If you’ve had the pleasure of taking a trip recently on a London Bus, you may have noticed these little fellas displacing the usual monotonous local council ads that coat the interior of our red people carriers.

Using cute looking cartoon characters to distract you just long enough for your wallet to be half-inched by an ASBO-medalled feral yoot, this is Transport for London’s bid to get people to be more considerate to their fellow passengers. Makes you feel all warm inside, doesn’t it?

The more cynical bus-riders amongst you may not have noticed the direct correlation between the appearance of these cheery posters and the drop in commuter anti-social behaviour. My response to you as I turn down my iPod’s blaring gagsta rap, casually dropping my burger wrapper onto the floor by the feet of the elderly blind-lady standing by my seat is this:

Stop tutting, roll-back your eyes, store-up your passenger peeves and take them online.

Yup, TfL has just launched it’s own social networking site: TogetherforLondon.org.

The idea is seemingly well intended: A little thought from each of us. A big difference for everybody.

In their own words:

We’ve all got ideas of how to make London a better place – like ours for more considerate travel.

Here is the place to get talking – we don’t even mind some friendly disagreement.

You can turn your idea into a campaign, and even create a Little Londoner to feature in it.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Create your own cutesy avatar (see mine below) and then unleash your citizen spirit upon the Capital. You set-up a discussion, monitor the feedback and then, if you’re up for it – kick off a campaign. To be clear, it isn’t all about transport although it would seem that the majority of chatter is about commuter experiences. This may change as the site self-populates. There are actually twelve categories to choose from when searching for active discussions:

• Amenities
• Workplace
• Education
• Community
• Behaviour
• Safety
• Tidiness
• Courtesy
• Environment
• Transport [there is it is!]
• Language

There’s not too much you can do on the website, but that’s what I like about it. It’s not complicated. It’s easier to navigate than a self-service Oyster ticketing machine.

But will the website be able to get people in to sign-up by the bus-load? I doubt it. That said, it’s already started to host some key discussions which are important for Londoners.

If you’re looking for a glimpse into Red Rax, you can check out my pet peeve here.

The site also has a few active polls which attempt to extract some kind of London ‘barometer’ with a question of the day.

Interestingly enough, the majority of people polled today say that they do at times talk loudly on mobile phones. Tomorrow’s poll will presumably reveal that bears actually shit in woods (worth noting only if you’re travelling on the Central Line to Epping Forest).

The verdict:

I actually do like the thought that has gone into this site but it’s still early days and I think that the community will struggle to convince most Londoners that this is the destination network for anything other than offloading your commuter gripes onto a group of sympathetic individuals.

What would make the difference would be some simple book-marking tools like email this to a friend or share this on Facebook, which would give genuine campaigns much wider visibility and scope.

Something that I’m not quite sure about is the concept behind the shop. On one hand it allows your campaigns to have a physical presence off the website. Having your campaign slogan and avatar printed on a mug, T-shirt, hoodie (how brave?!), shopping bag or mouse-mat may do it for some people but I can’t help feeling that the currently inflated prices may deter many from exploring further.

All in all, a nice idea, adequately executed but not one that will drive much traffic. Presumably because the traffic’s stuck behind a broken down bus.

Oh dear.

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