* General road, pavement and cycle infrastructure maintenance?
* Sports centres, libraries, schools?
Councils are already stretched thin. Last year was the largest increase in council taxes the UK has seen in decades, and councils are going bust left right and centre as pretty much all central funding was removed over the last 14 years. Do you honestly think that reducing every London councils budget by ~19% to provide free transit is going to result in a good outcome?
Slightly increase the price/tax for that for single-family homes.
> Street sweeping?
Yes, at a limit, I'd choose not having clean streets over people not being able to afford using them, even by riding a bus.
> General road, pavement and cycle infrastructure maintenance?
I'd get rid of cycle infrastructure if it's more than a token percentage of said road-focused expenditures, because it's mostly the middle class that is using bicycles and, as such, money spent that way goes directly for the only benefit of said middle-classes. But, yes, I'd personally settle for roads with more holes if that means public transportation that doesn't cost 2000+ pounds per year, you can bet on that.
> Sports centres, libraries, schools?
Yes, I'd get rid of sports centers, libraries are, I guess, just a token expenditure.
> Social care for the young and elderly?
I guess this is where, in fact, most of the money goes, and this is where Britain is, to put it mildly, fucked up, because (going by your word) that expenditure mostly falls on the local administration. It shouldn't be that way, it should fall on the central government, but I guess that's a bigger political subject to tackle.
As a point of reference, I grew up in Eastern-Europe back in the '90s back when our roads were full of holes and social care had started to accumulate holes bigger than the Bermuda Triangle, but, amidst that destituteness, public transport (both inside the cities and connecting them) was still very affordable. In fact, if it hadn't been for that I wouldn't be writing this comment right here, it is because of those small prices that I could still afford to go to uni (yes, you could tell me that "we have procedures in places for just those cases!", but that's just layers of bureaucracy over layers of bureaucracy that just don't work when you need them the most, it's way easier to not need that bureaucracy in the first place).
* Bin collections?
* Social care for the young and elderly?
* Street sweeping?
* General road, pavement and cycle infrastructure maintenance?
* Sports centres, libraries, schools?
Councils are already stretched thin. Last year was the largest increase in council taxes the UK has seen in decades, and councils are going bust left right and centre as pretty much all central funding was removed over the last 14 years. Do you honestly think that reducing every London councils budget by ~19% to provide free transit is going to result in a good outcome?