Friday 8 April 2016



This week Zac Goldsmith announced that he would raise £25m to pay for an extra 500 police on the Tube by scrapping TfL staff nominee passes, a variation on last year’s proposal by Andrew Boff and the Tories on the London Assembly to “save” TfL £22.3m a year, utter nonsense then and utter nonsense now.  Rather than being the equivalent of a Zone 1-6 travelcard as claimed nominee passes are valid on TfL services only so if TfL were paying £22.3m for free travel they be paying themselves.  What the Tories actually mean is “lost revenue” rather than cost, what the nominees notionally would have paid in fares if they didn’t have the free pass but I suppose if you say that TfL are spending tax payers’ money on free travel it sounds “sexier”.


How did they come to the figure of £22.3m?  In 2014 nominees made just over 3.6m Tube or rail journeys and just under 4.8m bus or tram journeys, the average Tube fare was calculated as £3.60 by taking the arbitrary figures of the cost of a single Zone 1-6 peak time journey, £5.00, and a single Zone 1-2 off peak journey, £2.20.  The average bus and tram fare of £1.92 was reached by simply adding the single bus fare, £1.45, to the single tram fare, £2.40, and dividing by two regardless of the fact that far more journeys are on the buses than trams!


TfL disputed these totally worthless figures and estimated the lost revenue as not more than £7m although even that might be an overestimation as there’s no guarantee all the nominees would continue to use public transport if their free travel was withdrawn.  So rather than funding an extra 500 police on the Tube withdrawing nominee passes would provide 140 at the very most but even that raises the question of whether the Tube actually needs more police or whether they’d be more useful elsewhere in London where officer numbers have dropped by 1535 according to Sadiq Khan.


Maybe Zac Goldsmith shouldn't have been so keen to adopt one of Boff's ideas, the party faithful had so little regard for him that he came fourth out of four in the mayoral candidate selection ballot with just 4% of the votes although their judgment of him seems well deserved.  Last August Boff put a video clip of himself on Twitter saying “I love the DLR, no driver, no one to strike” but three months later a strike by RMT meant there was no service on the DLR for two days.  That’s pretty stupid but not as stupid as the clip still being there six months later.


https://twitter.com/andrewboff/status/629251056015437824

13 comments:

  1. Also the Liberal Democrat candidate Caroline Pidgeon wants to stop the dependent pass as well.It appears to me Zac Goldsmith wants a confrontation with the Unions.

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    1. The lib dems were the original proposers of the idea on the GLA.

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  2. Do staff at 55 Broadway/Palestra etc get nominee passes as well?

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    1. As far as I know all Tfl staff get a nominee pass as well as a staff oyster - so would impact an awful lot more people than the lazy good for nothing over paid tube workers.

      I would never have voted for Goldsmith anyway but slightly dismayed at this cheap Evening Standard style policy from him. IIRC even Boris dismissed the idea of doing away with nominee passes last time Boff and Co mooted it. Does not bode well if Goldsmith does get elected. Am not overly optimistic about Khan either.

      It is very sad to see Tfl being used as a political football every time there is a Mayoral election - and not good in terms of planning for future capital investment on the network.

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    2. I wonder if all the office staff would still be willing to pile into the stations and do our jobs if we're striking to defend their nominee passes?

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    3. If I am a lazy good for nothing tube worker. Please explain how rather a lot of people got home yesterday evening(mon).Seem's some effort used on my part. You will probably say I just sit on the front of a train pushing a lever. Well lots of our passengers just shuffle paper or so it would seem to those who don't know what their job involves. But we can only guess their salary.

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    4. Only staff who have a nominated person living at the same address get one. For many, whose partners etc
      live and work well outside London it's virtually worthless, but of course that's lost on the Tory and LibDim simpletons.

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    5. According to Goldsmith it is a 'Union perk' funny I thought it was a tfl 'perk'. What a cheek to call it that from someone who has enjoyed 'perks' all his life! He does appear to want a confrontation with the Unions if elected as soon as possible.

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  3. Part of having a nominee pass is acting as an ambassador for TfL. Will they also be withdrawing travel concessions for the Metropolitan police?

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  4. Do police officers also get free nominee passes? If so will they also be wothdrawn?

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  5. Yes they do, though presumably any pre-1996 rail/admin TfL staff will just apply to revert to a Privilege Ticket card (which also applies to family members in certain circumstances) and cannot be ended by Mayoral whim/fiat.

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  6. Sorry for the delay in getting the comments up but I'm in Washington DC

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  7. I see the Standard are referring to these as "union perks". I think you'll find they were introduced by LT in the 1970s in a desperate attempt to recruit/retain staff and were nothing to do with the TUs. And if he withdraws them he picks a fight with every bus driver in London too.

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