TfL, and the Mayor have outlined plans for the phase of development of London’s transport, focusing on cost cutting and investments in street services.

TfL says that it has identified around £3 billion worth of savings over the period that can be stripped out by merging some separate divisions, redundancies, and looking again at nearly 70 contracts for savings.

The ongoing move to make more commercial use of TfL assets continues, with the headline figure of £3.4 billion by 2023 in additional income unchanged. Some changes are already visible, such as converting the ticket office in Westminster tube station into a shop, and a new coffee shop on the platform.

A total of £2.5bn will be invested to get more people cycling and walking, and to improve public safety and air quality.

The key highlights on the railways…

Night Tube

New shock-absorbing track fittings are being installed on sections of track to reduce noise from the night-tube, but they can only be used on modern sections of track.

TfL says that it has seen significant noise reduction in Pimlico, Notting Hill, Baker Street, Wanstead and Bethnal Green. They are using the same fixings between Vauxhall and Stockwell and there are plans to introduce them between Oxford Circus and Warren Street and in the Earl’s Court area.

Victoria line

They aim to increase capacity to a peak service of 36 trains per hour from May 2017.

All preparatory signalling work is complete at Brixton, so the focus is now on works at Northumberland Park depot and Walthamstow. The fan and air chilling system upgrade is complete and power cable and substation ventilation works to increase traction power and energy efficiency are on schedule

Jubilee line

Upgrades of the crossover junction at West Hampstead is under way, and a plan to increase the service in the central section is being worked on ahead of the delivery of additional trains. Delivery of 36 trains an hour remains on target for 2021.

Sub-surface lines

Upgrades to the power supply from 630 volts to 750 volts is underway to provide enough power to move from 28 trains per hour to 32 trains per hour. The work also reduces energy consumption as the northern section of the Metropolitan line can now operate regenerative braking, which feeds the braking energy back into the tracks as power.

Northern line extension

Tunelling is under way, and the new tunnel will be linked to the existing Northern line at the end of 2017. At the Battersea Power Station crossover box, they have already excavated to the level at which the steel-reinforced base-slab is being cast where the railway will eventually run.

Excavation of the station at Battersea is expected to start in Spring 2017.

Bakerloo line extension

The proposed completion date for the £3.1 billion extension have been brought forward slightly to 2028/29, which matches that of the planned signaling and trains upgrade for the existing Bakerloo line. The existing line upgrade will unlock spare capacity that an extension can utilise, whilst synergies between the two capital projects could deliver efficiencies in areas such as signaling and stock procurement.

A public consultation on the details for the extra stations, ventilation shafts and upgrades will be launched in January 2017, with construction starting in 2021/22.

It’s also expected that around £1 billion of the £3.1 billion cost of the extension will be recovered from land sales, developments and a local tax.

Although the completion date has been brought forward by a year, this has been done before the consultation on the construction of the line, and that will have a huge impact on the expected building sites. If sites are smaller than hoped for or other restrictions on construction applied, such as limits on when deliveries can be made, that could easily push the delivery date back again.

Greenwich power station

It’s proposed that six new gas powered turbines will be installed, with bids to be decided on next month. They could be installed with the potential to later sell surplus heat to local users.

Heathrow

TfL disagrees with the government on the lack of funding for public transport upgrades to cope with a third runway at Heathrow.

Mobile phones

The Elizabeth line will have Wi-Fi and mobile phone coverage in the tunnels, and there is an expectation that this will be extended to the rest of the network, mainly as TfL can charge the mobile network operators for access.

The Financials

Fares income for this year is forecast to be £138m – 3% – lower than projected, principally as a result of lower passenger volumes on buses (£42m) and the tube (£17m).

The cost of the Mayor’s fares freeze is estimated to be about £640 million in total by 2021. It’s still too early to say for certain what the impact of the Hopper Fare will be.

TfL also expects to receive less income from property sales and lower Crossrail funding sources, leading to a shortfall of £178m compared to their earlier projections. Worth noting that £98m of that decrease will be offset later, as it’s just due to the delay in selling 55 Broadway.

TfL also warns that the cost of some imports may rise following the Brexit vote due to the drop in the value of sterling.

Although the headline cost cutting mentions cutting staff numbers, it’s notable that there has already been a reduction of 1,636 since the start of this year, bringing the total number of full-time staff to 31,117.

Of TfL’s annual budget of £11.5 billion, only around £2 billion is spent on wages and associated costs. That is worth remembering when people talk about the cost savings of switching the tubes to a DLR style driverless train service. The wage costs saving would be barely into a few tens of millions at most, which is almost a rounding error for an organisation the size of TfL.

Although TfL controlled fares are being frozen, fares will become the primary source of income growing from 70 percent in 2016/17 to 76 percent in 2021/22. This is largely expected to be down to the opening of the Elizabeth line, and additional passenger growth across the rest of the network, with a particular focus on improving bus reliability.

However to fund these upgrades, TfL’s debt is expected to reach £9.8bn by the end of 2016/17, rising to £12.3 billion by the end of 2020/21.

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7 comments
  1. Jon says:

    You mention the DLR being driverless, but of course it is staffed. The Jubilee line is fully automated and of course also staffed. So the net gain of switching to a DLR style system is nothing as there is still a member of staff on every train.

    • Ian Visits says:

      The “DLR style driverless train service” that I mentioned is manned by staff.

      However, the wages are about half that a tube driver earns, so there will be some modest savings over time.

  2. Will says:

    ……..Fares income for this year is forecast to be £138m – 3% – lower than projected, principally as a result of lower passenger volumes on buses (£42m) and the tube (£17m)……….

    Is that per week, or just for one line?

  3. Victoria Line says:

    I am not surprised that bus passenger revenue is down as journey times are taking longer and longer due to construction works (CrossRail and others) and, in my particular case, the seemingly never ending closure of Tooley Street and now that of Tower Bridge, with a return to north bound only traffic on Moorgate. On a few occasions recently, I have failed to take advantage of the 2-for-1 fare scheme as the first bus took over an hour to reach the change over point. The most recent example was Royal Albert Hall to Elephant & Castle from where I intended to continue my journey to Blackheath.

    However, I am surprised by the projected fall in property sales. TfL has a large portfolio of both land and buildings and has been aggressively selling these off to the highest bidder. I can’t believe that flat building is about reach saturation point in London.

    • David Knowles says:

      Victoria Line the lower revenues from properties is probably down to a few things, one of Khan pledges is that 50% or more of TFL land is devoted to building affordable houses, the collapse in demand for properties at the higher end 1 million pounds plus houses and in the high end part of the market their are falls in prices happening, an general expectation that their will be less demand for office space and new houses after Brexit.

  4. Bob S says:

    The met line extension to Watford Junction appears to be missing from the latest plans.

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