No contradiction here as the gap in funding for the buses is due to the unjustifiable early scrapping of the bendy bus, and the expense of designing a completely new bus.

The gap in funding for the tube is due to Londoners having to pick up the bill for the Metronet disaster - a dodgy PFI deal which was forced on us and so not justifiable.

So the answer to this funding gap is to keep the bendy buses until they come to the end of their life, and for Boris to demand that the government pay for their own mistakes.

Changing the way people pay on the bus to prepay gave cost savings and sped up journey times. Some of the saving was passed back to the customers - I cant see the problem here.

Children travelling free is also a sensible solution to road gridlock in the morning. School buses are free in the US, so this is nothing too radical, (but providing separate buses must be quite expensive.)