be...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

I have another question about your style as a `bus nut'. Certainly as far as Lewisham goes, I think the service on route 436 has improved infinitely since tatty, clapped-out old Routemasters were replaced by new `bendy' buses. I was a bit concerned by the Mayor's comments at People's Question Time the other week that basically `bendy' buses were on trial and we could see them disappear. Whilst I accept that they are not suitable for all routes and it is only a very small number of routes that they are suitable for, do you seriously think there is a...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 15 March 2006

I am not going to get involved in the details of an argument between you and Miss Hoey, but I am concerned more generally about the style that that implies. That is the point I was interested in. Can I raise one simple other point on the Transport Strategy, which you rightly referred to? I do not regard you as a `bus nut' or typecast by any manner of means, but the Transport Strategy highlights the fact that, particularly in outer London, the private motor car will remain, certainly in the foreseeable future, the major means of transport for most...