1) Free school meals
...a current policy planned for extension but not actually a given, merely to "work to make universal free school meals permanent", and only for primary schools 2) Freeze TfL fares
...but only "until 2025" which isn't a pledge it's a fact because fares only rise once a year. There is however a promise to "continue to freeze fares for as long as economic conditions allow" 3) 40,000 new council homes
...but that's "by the end of the decade", so equates to just 7000 a year (or 20 a day) 4) More police officers
...specifically 1,300 neighbourhood police offcers, PCSOs and Special Constables, but requires Sadiq to "work with a Labour government" so again not a given 5) Investing in youth clubs
...the plan being to create "250,000 positive opportunities for young Londoners", which actually means "quality mentoring" and "investment in more youth workers" 6) Reduce violence against women and girls
...but specifically to "redouble efforts" to reduce that violence because engineering social change is never a given 7) End rough sleeping
...and end it for good, but this again requires Sadiq to work "in partnership with a Labour government" 8) 6000 'rent control' homes
....i.e. homes with rents capped and linked to the incomes of key workers, so a worthy start but a total drop in the ocean 9) World-leading climate action
...although the fine detail is a lot more about air quality than climate change, certainly in terms of worldleadingness 10) 150,000 new jobs
...but really just developing a new London Growth Plan setting out how jobs could be boosted and hoping it happens
All this is clearly explained in the manifesto, nobody's trying to pull the wool over your eyes, but it does show the danger of relying on a top level summary to judge a set of policies.
10 specific transport pledges
• Build on the success of the Superloop bus network by introducing a second superloop (a draft map emerged at 7.35 this morning)
• Explore the potential to run Superloop-style express bus services along the route of some as yet unbuilt rail projects (deffo the Bakerloo Line Extension, maybe the West London Orbital)
• Launch a new plan to cut bus waiting times (perhaps a posh way of saying "increase bus frequencies")
• Explore the potential benefts and means of bringing bus operations into public ownership (another aspiration "in conjunction with a Labour government")
• Invest at least £3m a year from City Hall to provide more toilets on the TfL estate (hurrah, although I'm not sure how far £3m goes)
• Allow concession holders to use their phones as their travel pass instead of having to carry an Oyster card (I'll pass, thanks)
• More than 40,000 new bike parking spaces on high streets and in schools, stations and residential areas by 2030 (another pledge due to be delivered after the end of Sadiq's third term)
• Expand the step-free access programme to cover half of the Underground network by 2030 (we're currently at one third, and I doubt an extra 44 step-free stations is doable in six years)
• "I want Londoners to have certainty about the future, so I commit to keeping the London-wide ULEZ standards the same over the next four years. I also rule out a move to any form of pay-per-mile smart road user charging system." (there you are Susan, in black and white)
• more of the same (this is the majority of the manifesto, to be honest)
