Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Projects stall on Crossrail 2 and Bakerloo line extension
TFL CANNOT PAY FOR WORKS DESPITE FUNDING DEAL
PLANS for Crossrail 2 and extending the Bakerloo line further south are off the cards for the foreseeable future, according to Transport for London boss Andy Byford - despite agreeing a major funding deal with ministers to secure TfL’s future.
Transport for London announced plans to extend the Bakerloo line South East to Lewisham in 2017, with extra stops at Old Kent Road in Southwark and New Cross Gate in Lewisham.
Work to build the extension hasn’t started, and in December, Mayor Sadiq Khan warned the £3.1 billion lengthening of the route wouldn’t go ahead because of TfL’s lack of money, as MyLondon reported. That remains the case despite a funding package secured after months of wrangling with ministers. In August, TfL said it will receive extra funding of around £1.2bn from the Government until March 2024 to cover the drop in fare income due to lower passenger numbers after the pandemic.
But the publicly-owned operator still has to find about £800m of savings for each of the next two years to stay afloat. On Tuesday, outgoing TfL commissioner Andy Byford told the London Assembly: “The deal wasn’t as much…or as long in duration as we would have wanted. So, we’re not suddenly able to say all of the projects are back on track. We can’t reinstate Crossrail 2, we can’t reinstate the Bakerloo line extension – not yet, but there’s still compelling cases.”
He added: “I like to think that we won’t be in this situation forever, we will move to sunnier uplands. There will come a point where we are able to do more, but I should just manage people’s expectations: big ticket items are not on the horizon right now,” as New Civil Engineer reported.
The government bailout has allowed TfL to commit £3.6bn to capital spending over the next two years, with around £200m of new capital funding from the Government. And it has reversed cuts to the Healthy Streets programme, which aims to make London’s roads safer and better pedestrians and cyclists. But the cash is not enough to begin construction on the Bakerloo line extension or Crossrail 2, which would require billions more each in extra cash.
At the end of August, Sadiq Khan said the funding deal was “far from ideal”: “The Government is still leaving TfL with a significant funding gap, meaning we will likely have to increase fares in the future and still proceed with some cuts to bus services. There are also onerous strings attached, such as the Government’s condition requiring
TfL to come up with options for reform of TfL’s pension scheme at pace, which could well lead to more industrial action and more disruption for commuters.
“These are things we have had no choice but to accept in order to get the deal over the line to avoid TfL becoming bankrupt, to save the jobs of thousands of transport workers and to keep trains, tubes and buses running across our city.” He added TfL would be working “flat out” to mitigate the impact of the conditions required by ministers.
As MyLondon reported at the time, though the latest funding deal with ministers will avoid ‘managed decline’, the conditions attached to it by the government mean outgoing TfL boss Andy Byford and his successor will not full freedom over how to use the extra cash. The network can’t use any of the money for ULEZ expansion, to order new trains for the
Bakerloo or Central lines, or to make progress with Crossrail 2.
Crossrail 2 would follow the (eastwest) Crossrail – the Elizabeth Line – in providing a new north-south, highspeed train link in the capital, at a cost of around £30bn.