It’s time to turn your attention to TfL, Boris

This rise, of inflation plus one per cent from January 2009, is, of course, the exact same package which the ex-Great Helmsman himself secretly agreed on 24 October last year.

The only difference, as emails leaked to the Standard in April showed, was that to the horror of his officials, Mr Livingstone simply decided to ignore the decision.

We've short memories, Ken, but not that short. And remind me: just which Mayor was it who raised fares by up to one-third in 2007? Would that have been you, or a totally different one?

The real problem is not that Boris has kept Ken's 2009 fares plan but that he has, so far, left almost everything else about Livingstone's TfL intact, too. It's a problem because TfL is the Ed Balls of public administration: nothing like as good as it thinks it is.

It genuinely believes, in the words of its commissioner, Peter Hendy, that it is an "efficient and effective" provider of bus and train services.

In fact, under Livingstone and Hendy's stewardship, it has achieved the worst of all worlds: rapacious fares, vast public subsidy and often mediocre service.

The buses have improved, though at a disproportionate, unsustainable cost (bus subsidy has risen about 1,300 per cent, while passengers have risen about 45 per cent). But the Tube is the least-reliable, worst-managed metro in Western Europe, and is getting worse, not better. It is hard to overstate the damage it does to London's international reputation and to Londoners' blood ­pressure.

TfL genuinely believes itself a world leader which other cities follow. Actually, other cities are surprised at our backwardness in, for instance, providing clean public transport. Even the buses in Delhi have been using cleaner fuels for years — but London's bus fleet remains 99.9 per cent diesel. In terms of air pollution (different from C02), TfL buses are among the most poisonous things on the road in London today, directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Londoners each year.

No other city has followed London's model of the congestion charge, for the good reason that it uses crude, old technology and has, partly as a result, stopped reducing congestion.

TfL does, however, lead the world in pointless extravagance, with 123 of its managers earning more than £100,000 a year and fortunes wasted on vanity projects like the "Greenwich Waterfront Transit" (a six-mile bus route — again diesel — costing £20 million). Hence the high fares.  

Now, with big bills looming for projects of real worth such as Crossrail, fare rises alone, however necessary, won't pay for everything. The bus and rail services London depends on simply cannot survive at their current levels unless TfL takes a crash diet.

But four months in, marvels one senior TfL figure, "Boris's arrival has made no difference whatever. It's all going on exactly as before." No programmes have (yet) been cancelled. No personnel changes have been made. Indeed, one senior TfL person has just been appointed, of all things, Boris's environmental adviser.

Less than a year ago, as further leaked emails show, Mr Hendy was secretly plotting with Ken's chief of staff to "refute Boris's transport ideas". Now, in a truly gymnastic feat of brown-nosing, he has apparently persuaded the new Mayor that his sole purpose in life is to implement those very same ideas.

It's surprising that someone as bright as Boris can fall for this obvious nonsense. What it probably means is not that TfL will end up working for Boris — but that Boris will end up working for TfL.