TFL & "Managed Decline"

[deltic]

I think so long as we have a Conservative government and a Labour Mayor in power, the situation will remain as is. The former will want to punish voters until such time as they "get the message" and vote Tory.

As happened when the Labour govt was in power and Ken Livingstone was mayor and the crazy PPP scheme was imposed on the underground which cost billions.

 

[leytongabriel]

Yeah, kind of.
But actually, North London Line is already overloaded during both daytime off-peak and peak hours.
If NLL, WLL, SLL and GOBLIN managed to reduce the journey time by reducing the padding at the station, I think some efficiency may be better achieved. They are just too slow for now.

Certainly the NLL is slower than in BR days. Orbital journeys apart from the lines above are often difficult in London - try Ealing or Southgate or Enfield to anywhere not via zone 1

 

[Taunton]

Certainly the NLL is slower than in BR days.

Canonbury to Richmond 48-50 minutes today. 43 minutes in 1955, with 1920s trains. Same stations.

Meanwhile, I see the Mayor is now saying "A tube line may have to closen unless TfL secured long-term investment from the government":

London Underground: Entire Tube line may close, mayor warns - BBC News

Quite apart from the Mayor needing to understand the difference between "investment" and plain meeting of running costs, repairs and renewals (he may not know it but one of his advisers surely should), this seems to be getting ready to address the shortage of staff they have allowed to build up and blaming it all on the government.

 

[rebmcr]

Quite apart from the Mayor needing to understand the difference between "investment" and plain meeting of running costs, repairs and renewals (he may not know it but one of his advisers surely should)

Or, he's smart enough to understand that the average Londoner would just stop paying attention if he tried to communicate such nuance.

 

[deltic]

Canonbury to Richmond 48-50 minutes today. 43 minutes in 1955, with 1920s trains. Same stations.

Meanwhile, I see the Mayor is now saying "A tube line may have to closen unless TfL secured long-term investment from the government":

London Underground: Entire Tube line may close, mayor warns - BBC News

Quite apart from the Mayor needing to understand the difference between "investment" and plain meeting of running costs, repairs and renewals (he may not know it but one of his advisers surely should), this seems to be getting ready to address the shortage of staff they have allowed to build up and blaming it all on the government.

All politicians now seem to refer to spending as investment regardless of what it is.

With the exception of the Waterloo & City line its highly unlikely any line will close and arent drivers allocated to single lines. An Upminster based District Line driver is not going start working out of Morden depot on the Northern.

Its all political posturing.

 

[Taunton]

Or, he's smart enough to understand that the average Londoner would just stop paying attention if he tried to communicate such nuance.

Not a nuance. Government billions are always split between the two. One of the key things that government watches for is funds provided for significant improvements and investments being squandered on day-to-day expenses.

 

[Roger1973]

With the exception of the Waterloo & City line its highly unlikely any line will close and arent drivers allocated to single lines. An Upminster based District Line driver is not going start working out of Morden depot on the Northern.

While I agree that it's fairly unlikely that any Underground line will close, I think drivers would probably at least be offered redeployment elsewhere if any depot was to close, or ended up requiring a considerably smaller number of drivers.

I've not seen a LU driver contract, but I would be fairly sure that they are employed by LU as train drivers (or train operators or whatever they call them these days) rather than specifically employed as a X line driver at Y depot.

There are precedents here, New Cross (East London Line) train and station staff were (as far as I am aware) mostly moved elsewhere on the network when it closed for conversion to Overground (although I believe some took redundancy or early retirement instead) and a fair number of drivers moved around in the late 80s as lines went to OPO, either to take a (better paying) OPO job elsewhere, or to transfer to a line that was not (at that time) going OPO if they didn't want to do that.

There may be clauses in the contract for some sort of payment if a driver gets compulsorily moved to another depot - LT bus crews contract used to include an allowance of X amount a week per mile for a year or two if they got moved to another garage as a result of garage closure, or service reductions / OPO conversions at your own garage. Although there might be case by case arguments for redundancy if a new location was considered 'unreasonable'.

 

[dan5324]

Indeed so but as a contract worth ~£1 billion over 30 years, plus £1 billion up front, it's reasonable to be asking the question of what it's effect is on the near term budget. As I suggested bringing forward the charges for the Blackwall Tunnel to offset some of the costs of the Silvertown Tunnel is an option that's not apparently been looked at.

C charge. ULEZ. Potential to charge non Londoners a fee to drive into London. Now toll the blackwall tunnel immediately. How about we make public transport users start paying their way for change?

 

[stuu]

Not a nuance. Government billions are always split between the two. One of the key things that government watches for is funds provided for significant improvements and investments being squandered on day-to-day expenses.

Its a standard PR thing these days. Maintenance is referred to as "investing", even though it's patently nothing of the sort e.g. I saw saw other day that resurfacing a street with no other changes is referred to as "investing in your highways". It may not fool the Treasury of course

 

[Wolfie]

I think so long as we have a Conservative government and a Labour Mayor in power, the situation will remain as is. The former will want to punish voters until such time as they "get the message" and vote Tory.

Re your last sentence hell will freeze over first. I hope that the voters in Uxbridge exercise their judgement well come the next general election.

 

[Starmill]

C charge. ULEZ. Potential to charge non Londoners a fee to drive into London. Now toll the blackwall tunnel immediately. How about we make public transport users start paying their way for change?

The C Charge area is very small and it's not at all difficult to avoid the low emissions charges. Note that public transport users don't contribute to emissions in any comparable way. And there is overwhelmingly an argument that people using public transport are paying for it and likely will continue doing so with large above inflation rises. But of course that won't be sufficient. I must say if the idea of paying £2 to go through the Blackwall Tunnel causes you such a reaction as this I worry how you cope with airports that charge for drop off, car parking fees, or the sort of charges used on the M6 Toll.

 

[rebmcr]

I must say if the idea of paying £2 to go through the Blackwall Tunnel causes you such a reaction as this I worry how you cope with airports that charge for drop off, car parking fees, or the sort of charges used on the M6 Toll.

Probably with the same old tired "but my car" rhetoric.

 

[matt_world2004]

C charge. ULEZ. Potential to charge non Londoners a fee to drive into London. Now toll the blackwall tunnel immediately. How about we make public transport users start paying their way for change?

They do. Train fares and bus fares subdise the maintenance of the road network in London

 

[dan5324]

They do. Train fares and bus fares subdise the maintenance of the road network in London

That’s due to politics. Not money. VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport. Tube fares and bus fares have been subsidised for too long. Time to increase them dramatically. Or cut services. Simple as.

Thanfully it looks like services will be cut rather than bleed the motorist.

 

[Tube driver]

While I agree that it's fairly unlikely that any Underground line will close, I think drivers would probably at least be offered redeployment elsewhere if any depot was to close, or ended up requiring a considerably smaller number of drivers.

I've not seen a LU driver contract, but I would be fairly sure that they are employed by LU as train drivers (or train operators or whatever they call them these days) rather than specifically employed as a X line driver at Y depot.

There are precedents here, New Cross (East London Line) train and station staff were (as far as I am aware) mostly moved elsewhere on the network when it closed for conversion to Overground (although I believe some took redundancy or early retirement instead) and a fair number of drivers moved around in the late 80s as lines went to OPO, either to take a (better paying) OPO job elsewhere, or to transfer to a line that was not (at that time) going OPO if they didn't want to do that.

There may be clauses in the contract for some sort of payment if a driver gets compulsorily moved to another depot - LT bus crews contract used to include an allowance of X amount a week per mile for a year or two if they got moved to another garage as a result of garage closure, or service reductions / OPO conversions at your own garage. Although there might be case by case arguments for redundancy if a new location was considered 'unreasonable'.

Yep, I’m employed as a train operator for London Underground and not as a train operator at xxx depot on xxx line. If they closed my line I’d just be punted elsewhere on the network and probably get first dibs on depot location to boot! East London line closure has set the precedent for that.

If, in the extremely unlikely event it does happen, LUL would probably offer voluntary severance and the queue for that would be miles long! There’s an awful lot of t/ops who have an awful lot of service who‘d jump at the chance of an early payday like that.

 

[Starmill]

VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport.

Even if this were a valid comparison, which it most definitely is not, it doesn't appear to be true. Unless you compare the whole country with just London.

As for "bleeding the motorist" nonsense, emissions charges are a new thing across England, and they're all specifically designed to improve air quality by increasing the proportion of compliant vehicles, not "bleed the motorist". Most won't raise enough revenue to do anything useful with.

 

[matt_world2004]

That’s due to politics. Not money. VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport. Tube fares and bus fares have been subsidised for too long. Time to increase them dramatically. Or cut services. Simple as.

Thanfully it looks like services will be cut rather than bleed the motorist.

None of which goes to funding the road network in London.

 

[stuu]

That’s due to politics. Not money. VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport. Tube fares and bus fares have been subsidised for too long. Time to increase them dramatically. Or cut services. Simple as.

Then expect the poor, downtrodden motorist to be stuck in even bigger traffic jams in the future.

Road transport comes nowhere close to covering it's costs any more than public transport does

 

[Busaholic]

If, in the extremely unlikely event it does happen, LUL would probably offer voluntary severance and the queue for that would be miles long! There’s an awful lot of t/ops who have an awful lot of service who‘d jump at the chance of an early payday like that.

I don't doubt you're right, but that would wipe out a lot of the notional 'savings'. Of course, the ultimate 'saving' would be TfL to withdraw from providing public transport at all or having any duties or responsibilities. Think of the unbelievable savings to be made there, a real gamechanger. That great follower of Ayn Rand, Sajid Javid, might be the man to oversee this visionary idea.

 

[The Ham]

That’s due to politics. Not money. VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport. Tube fares and bus fares have been subsidised for too long. Time to increase them dramatically. Or cut services. Simple as.

Thanfully it looks like services will be cut rather than bleed the motorist.

However TfL don't receive any of those taxes from cars, as those feed into general (national) tax income rather than being linked to roads.

Vehicle taxes (especially the "tax" generated from speed cameras) are easy to avoid. If you wish to reduce your fuel duty taxes you can:
- walk/cycle more of your shorter journeys
- get a car which needs less fuel
- see if there are ways you can drive in a way which reduces the amount of fuel you use

One thing which I wish you well on its getting about, as if we see a significant fall in the availablity of public transport those people will still need to get about, if not by public transport then likely by car.

Whilst buses may not look busy, a bus with 8 people on is likely to be carrying 5 cars worth of people but taking up just 2 cars worth of road space when moving and requires nearly zero space to park (at least compared to the space those driving to those locations need).

The division between car driving vs other modes of travel is not a helpful one, as both are needed (in that few never drive or benefit from those who drive, however those that drive benefit from others not driving).

The Union Connectivity Report said that it's anticipated that road use will increase between 2015 and 2050 by 51%, without massive road building plans (which the government will need to significantly increase the level of subsidy) or new public transport provision (which the government will need to invest in) many roads will gridlock well before 2050 even without reducing the amount of public transport use which could come about from this current spat between TfL and Central Government.

However it should be noted that I say the above as someone who designs roads for a living and I can tell you that we are never going to be able to build our way or of car congestion because cars are such an ineffective use of the land we have available in this country.

Many suburban houses will have garages which are larger than most rooms in the house (a fairly reasonable double bedroom is circa 3m x 3m, most new garages should be 3m x 6m). Most shops are smaller than the car parks which serve them and the amount of road space (much is often used for the parking of cars at zero cost, or very low cost, to their owners) in any area is significant.

Not only that but cars are rarely used, even if someone were to drive their car for 2 hours every day (and relatively few do more than that, given that most people live within 20 miles of where they work) the car is used for about 8.4% of the time and most of the time most cars are carrying just one person (average car occupancy is between 1.2 and 1.4 depending on the reason for travel).

That's not overly surprising, given that according to market research undertaken by Chrysler in the 1990's SUV drivers are self-centred and self-absorbed with little interest in their neighbours or communities.

There's likely to be other sources for that but here's one:

Wheels within wheels

www.walk.com.au

I may design roads, but few who love cars like what many of us in the industry have been saying for years. In part as the adverts for cars sell us the image of empty roads for us to drive about on without a worry in the world (if you don't belong me count the cars not being advertised in car adverts and tell me how many have more than a handful and compare that to those which have none).

Technology isn't going to help, self driving may gain is a little in capacity, but 50% more that 2015, not a chance.

Cars a useful tool, unfortunately too many see them as an extension of themselves. Yes they are great at getting you from A to B, however they don't change who you are (with the possible exception of isolating you from those around you).

 

[SynthD]

this seems to be getting ready to address the shortage of staff they have allowed to build up and blaming it all on the government.

In all of the talk I saw about resuming the night tube and negotiating with the unions, this didn’t come up. It sounded like they restarted training on day time drivers first, and caught up. How big is the shortage?

 

[Wolfie]

That’s due to politics. Not money. VED and fuel duty alone brings in nearly double the amount of fare income from public transport. Tube fares and bus fares have been subsidised for too long. Time to increase them dramatically. Or cut services. Simple as.

Thanfully it looks like services will be cut rather than bleed the motorist.

Time for motoring to pay the full cost of the damage it's emissions do....

 

[Snow1964]

Its a standard PR thing these days. Maintenance is referred to as "investing", even though it's patently nothing of the sort e.g. I saw saw other day that resurfacing a street with no other changes is referred to as "investing in your highways". It may not fool the Treasury of course

PR doesn’t seem to care about accounting accuracy.

Strictly repairs / renewals / maintenance ends up with asset doing same thing with same capacity, speed etc

Investment is an improvement / enhancement, so goes faster, has more capacity, simpler to maintain, uses less energy etc.

Downgrade / rationalisation is where you end up with something slower or less capacity. (But PR teams always skip this category)

 

[The Ham]

Time for motoring to pay the full cost of the damage it's emissions do....

What about the impact on water quality, the increased risk from flooding, harm caused to people, harm (directly) to wildlife, loss of habitats, emissions from concrete during road construction, etc...

That's before you consider division of communities due to traffic, the fact that we often drive when we shouldn't, harming our physical and mental health which costs us as tax payers more in treatments on the NHS.

 

[dan5324]

Time for motoring to pay the full cost of the damage it's emissions do....

No issue with that. As long as everything that is the fabric to modern life is equally billed for the external harm it does.

What about the impact on water quality, the increased risk from flooding, harm caused to people, harm (directly) to wildlife, loss of habitats, emissions from concrete during road construction, etc...

That's before you consider division of communities due to traffic, the fact that we often drive when we shouldn't, harming our physical and mental health which costs us as tax payers more in treatments on the NHS.

That first part sounds like you’re describing HS2.

 

[Snow1964]

Anyone who has looked at TfL Board meeting papers for 8th December will have noticed item 7

7. Finance Report: Budget Submission and Capital Strategy - to follow Chief Finance Officer

So TfL are still working on Capital strategy, and budgets are normally done around February/March ahead of financial year starting 1st April.

Therefore as TfL don’t do their own budget this time of year, it must be the one indicating how grovelling they want to be to Government . Should be interesting read when it is uploaded (hopefully the juicy bits won’t be redacted as commercially sensitive)

https://board.tfl.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=138&MId=643&Ver=4

 

[The Ham]

That first part sounds like you’re describing HS2.

The use of SUDs will ensure water quality from drainage is kept high even if contamination gets into the drainage system. If you are thinking of ground water contamination, given the water board have signed it off chances are it's not an issue.

HS2 doesn't directly cause (physical) harm to people.

HS2 does cause harm to wildlife, however as an example the barn owl trust cite that HS2 would “cause the loss of up to 80 breeding pairs of Barn Owls” however they also state that "

• In a typical year, Britain’s 4,000 pairs of Barn Owls produce roughly 12,000 young and it is estimated that a staggering 3,000 – 5,000 of these are killed on roads.
• Less than 2% of Britain’s roads are major roads (e.g. motorways and dual carriageways) but that’s where over 90% of Barn Owl road casualties are found."

Yes HS2 does cause habitat loss, however it would be much worse if it was a near motorway standard road or would likely be worse in footprint terms. However that's not the main concern, the biggest cause of habitats loss is down to global warming, the largest share of carbon emissions in the UK is transport with cars being far and away the biggest cause of that.

Again HS2 does need a lot of concrete, however again compared to a comparable major road the amount would likely be less.

Before you say "ah but HS2 isn't instead to a road", with projected road growth of 51% between 2015 and 2050 is likely that without HS2 more roads would need to be built. With 18tph and capacity of 1,100 passengers per train over an 15 hour day assuming 50% loading of trains HS2 had the capacity to carry broadly the same number of people as the M25 (200,000 vehiclesb per day with an assumed average occupancy of 1.5 = 300,000 vs 18tph over 15 hours, so 7am to 10pm, with 550 passengers on each train in each direction = 297,000).

 

[Cowley]

Hm. I think at this point we might be drifting off topic somewhat…

 

[Dstock7080]

Can anyone shed any light on the state of the Silvertown Tunnel contract? Has progressed such that it not be cancelled? Surely deferring the new tunnel a decade would help with the current finances?

Picture posted today of the RiverLinx TBM for Silvertown tunnel undergoing testing at the factory in Herrenknecht Germany, before being dismantled and shipped by boat to London for reassembly

 

[Recessio]

Of course, the ultimate 'saving' would be TfL to withdraw from providing public transport at all or having any duties or responsibilities. Think of the unbelievable savings to be made there, a real gamechanger.

Reminds me of the Yes Minister episode with the empty hospital running at perfect efficiency.

Tbf, TfL won't be far off this if they had ended up issuing a s104. What was it, school buses, dial-a-ride and the Woolwich Ferry only left operating?