February 3rd - TfL Tries To Mind The Gap
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transport for London has announced in their latest financial update that the black hole in London's transport network has ballooned to £1.5 billion, mainly due to the pandemic. Just as London's network begins to show the strain of this, bosses are in a battle to get more money from the central government and are looking at a lot of different ways to claw back some of the money. Plans to introduce a road user charge, hike up council tax and extend a congestion charging zone will not be enough to balance the books, TfL board papers have revealed and talk of 'managed decline' as well as more off-the-wall plans such as closing tube lines for some days of the week are all being talked of. I take a look at what's going on.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest |
| 0:07.4 | news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward to one or perhaps |
| 0:12.6 | like me on a great journey. Right now, I'm on a number 19 bus going east along Piccadilly in central London. |
| 0:23.3 | And the reason I'm doing that is because there is some glum travel news about transport |
| 0:29.7 | for London. |
| 0:30.8 | Used to be known as London Transport running the buses and the tubes around town. |
| 0:37.7 | The big problem is that the organisation faces an annual shortfall of £1.5 billion. |
| 0:49.1 | That is an extraordinary sum of course and it represents the difference between what people |
| 0:56.6 | will be paying in fares and the other income that Transport for London gets |
| 1:02.1 | everything up to and including ads on buses and tubes of course and what it |
| 1:08.6 | costs to run the system and so therefore the board of Transport for |
| 1:15.7 | London is coming up with ways to address that now you've got to be aware that of |
| 1:22.0 | course this is a big game between central government and the London mayor who is responsible for travel. |
| 1:33.3 | You've got Siddik Khan, the London mayor, Labour of course, and the government where the |
| 1:40.3 | treasurer, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak and the rest the Treasury, really don't want to spend too much more on London transport. |
| 1:50.2 | Ironically, of course, in the leveling up announcements that we heard on Wednesday, it was all about getting transport elsewhere in the UK as good as it is in London. |
| 2:00.7 | But today, they are talking about managed decline. |
| 2:06.9 | And, well, this is actually a quote from the proposals that have been published. |
| 2:14.0 | You can search for them online. |
| 2:15.5 | Just look for TFL budget update and you will see |
| 2:19.5 | that they warn of a declining network with aging assets that will fail more regularly |
| 2:25.6 | significantly worse performance on the road network as existing strained conditions for some |
... |
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