Last Friday I worked out that Ken Livingstone was promising that were he elected mayor next May, an adult's Zone 1-6 monthly travel card would cost around £10.45 less from next October than it was going to from next January. Let me explain: at present a Zone 1-to-6 monthly travelcard costs £193.60 and at this time last week Boris Johnson had arranged for it to go up to £208.90 from the start of next year; Ken's pledge was to reduce public transport fares by an overall average of 5% from the levels he inherited from Boris, meaning that he would bring the cost of that travelcard back down again to about £198.45 - still nearly a fiver a month more than it is now, but over a tenner less than Boris was intending to charge.
But now something has changed. Chancellor George Osborne has bunged his fellow Tory £136 million, and that means Boris is now going to put a Zone 1-to-6 monthly travelcard up from its present £193.60 to, by my calculation*, £205.10 from January instead - an increase of £3.80 less than originally planned. So now that the maths have changed and Boris's average fares hike is to be 5.6% instead of 7.2%, will Ken stick to promising to cut 5% from the package Boris passes on to him should he triumph next spring? Will his offer to that Zone 1-to-6 travelcard-buyer be quite as seductive as before?
I think we can assume that the Team Livingstone abacus is seeing a bit of action now that most of the details of Boris's revised 2012 fares package have been published. The notes at the bottom of Ken's response to Osborne's autumn statement reiterate that under Fare Deal "fares will be cut in the autumn, then frozen for 2013," and rises held to inflation level thereafter. But they don't specify that the cut would be 5%.
Interviewed by BBC London at the Olympic Park today he said that the increase "should be zero this year" but made no specific mention of cutting them at all, including in the bits of the interview that weren't broadcast (I know, because I was there listening to it).** His press release about the revised 2012 package links to his original Fare Deal pledge, but again doesn't mention 5%. What it does says is:
Fares are rising when they should be cut, and as the Tory mayor has once again failed to cut them today, I will set out next week further details of how I will cut them instead.
Any major row back from the original Fare Deal pledge is surely unthinkable for Ken, and I've been told that careful thought had been going into its development well before this week's events. But it will be interesting to see if and when that 5% cut promise reappears and, assuming it does, whether any of the other elements have changed.
*Transport for London's press release links to a price schedule that gives the 2012 prices for 7-day travelcards and explains that to calculate the equivalent monthly rate you multiply by 3.84 and round up to a 10p multiple. Hence: £53.40 x 3.84 = £205.056, rounded up to £205.10
**Update, 4 December. A 5% cut to Boris's new, reduced hike of 5.6% wouldn't be much different from "zero this year", although Ken has said that the earliest any cut could be implemented is October next year. But at Labour List, London Assembly candidate Tom Copley describes this remark as "a big signal that he may want to go further than 5%" and urges him to do so. Imagine...
