Apart from his gaffes in the media, Boris Johnson made spectacular blunders while Mayor of London.
Bikes, buses and bridges: Boris Johnson’s nine biggest design blunders by Oliver Wainwright
The New Routemaster with its nostalgic design, conductors and back door
was intended to be more fuel efficient, with all costs borne by the industry.
In fact, Transport for London (TfL) paid the £11m development cost, and each bus
cost twice as much as a regular double-decker. With faulty air-conditioning and
lacking openable windows it becomes unbearable in high temperatures, is just as
polluting as the old buses and the cost of a second conductor was too
expensive.
The cycle hire scheme, originally planned by his predecessor Ken
Livingstone, was to be funded by sponsorship (initially by Barclays, now by Santander)
but the deal only covers a fraction of the running costs, leaving TfL with an
£11m annual bill (the equivalent scheme in Paris makes £12m a year for the
city).
Johnson initiated the project to build the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a tangle of steel by Anish Kapoor for the 2012 Olympic Games. This
privately sponsored ‘gift’ costs Londoners £10,000 a week to maintain. A £3m
slide was recently added in the hope of recouping costs.
With the London 2012 Olympic bid won by his predecessor, Johnson claimed
credit for the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley. But the pledge of 10,000
new homes resulted in just 6,000 and the athletes’ village costing £1.1bn
was sold for about half that to Qatar. Instead of the promised 50%
affordable homes, with sites for community-led housing projects, plots were
sold to the usual volume house builders, with just 30% affordable.
Johnson criticised the 27 tall buildings passed by Ken Livingstone but
during his mayoralty, then approved a further 436 towers. Many projects may be halted
due to Brexit.
Johnson boasts of building more affordable homes than
Livingstone did – but the definition of “affordable” changed during
his tenure. Previously linked to local incomes, itcan now mean up to 80%
of market rate. Westminster council warned this would mean council
tenants in a three-bedroom home needed an income of £109,000 a year but half its
social rented households have an income of less than £12,000 a year. Johnson
also abandoned Livingstone’s 50% affordable target, allowing developers to justify levels as low as
10%.
The mayor has the power to “call in” major schemes deemed to be of
“strategic importance” to London and overturn decisions made by the local
planning authority. Of the 14 schemes Johnson called in, 13 were decided in
favour of the developer. Almost two-thirds breached the mayor’s own density
guidelines. He actively prevented councils from
providing low-rented housing where there was urgent local need for it, and set
a dangerous precedent for bypassing the democratic planning process. The
result: a city where developers call the tune.
Boris Watch also noted:
In 2007, he claimed that Bendy Buses “wipe out cyclists, there are many
cyclists killed every year by them”. BorisWatch reported: the real figure was
none killed by 2008 and a further none by the time the last bendy left in
December 2011. During this period around 45 cyclists had died in accidents not
involving bendy buses.
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