Agenda Item 3 Appendix 1 London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee – Thursday 1 October 2020 Transcript of Item 4 - 2020-21 Budget Review – Transport for London Susan Hall AM (Chairman): This brings us to today’s main item of business, the 2020/21 Budget Review on Transport for London (TfL). I would like to welcome our guests in the Chamber, Andy Byford, who is the Commissioner of TfL, and Tony King, Group Finance Director at TfL. You are replacing Simon Kilonback [Chief Financial Officer (CFO), TfL] at the last minute. We wish him well, and thank you for attending. Attending remotely, we are pleased to welcome Heidi Alexander, the Deputy Mayor for Transport, and David Gallie, Executive Director of Resources. I shall start off, I think, first to you, Commissioner. Can I ask you: what steps has TfL taken to support an increase in passengers? Andy Byford (Commissioner, Transport for London): Good morning, everyone. It is my first appearance and it is an honour to be here. We are doing a lot to increase passenger numbers, albeit it is, I would say, a moving feast because obviously with COVID and the varying Government instructions which respond to the changes in the COVID threat it is a very dynamic and fluid situation. In terms of what we are doing to get customers riding again, to increase ridership, there are a number of things. First of all, an all-out focus on cleanliness, absolutely making sure that the system is as clean as it can be. That means applying industrial-grade cleaner on all touch points across the network, it means highly visible cleaning, it means we have increased the periodicity of the cleaning and the intensity of the cleaning, and it is to the cleaning contractor’s credit that already customers are commenting on the fact that it is a lot cleaner throughout the system. Also, we are doing remote monitoring via an independent source at Imperial College [London] who are doing independent reviews to test if COVID is present. To date they have done a number of samples and cannot find any, which is good. We are enforcing masks. We have really increased our enforcement in recent days with the British Transport Police. I believe in leading from the front. I myself stood on the gateline shoulder to shoulder with frontline colleagues the other day at Waterloo to just remind people to please pull up their masks, or in some cases to put them on or display the exemption sign. We are also providing social distancing by running something like 97% of the service to schedule across all of our modes. In addition, a huge blitz on publicity. We have sent out pieces of correspondence to 8.5 million Londoners via email, via tweets and our various other social media, 13.2 million in the wider London area. We have developed briefing for businesses. We have sent documentation to businesses to encourage them to stagger their start times and to give them information to convey to their employees about where the busiest times are and when the quieter times are, when they can travel. That is something like 4,000 businesses. We have engaged with over 3,000 schools to, again, get the schools to vary their start times, and we have reached over 12 million people through radio adverts. I myself recorded one of those adverts to again encourage people to ride. We have also been taking steps to encourage other means of travel, such as cycling, walking and even scooting to get people to come back. That has had some success. Where we started off at a low of around 5% of travel compared to this time last year, on the Tube we are up to around 34% now, and 57% on the buses. It has plateaued and slipped back a Page 1 tiny bit as a result of the new restrictions but we are very much spreading the message that we are ready when you are ready, the system is safe and we encourage people to use it. Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That is very encouraging. I am sure Londoners will be thrilled to hear that the cleaning regime has been hyped up, if you like, and definitely pleased to hear about enforcing masks. The number of people that seem to wear them around their chin is quite alarming, so pleased to hear that you are doing that. Have you made any assessments of the impact the Streetspace programme has had on reducing the use of public transport and the number of people walking and cycling as a result? Andy Byford (Commissioner, Transport for London): Sure. Again, we have, and what we do notice is that increases in cycling in particular, because of the changes we have made with Streetspace where we have implemented wider pavements but also where we have put in cycleways. The increases in cycling are quite remarkable, actually: weekday flows up 23% on the previous year, 97% increase on weekends. There has overall been a 34% increase in people cycling, and we have been measuring that through counters. There is one on Blackfriars Road that I have stood and watched a few times that literally counts the cyclists as they pass through. We have also been widening pavements in certain areas to make sure that we are enabling people to socially distance where the pavement would have otherwise been too narrow. We are very mindful of the impact on buses because to me it would be counterproductive to encourage people to cycle and to walk, and inadvertently to cause problems for the buses. We very much keep this under review. Every change we make, we monitor to see, has it had the desired positive effect and has there been an unintended negative consequence? I will give you a good example. Along Bishopsgate, the bus times were 5.8 minutes pre-COVID and they are now 3.2 minutes, as recorded on 25 September [2020]. Literally, people are spending less time on buses because we prioritise public transport. I would say, as a transport professional, that is what we should be doing: we should be making the public transport alternatives - including such other modes as walking and cycling - super attractive because if we let this become a car-led recovery it will be disastrous for the environment, but also my buses, our buses, will get hopelessly mired in traffic. I would say so far, so good. That is not to say there have not been some installations that have not worked as well as we would want. We are actively monitoring those and, in some cases, we have either taken them out of made adjustments. Susan Hall AM (Chairman): At this point, can I make a plea, please, that if you are looking at buses, can you also look at black cabs? I know they did not feature as they should have done in the transport papers but they really should be looked at. There are people who cannot cycle or walk and are unable to get on buses, but can get in black cabs, particularly the disabled. If I can make a plea, if you are looking at how the buses are getting around, can we make sure that the black taxis can go where the buses go in order to make sure that those who are disabled are looked after by TfL? Andy Byford (Commissioner, Transport for London): Sure. I will reinforce that to my team, but just to give you some assurance, where we, for example, have been introducing 24-hour bus lanes, the taxis can go along the bus lanes. I consider black cabs to be part of the public transport offer and there is certainly no intention to treat them in some inferior way or degrade them in terms of a mode, but I will reinforce to my team that that must be factored in in any scheme that we introduce. Page 2 Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Absolutely. I am thrilled to hear that and I am sure the black cabbies will be very happy to hear that too. I am going to turn now to my colleague, Assembly Member Devenish, to ask the next question. Tony Devenish AM: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Andy. Andy Byford (Commissioner, Transport for London): Good morning. Tony Devenish AM: Is a return to 30% passenger volumes a realistic assumption for your projections given the current levels? What are the key risks to achieving the income in your revised budget, please? Andy Byford (Commissioner, Transport for London): As I said in my first response, this is very much a moving feast. We do rely on modelling, we use modelling from very credible sources such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and various other economic fora who give us expert advice, plus the scientists, on what they think the economic situation will be like and how that might impact upon the travelling public. We at TfL have worked on a number of scenarios in terms of what the likely recovery might be and in terms of what the impact upon ridership would be and we still think that 30% ridership is possible, but, again, we are keeping it under very close review because that ridership assumption was made before the most recent changes where we had the lockdown at 10.00pm and before we had the rule of six enforced. It is very much a dynamic, active situation that our economists and transport planners are keeping under review. People sometimes say to me, “When do you think you will get back to full ridership?” That is a very difficult question to answer because there are so many variables.