• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

You said that some bus routes had a much higher level of evasion than others. Which route has the highest level of evasion?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

What is the mechanism? How does it work?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

With the introduction of the bendy buses, you have now got an additional problem coming along the track.

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Mr Mayor, residents have written to me about the problem with bendy buses, about the amount of people who can get on them without checking and also about the problems with fare evasion. Would you accept that there is a perception that there is a problem with bendy buses, and perhaps TfL should do some very high-profile work in addressing that perception?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I would like, if I may, to return to the issue of the contracts which my colleague Roger Evans brought up. Surely, there would be a better incentive for the bus companies who are operating the services to make sure that fares are collected, if you actually changed the contracts to make them pay to operate the routes, so it would be in their interests to make sure they carried as many passengers and made sure they paid. At the moment, there is very little incentive for them to bother too much, simply because they do not actually get to...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Fare evasion on the buses is costing £40 million a year to London and £45 million a year on the Tube. It would seem that the £10 penalty fine is not sufficient to motivate actual prosecution. There are a number of difficulties we will not go into now. You are very quick to raise fares for the ordinary travelling public, and to then say you will do it for another three years, breaking inflation and all of that. Would it not be more sensible to raise the penalty rate for fare dodging and to have it on the same par...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

They are not catching a huge amount. I am glad if the rate has gone down, but there are 132,000 people every day who still are dodging their fares, and I do not think that is effective. With the introduction of bendy buses, they are becoming a sort of public scandal. They are known as a free bus, and I want to know what percentage of the fare box income has dropped on those routes where you have substituted bendy buses for the Routemasters, for example.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

That would be in their interest, too.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

With the introduction of the bendy buses, you have now got an additional problem coming along the track.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I wonder, have you or your officers drawn the provisions of the London Plan, (your analysis of which I agree) to the attention of the Post Office?