Transport For London , December 2021, Section 114 "Bankruptcy" - Service Cuts?

[Pandora]

Tfl has had a received a number of short-term Govt bailouts  to continue train/underground/bus services,  reasons, Covid, Crossrail delayed.

The most recent bailout is soon to end in December   there is a £1.9 bn financial hole to plug.

Speculation is Tfl may issue a dreaded  Section 114 "no way out of this hole" Notice.

Press articles  write of  closures and service cuts , the Bakerloo Line  is the favourite, and 100 of the 700 bus routes will close and reduced services on others.

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

A simple explanation about the situation....

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/tfl-funding-managed-decline-sadiq-khan-b967241.html

 

 

 

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[Pandora]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

A simple explanation about the situation....

 

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/tfl-funding-managed-decline-sadiq-khan-b967241.html

 

 

 

.

 

A  "tongue in cheek" column filler by the Standard. 

The non-performing much-delayed  Crossrail , slated to be worth £500m then £1bn in revenues for Tfl must be part of the problem

[Pandora]

London has an incredible generous free-travel policy,  the over 60s Oystercard,  provides  free travel 7 days / week for those aged 60 to 66 on Tfl, Network Rail , bus, underground  over a vast area Romford - Surbiton East-West,  Hadley Wood to Epsom North - South.

The  days of the over 60s Oystercard free travel scheme must be numbered as  Tfl place a begging bowl  before the Govt again

[lmsforever]

Do people think that khan contruted to the current situation with his fare freezes you cant run services at a loss for ever.

[phil-b259]

10 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Do people think that khan contruted to the current situation with his fare freezes you cant run services at a loss for ever.

 

The fares freeze was one of the first things the Government demanded be scrapped as a condition of the first bailout over a year ago!

 

 

[thirty2a]

bus routes have been cut back already which doesn't get a lot of coverage, I do wonder how we will get people to use less cars when public transport is on a downward trajectory .. 

Tony

[JeffP]

London has an incredibly complex local area travel system, with buses, and both under, and overground trains. With it you can get anywhere in the capital relatively easily.

Seriously, I'm being pressured to use more public transport with my wheelchair-bound wife, yet buses here (and that's my sole option), are infrequent, and go into the town, full stop.

To visit my son, or a local shopping area would necessitate into town and back out.

Londoners need to bite the bullet and pay for what they have.

[Hobby]

It's the same where I am, Jeff, people in large cities don't know how good they have it!

[thirty2a]

I agree with what you are saying but surely we need to get the best for everyone not cut what people already have? it is a failing of local government as far as buses outside London is concerned. Manchester trams are a good example of how to get a good network of public transport, if only we could get Croydon tram link extensions so well!

[melmerby]

West Midlands bus services are pretty good and most are run on a commercial basis.

They still manage to have cheapish fares, NX WM have recently cut their fares.

 

 

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, thirty2a said:

I agree with what you are saying but surely we need to get the best for everyone not cut what people already have? it is a failing of local government as far as buses outside London is concerned. Manchester trams are a good example of how to get a good network of public transport, if only we could get Croydon tram link extensions so well!

 

The problem with any Croydon tram extension is you don't have to go far before you slam into congested radial roads with no space for a dedicated set of tram tracks.

 

If you have a look at all UK tram systems the amount of street running is generally minimised - and the roads which are used not carrying strategic traffic.

 

In Croydon the corridors most in need of relief are north and south of the town - but you don't get far before you slam into the A23 and would have to mix it up with what is the signposted route between London, Gatwick and Brighton!

 

 

 

[lmsforever]

Here in Bucks we have good services thanks to the council considering the needs of us voters , in Aylesbury we are very well served mainly by a local company that sends buses where people want them.London has always been an area of different needs ,for a long time routes did not deviate off of main roads and you often had a long walk to the bus. When i lived in Newbury Park we had a mile and a quarter walk to get on a trolleybus to Ilford but people accepted this then.As things developed buses went further into estates thus increasing the requirement for more buses and crews but of course covid has changed everything .I read an article yesterday about closing the Bakerloo line and cutting many many bus routes how things are going downhill quickly .London without its many bus routes will be a city where the car will take over so something has to be done quickly.

[SamThomas]

Maybe, just maybe the costs of replacing perfectly serviceable TfL buses & other vehicles with alternative fueled ones is not helping to ballance the books ?

[Nearholmer]

That ‘Standard’ article is actually a pretty good summary of what I know to be the facts, having been ‘an insider’ until leaving TFL about five years ago, and continuing to ‘follow form’ quite closely.
 

Pandora is right that delay of the Crossrail income stream has left holes in the forward income plan, but the real problem is nothing more or less than the pandemic having crushed fares income. Before the pandemic, TfL was more or less self-funding from the various sources available to them.

 

If you winkle into the figures and reports, which are in the public domain via TFL’s website, it is possible get a pretty clear idea of which parts of the TfL network don’t directly cover their costs, even in normal times, and you will find that bus routes are probably still the biggest part of that, and the big issue around that is “social inclusion/exclusion”. Buses serve places and a great many people who, bluntly, can’t afford to live in tube catchment areas, because housing costs in tube catchments are much higher, and if bus routes are slashed, it cuts-off from access to jobs and services a great many people, ironically many of whom provide the services that everyone else depends upon.

 

Boris fully understood this, and fully supported a ‘social inclusion’ agenda, using heavily subsidised bus services, and concessionaire/free travel when he was Mayor. It made both practical and electoral sense. It was after his tenure that revenue subsidy was shifted from London to the North of England, and TfL rose to that challenge by a mix of cuts and clever-stuff to re-balance the books.

 

I don’t know what the answer is, although the shorter-term options are clearly: cut services that don’t directly cover costs; cut free travel concessions; or, obtain some ‘tide over’ funding to fill the fares chasm until things re-stabilise.

 

As a sort of PS, the reason people in cities always do better than people in rural areas for public transport is really simple: it is cheaper per person to serve customers in a densely populated area. Nothing new in that, it was ever thus. From a financial efficiency viewpoint it is always better to serve densely populated areas than sparsely populated, whether that be with trains, buses, post offices, shops, pubs, schools, hospitals, hairdressers …… I could go on. How much public money, if any, to spend on subsidising services of any kind in any area is a political question, but the economic realities are unchangeable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[APOLLO]

Shut the whole lot, buses, tubes, taxis etc. Total ban on all cars and give everybody one of these, Should be loads of fun !!!!!

 

 

 

Brit15

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

The problem with any Croydon tram extension is you don't have to go far before you slam into congested radial roads with no space for a dedicated set of tram tracks.

 

If you have a look at all UK tram systems the amount of street running is generally minimised - and the roads which are used not carrying strategic traffic.

 

In Croydon the corridors most in need of relief are north and south of the town - but you don't get far before you slam into the A23 and would have to mix it up with what is the signposted route between London, Gatwick and Brighton!

 

 

 

Imo Croydon tramlink should takeover the line to Sutton from west Croydon.

 

imagine.. new terminal platforms on the old carriage sidings, access from the existing slope from the main road… the station platforms would be step free,

Then the current through platforms become tramlink, lowering the platform height removing the track off the road by the bus station, and again step free and a whole open bus, tram, train interchange.

 

Tram runs up to Sutton restoring Bandon Halt, maybe a new stop at Waddon Road.

Then take the Quadrant at Sutton avoiding the Downs line, over the railway bridge and round the town centre and off down Rosehill towards South Wimbedon as per current plans, with a Tram interchange at Morden Road, to allow connections access to Wimbledon station.

 

Divert the Epsom to London Bridge via Carshalton, Hackbridge, which cancels the loss of Beeches and Wallington. Make Epsom Downs into a shuttle to Sutton, and a Victoria -West Croydon service.

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by adb968008

[Bernard Lamb]

16 hours ago, Pandora said:

London has an incredible generous free-travel policy,  the over 60s Oystercard,  provides  free travel 7 days / week for those aged 60 to 66 on Tfl, Network Rail , bus, underground  over a vast area Romford - Surbiton East-West,  Hadley Wood to Epsom North - South.

The  days of the over 60s Oystercard free travel scheme must be numbered as  Tfl place a begging bowl  before the Govt again

Firstly no it does not.

Secondly. Got a better idea?

Far too political for further comment.

Bernard

 

[adb968008]

One thing ive not seen TFL threaten is to reduce its own costs.

Personally I think its over bloated, with too many dream schemes the go in endless iterations of consulting fees, but never go further, there is plenty of fat that can be cut at all levels.
I dont think every overground station needs to be manned for a start.. none of the other operators are doing this.

Theres some tremendous waste spent on designer architecture projects over the years, including places the public never see.

 

I dont believe for one second a line will close, its just brinksmanship. What concerns me more would be if they did, the amount of money they would spend on advertising it being closed to promote their politics.

 

Are they still spending a small fortune of resdesigning the caves below Bank station on the Northern Line ?

They could hand back Overground to the Dft ? But that would mean an end to their empirical dreams of taking over most of london suburban lines. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by adb968008

[Michael Hodgson]

51 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

Shut the whole lot, buses, tubes, taxis etc. Total ban on all cars and give everybody one of these, Should be loads of fun !!!!!

 

 

 

Brit15

As it's illegal to use them on the highway, everybody would be arrested.  We can't increase taxes for all the new prisons we would need if the entire population is doing porridge,  so the gaols will go bust. 

[Nearholmer]

A factor to be borne in mind with all of the free travel concessions, has to be how people will behave if they are taken away:

 

- a prosperous top-slice will continue as before, but pay for travel, or change modes and, in the suburbs, use cars more, or use Uber, or black cabs;

 

- a middling group will travel less, maybe cutting things back to bare necessities like getting to medical appointments;

 

- some will simply stop travelling beyond the range of shanks’s pony.

 

What definitely never happens is that all the free trips convert into paid trips, magically boosting revenue. The net effect in a city is to further impoverish the poor, reduce general trade, a very small increase in revenue, and, it doesn’t save the operator much if anything in cost of operating services (it’s not like rural areas where many bus services are pretty much ‘pensioners and school kids only’, in cities the demographic of users is much wider).

 

Much free travel is off-peak, and has virtually nil marginal cost of provision, not the case so much with morning school trips, but definitely the case for pensioners.

 

Its also worth considering the right symbiosis between public transport provision and the general function of the city, and it’s prosperity. In mega-cities like London, NY, Paris, Berlin etc that relationship is so tight as to be inextricable - public transport made these cities, not the other way round, they can’t function as cities without it. No coincidence that a significant source of non-fare income for TFL is from business rates, and that the business community is always well-represented on the board of TfL. Even if a very few swankers get driven to their offices in limos, everyone else, from the office cleaners to the Kings of Kommerce gets to Canary Wharf, The City, the West End, both Westfield shopping centres etc by public transport.

 

Solving the problem by one means or another is in everyone’s interests, and if between them they don’t get it right they will “kill the goose”.

[Steamport Southport]

3 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

As it's illegal to use them on the highway, everybody would be arrested.  We can't increase taxes for all the new prisons we would need if the entire population is doing porridge,  so the gaols will go bust. 

 

Not true. It's illegal to use them on pavements, not roads. Most major cities now have them.

 

They've virtually replaced Boris Bikes in Liverpool. Particularly with students.

 

https://liverpool.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/getting-around-liverpool/e-scooters-for-hire/

 

Far too expensive though. Just get a bus.....

 

 

Jason

[Nearholmer]

9 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

One thing ive not seen TFL threaten is to reduce its own costs.

Go away and do your research. It’s all there in the public domain to be found.

 

Most “fancy station schemes” BTW are at least part-funded through Section 106 monies from property developers. As a random insight to this topic, I well remember when Olympia and York, the Canadian-owned developers of Canary Wharf, went bust, owing TfL staggering sums towards the construction of the Jubilee Line (£400M IIRC), and how that created a previous hole in the budget.

 

16 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

tremendous waste spent on designer architecture projects over the years, including places the public never see.

If you can cite an example of spend on over-design of bits the public never sees, I will eat my hat, because in 27 years with TfL I never saw any. If you get to see the bits nobody sees, you will discover that they are seriously, deeply, incredibly utilitarian.

[adb968008]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Solving the problem by one means or another is in everyone’s interests, and if between them they don’t get it right they will “kill the goose”.

The problem is the goose has grown up to become a duck.

 

Professionals are working from home, meaning catering, retail and cleaning jobs are in decline. Tourists have gone away, and as much of Londons tourism is Europeans, much of that wont return, as they need to buy a passport rather than wave an ID card. Add to this Londons decline as a European hub there is less need for business travel in a zoom era.

 

London is going to have a long painful readjustment. I would point to Hong Kong as an example, from 1990 it went into terminal decline for 12 years and only started growing again when Chinese influence and prosperity brought inward investment from 2002 onwards.

 

I dont see a sunny upside where tourism grows above pre-covid levels, or where international business returns its hubs to the UK or employees willingly give up their extra 4 hours a day at home, £3k a year on travelcards and £5k a year on childcare, £2k a year on parking when most of that has already been eaten by inflation.

[adb968008]

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If you can cite an example of spend on over-design of bits the public never sees, I will eat my hat, because in 27 years with TfL I never saw any. If you get to see the bits nobody sees, you will discover that they are seriously, deeply, incredibly utilitarian.

Stratford tube depot… impressive… way over architected for its needs.

 

West Ham bus garage… very designer… all thats needed is a warehouse with doors not a designer building…with wooden arched roofs… £5.5 mn, just for the architects…plus construction..
https://briggsandforrester.co.uk/case-studies/west-ham-bus-station

 

 

£300 million spent on a handful of designer projects…by their own admission…

 

http://www.prsarchitects.com/practice/clients/transport-london

 

Thats the most colourful sub station ive ever seen… and theres 3 unique ones like that…

 

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by adb968008