It is worth saying that government funding of TfL was a pretty regular thing but was massively cut before Covid. I don't have the numbers to hand but central government basically forced hundreds of millions of pounds in funding cuts which surely are having an impact today?
Bozo "agreed" with Osborne's/Treasury's wizzard-wheeze of slashing TfLs operating subsidy on his way out of the door to a life of doing even less for his living than the grand photo-op that was his ruinous Mayoralty.
Those idiots went along with the comfortable assumption that because (shock!Horror!!) TfL actually was on its way to a relatively neutral budget that they could get away with this and there would be no consequence - Bozo's favourite justification - for doing so because London would just keep generating Fares Revenue to cover the gap this would leave.
Almost nobody bothered to ask "but what if......?" at the time and the usually cautious Treasury was presumably happy to run without the safety net/insurance policy because things had been fine since at least WWII. What could possibly go wrong?
We'll Covid happened only four years later. London stopped "generating" much of anything and the rest is the largely unacknowledged sad story we are currently living through.
TfL are not in the crap because of payroll, or headcount, or incompetent management or any of the other safe and lazy excuses that help fog the situation for the morons currently in charge of everything. They did this. The Government.
And It wasn't Khan's fares-freeze - that came to a grand total of revenue forgone that would barely get TfL through five weeks of operating. So let's dispense with that handy bit of whatabouting.
The creature currently parked like a fat donations-sponge in 10 Downing St owns the blame for why £500M is currently such an insurmountable "issue" for TfL - who haven't got much "fat" that can actually be cut to meet this stupid demand without harm.
But "must be fair to Taxpayers" right?
This administration is even less able than usual to try pulling that stupid sound bite off.
There's a Blue Wall to shore-up/bribe/keep happy somehow. And it doesn't run anywhere near anywhere TfL does.