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Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

londoncentric.media

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Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#61

Post by avianlyric »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #28
avianlyric wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that won’t get close. Existing London car taxes only raise around £0.2 billion annually. Not a chance in hell you can raise that by 3500% without either public unrest, or such a dramatic change in behaviour that tax collection amounts drop, instead of raise (although I would personally love a car free London).

Are you counting fuel duties here, or only road tax?

There isn’t road tax in the UK, only vehicle tax which is based on the about a vehicle pollutes. Additionally all of that tax across the UK goes to the central government, and none of it goes to the London Mayor. There have been attempts to have vehicle taxes collected on London based vehicles be allocated to the Mayor, but it’s always been soundly rejected by central government.

Fuel duty is also collected by central government, and none of it goes to the London mayor either.

The only taxes collected and managed by London are the Congestion charge and the ULEZ charge. Everything else is beyond the reach of the London mayor.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#63

Post by avianlyric »

paganel wrote: post #38
avianlyric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TfL has built most of its fare collection systems in-house, indeed it licenses its fare collect technologies to other cities like New York. Also it’s not within TfLs or London Mayors gift to provide free transit, TfL is almost unique in that its costs are almost entirely covered by farebox collections, and they receive little to zero government subsidy. If London made transit free, they have to find an additional £7…

Take the 7 billion from the existing 37 billion and get rid of some existing stuff which is non-housing related.

What exactly would you get rid of?

* Bin collections?

* Social care for the young and elderly?

* Street sweeping?

* General road, pavement and cycle infrastructure maintenance?

* Sports centres, libraries, schools?

Councils are already stretched thin. Last year was the largest increase in council taxes the UK has seen in decades, and councils are going bust left right and centre as pretty much all central funding was removed over the last 14 years. Do you honestly think that reducing every London councils budget by ~19% to provide free transit is going to result in a good outcome?

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#64

Post by kiba »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #18
kiba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax cars further. They take up way more space than the average pedestrian and required more infrastructure to support and maintain.

Let's say that happens, which is not at all a given. What are you going to do when car usage goes down because people are tired of being taxed excessively for them? "Just tax this thing I don't like" is not a viable strategy to fund the things you do like.

Less car usage means less money spent on car related infrastructure and better flow of existing traffic which leads to further economic growth as space freed up can be repurposed for something else which lead to increased tax revenue.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#65

Post by cutler »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #55
paganel wrote: post #35

> Hundreds of thousands of Londoners are being overcharged for travel, while London Centric spoke to one teenager who is having to skip meals because of cashflow issues brought on by the cyberattack. This is just crazy, why not make public transport as cheap as peanuts to begin with? Why does everything have to be so damn expensive? Why the heck does a monthly transport pass have to cost, let me check, around 200 pou…

I don't live in London, but most people I've talked to who do don't have any monthly transport pass or anything like that. They just tap in with contactless. The transport is cheap enough that if you don't travel many times per day, there is really no need. As one example - a bus journey is 1.75 GBP regardless of the distance and number of individual buses taken, as long as all initial tap-ins are within one hour. Lo…

Not so fast. Contactless accounts for a huge volume of compensation claims due to faulty or badly-designed interchanges. I've lost count of the number of times my partner has been overcharged when travelling from Wimbledon to Waterloo.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#66

Post by rahimnathwani »

avianlyric wrote: post #61
rahimnathwani wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you counting fuel duties here, or only road tax?

There isn’t road tax in the UK, only vehicle tax which is based on the about a vehicle pollutes. Additionally all of that tax across the UK goes to the central government, and none of it goes to the London Mayor. There have been attempts to have vehicle taxes collected on London based vehicles be allocated to the Mayor, but it’s always been soundly rejected by central government. Fuel duty is also collected by centra…

I'm from the UK, and lived there for the first 35 years of my life. During that time, 'road tax' was a common way to refer to 'vehicle excise duty'. Doesn't anyone call it that any more?

Back to the point, though... Even though the Mayor of London doesn't have control over most tax revenue collected from drivers in London, this whole discussion is about what could be, so suggesting that the congestion and ULEZ charges are the only possible sources of revenue places an unnecessary limit on options.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#67

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

akira2501 wrote: post #45
bdndndndbve wrote: post #6

It's amazing how much bureaucracy they're willing to spend money on to means-test a fundamental service. If you just made transit free at the point of service you wouldn't have free cards for all under 16, and some over 16, and all over 60, and discount fares for people in poverty. Cities spend so much money outsourcing the IT for fare collection, and the administration of budget programs, and ultimately the experien…

> can't stomach a poor person getting to ride the bus for free. If you don't accurately measure ridership you can't accurately serve that ridership. You'll waste money on useless services and you'll waste peoples time by not creating necessary services. The system needs to exist. It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorb…

>Ideally it should just be a system that lets you scan your identification card or drivers license. If you're of the correct age it should serve as a transportation pass. Simple. Compliant. Captures useful data.

Privacy nightmare, and disenfranchises those with no paperwork.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#68

Post by avianlyric »

carapace wrote: post #14
bdndndndbve wrote: post #6

It's amazing how much bureaucracy they're willing to spend money on to means-test a fundamental service. If you just made transit free at the point of service you wouldn't have free cards for all under 16, and some over 16, and all over 60, and discount fares for people in poverty. Cities spend so much money outsourcing the IT for fare collection, and the administration of budget programs, and ultimately the experien…

> In Gavin Newsom’s book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming [San Francisco] mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was told by so many advisors that the busses would become “dumpsters on wheels,” from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not respecting services that are fr…

Don’t compare TfL to buses or the BART in San Fransisco. The transit system the TfL operates makes US transit look like a toy.

London busses arrive every 5 mins not every 30 mins. At high throughput bus stops busses arrive pretty back-to-back continuously. Trains arrive every 90secs not every 15mins, often the next train is waiting just outside the station for the previous train to depart.

There are over 500 different bus services in London managed by TfL. 11 Tube lines covering over 200 miles of track and 272 stations. 6 suburban rail lines covering over 100 miles of track and a 113 station.

TfL is a major operation, and its fare collection system is one of the most efficient and technically capable systems in the world. So good they sell it to other cities like New York. I can absolutely guarantee that the cost of TfL fare collection system will be an insignificant fraction of the £2.2 billion that TfL collects annually.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#69

Post by carapace »

avianlyric wrote: post #68
carapace wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Gavin Newsom’s book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming [San Francisco] mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was told by so many advisors that the busses would become “dumpsters on wheels,” from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not respecting services that are fr…

Don’t compare TfL to buses or the BART in San Fransisco. The transit system the TfL operates makes US transit look like a toy. London busses arrive every 5 mins not every 30 mins. At high throughput bus stops busses arrive pretty back-to-back continuously. Trains arrive every 90secs not every 15mins, often the next train is waiting just outside the station for the previous train to depart. There are over 500 differen…

(SF is 150 years old and 7x7 miles in size, we do not compare to London on any dimension. My whole city could be a borough of London!)

(This one time I was at a party (it was a long time ago) and these Italian dudes were there, and when I mentioned that I was from SF one of them said, "Nice town." ... I was a little miffed, but they were from Rome, so... *shrug* )

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#70

Post by shamiln »

cutler wrote: post #65
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in London, but most people I've talked to who do don't have any monthly transport pass or anything like that. They just tap in with contactless. The transport is cheap enough that if you don't travel many times per day, there is really no need. As one example - a bus journey is 1.75 GBP regardless of the distance and number of individual buses taken, as long as all initial tap-ins are within one hour. Lo…

Not so fast. Contactless accounts for a huge volume of compensation claims due to faulty or badly-designed interchanges. I've lost count of the number of times my partner has been overcharged when travelling from Wimbledon to Waterloo.

Is your partner not following the signs saying where to tap in?
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