Open Letter Re: Open Letter - Assisting the Inevitable Independent Inquiry about the Safety of the London Contracted 'Bus Market’ Model

Document date

23-09-2024

By Email and Blogpost

Elly Baker, Chair
London Assembly Transport Committee
City Hall
Kamal Chunchie Way
London E16 1ZE
23 September 2024

cc: London Assembly Transport Committee, Members and Staff

Good Morning Elly Baker,

I received the attached letter from you as Transport Committee Chair "responding to your email from 26 June 2024” on 19 July via a Committee Staffer.

As you know, my 26 June email to you and the Committee simply contained a link to an Open Letter from former TfL Bus Driver Lorraine Robertson: acting on Lorraine's express instructions, I was pleased to post her letter on my blog and email the link to you and the Committee on 26 June.

Although I intend to respond publicly to your 19 July letter to me in due course, kindly note it’s been over two months and Lorraine Robertson still awaits your response to the issues she requested the Transport Committee to investigate, namely—and quoting directly from her 26 June Open Letter—

• The Contradiction between TfL's Bus Contract Timeliness Incentives and Speed Limits;
• TfL's Refusal to Require Independent Bus Crash Investigations;
• TfL's Failure to conduct Risk and/or Human Factors Assessments of Bus Driver Working Conditions that are known to have a direct impact upon Safety Performance.

If you have a chance to listen to my recent podcast or read Sunday's report from My London "Whistleblower London bus drivers ‘exhausted’ and ‘use faulty vehicles’ in ‘dangerous’ conditions” , you might understand why I’m surprised that you—a Labour Party Member and well-regarded union activist—seemingly chose to deny a London Bus Driver any agency to express her valid concerns to the Transport Committee about well-evidenced TfL policies that affect Bus Driver Safety Performance. Like my 26 June email to the Committee, Lorraine Robertson is also copied to this email and awaits the Committee's thoughtful response to her urgent request.

In the interest of transparency and to encourage public scrutiny of the Transport Committee’s important work holding the Mayor of London to account, kindly note that I have posted your 19 July Letter and this email correspondence on my blog.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Kearney
#LondonBusWatch

T: dddddddddddddd
E: [email protected]
Twitter: @comadad

Blog: www.saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.co.uk

2018 Winner, Community Hero Award — The Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association
2016 Winner, Transport – Sheila McKechnie Foundation SMK Campaigners Award

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Source: https://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.com/2024/09/re-open-letter-assisting-inevitable.html
Auto-imported from Tom Kearney’s blog.