Rush outside after Transport Committee to do a TV snippet on Bob Kiley’s bonus and Oystercard.

Liberal Democrats finally got the figures and performance criteria of London’s traffic supremo – only thanks to our request under the Freedom of Information Act. Mind you, I think it should be a matter of public record – after all Londoners are all paying!

Mr Kiley gets a basic of £312,000 per annum. And over the last two years, in each year he got a bonus of £275,000 (96% of the full bonus) and this year is expected to get as much as £365,000 bonus.

The criteria for the pay are extremely vague, flabby and flawed. For a start – we have no idea what Mr Kiley is meant to do for his basic salary. I would have thought quite a lot for that amount. And yet in the performance criteria we find things he has to deliver like increased bus mileage and reduced congestion. ‘Scuse me – given the amount of extra buses we have all paid for over the last few years it would be a bit of a shock if bus mileage hadn’t increased. Ditto for reducing congestion – with the Congestion Charge it seems to me that was the main point.

Another strand of Bob’s bonus is helping to get borrowing from the government. This he has certainly delivered on and without Kiley I don’t think the government would have trusted Ken to borrow money. Budgeting is not his strong point…

However – Lib Dems will now pursue what we should have got for our money out of Mr Kiley’s basic salary and somewhat more specific targets for a bonus.

Call me old-fashioned – but I always thought a bonus was for doing extra well – not simply doing your job!

And of course the other biggy of the day was Oystercard packing up across London this morning. It wasn’t down for long – but it’s a good example of how things can go catastrophically wrong. (A corrupted disk Tim O’Toole had said in committee when I asked him to make a statement.)

Imagine if TfL had advanced the dream at this stage of everyone getting rid of their small change because you could buy bread and milk on Oystercard. Doris would have gone thirsty and hungry this morning.

After a Metropolitan Police Authority meeting, I rush to Transport for London to see Peter Hendy – supremo of all transport that runs on the surface of London.

This visit is about the Croydon Tram. There is a row between the guys running it and Transport for London. The people running the tram seem to believe that TfL may be trying to put them out of business by running competing bus routes. TfL think this is rubbish.

Peter (who is pretty robust) seems quite open to any suggestion from Croydon Tramlink about a way forward – but he certainly needs something from them on the table before any rescue plan could be brought forth.

And in the evening: with an election just around the corner – I do some telephoning!