Underground is in Deep Trouble

Andrew Neather
29.07.10

Ads by Google

Specialist Contractors
M & E, Signalling, Civils. Rail, Underground, Switchgear.
www.giffengroup.co.uk

Transport in east London
East London has the fastest growing transport infrastructure
www.gtlon.co.uk/transport

London Trains
Cheap Tickets For UK Trains - Check Times and Book Online Now!
FirstCapitalConnect.co.uk

Paris Train Tours
Champagne Lunch On The Eiffel Tower Train Tours From London. Book Now!
www.PremiumTours.co.uk

For the 3,000 passengers sweltering in the tunnel at Oxford Circus on Monday, it was just another rush-hour delay on the Victoria line. For the future of the Tube, it was more frustrating.

The broken-down train was one of the 10 spanking new, fully automatic, £10 million machines central to the Victoria line's £900 million upgrade.
Already they have been tested on the line for a year. Still they suffer computer software problems. And this is just the leading edge of the dramatic upgrades planned for almost the whole network.
New kit always causes problems: trains introduced on the Northern line in 1996 broke down for years, justifying the “misery line” nickname. The Victoria line upgrades are on schedule and on budget. But today Tube users are facing the reality of state-of-the art trains and signalling systems being tested live on the world's oldest underground railway system.
Combined with the threat of savage Government cuts, such challenges suggest we may have much longer to wait for the new Tube we were promised in 2003, when the first of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) deals for the network was signed and control of London Underground passed to the Mayor.
That we need a new Tube is beyond doubt. Never mind the delays and crumbling stations suffered by passengers: go behind the scenes and it's clear that this is a network in desperate need of investment.
At the Earl's Court control room on the District line, most of the technology is stuck in 1961, when it was built. “I first came here in 1977,” jokes Howard Collins, LU's chief operating officer, “and you still can't stick anything into the wall because of the asbestos.”
I'm down in the interlocking machine room, the guts of the District line's signaling system — effectively the brain of the line. The technology is mechanical levers powered by air pressure, directed by hole-punch reels driven by Hewlett Packard HP1000s, a 1960s computer system discontinued a decade ago. It looks like the traffic-control computer sabotaged in The Italian Job (1969) — only scruffier and with household fans rigged up to keep the heat down.
Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy is more pithy: “The signaling is all clapped out.”
This is the heart of the problem, and it's a big job — roughly like rewiring your whole house, only without stopping anything running. On Monday the Metropolitan line will get the first of the “sub-surface” lines' 191 new trains, complete with air conditioning. But as Collins admits: “It's like taking the poshest car imaginable and then driving it down a farm track.” Without new signalling and track, the new trains will make little difference to journey times.
The PPP, a mind-bendingly complex 30-year deal contracting out maintenance and upgrading, was supposed to fix all this. The plan was to increase the Tube's capacity to serve a bigger, more prosperous London, as well as making the Tube more pleasant to use. Instead of about 24 trains an hour at peak times, there would be nearer 36.
You could be forgiven if you hadn't noticed — despite nearly £12 billion being spent since 2003. Many of the improvements have been peripheral — new track on outlying sections, spruced-up stations — or else add-ons such as the Oyster system.
The major work fell rapidly behind and costs ballooned. The two consortia of engineering contractors involved, Tube Lines and Metronet, argued bitterly with Transport for London.
Metronet collapsed in May 2007 under a mountain of debt and uncontrolled costs. It had been responsible for the Victoria, Bakerloo, Waterloo and City and Central and “sub-surface” lines (the earliest, shallow Underground lines — Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and East London). In May 2008, it was transferred to TfL.
Then last year the other contractor, Tube Lines, responsible for the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, started to wobble, after admitting that the Jubilee line upgrade was far behind schedule.
A major stand-off developed with TfL over the costs of the next stage of the work, starting next year — although the PPP's arbiter conceded that the cost was £400 million more than TfL claimed. Faced with collapse, Tube Lines was bought out for £310 million by TfL last month.
Imperial College's Professor Stephen Glaister, a former board member of TfL and a director of Tube Lines, blames Gordon Brown, who forced the PPP model on Mayor Ken Livingstone. “Brown thought PPP was a cost-reducing way of getting the work done,” recalls Glaister. “That simply was not realistic.”
A TfL report last week warned of serious new delays to both the Jubilee and Northern lines (see box). One Jubilee line driver told me: “There's a general lack of confidence among drivers. When we test it at weekends, we'll have a good afternoon when it runs fine and then the system falls over and we have hours of delays.”
The Mayor has promised that line closures on the Jubilee and Northern lines will be kept to a minimum — but that will prolong the job.
Meanwhile, there are serious doubts whether the lines that were always further along in the schedule — such as the Piccadilly and Bakerloo — will ever now get their upgrade.
Then there's the money. It was already questionable whether TfL could afford the job.
Glaister warns: “There is a big black hole and TfL are either going to have to find the money elsewhere or slow down the whole programme.”
And there is the prospect of the Department for Transport passing on cuts of up to 40 per cent.
There is also competition for funds from separate Crossrail projects. The LSE's Tony Travers is pessimistic: “The Treasury just don't trust London Underground any more.”
Hendy concedes that “in extremis” a 40 per cent cut in funding would mean not being able to upgrade signalling on the sub-surface lines. He warns: “The risk then is that the system falls over more and more.” Glaister adds: “I'm really concerned that the Northern line is going to become dreadfully unreliable.”
Business leaders are clear, though: without a revamped Tube, London will start to grind to a halt. Passenger numbers have risen steadily since the mid-1980s: there are now 3.5 million journeys each weekday and sometimes more than four million. London's projected future growth will push it past breaking point.
Peter Hendy is defiant: “The Mayor will go down fighting for this.”
Prepare for a battle royal between Boris Johnson and the Chancellor over the future of the rails beneath our feet.
Victoria Line
Still scheduled for completion in spring 2012. A new signalling system is ready to go live, while most of the work on renewing track and ventilation systems is complete. The main hold-up now is the wait for the rest of the 47 new trains, arriving at a rate of about one a fortnight from engineers Bombardier.
Jubilee Line
Originally contracted to Tube Lines, the main part of the upgrade to the Jubilee line is to its signalling system, designed by French electronics group Thales. Originally scheduled for completion in December 2009, it fell badly behind: Tube Lines underestimated the difficulty of developing the system software. Extra weekend closures — 146 to date, which have led to all sorts of problems for the O2 arena at Greenwich, for example — have still not anywhere near ironed out the bugs in the system. A recent TfL report says that it is unlikely to be complete before February 2011.
Circle, District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan Lines
These sub-surface lines are the focus for the next major tranche of investment, £4.5 billion over seven years. From next week, new trains will start to run here, starting with the Metropolitan line. By 2015 all these lines will have the new trains (cost: £1.5 billion) although some platforms will need lengthening to accommodate them. Work on new signalling will begin next year. Expected completion of the whole upgrade: 2017.
Northern Line
New signalling for the Northern line was originally contracted to Tube Lines and scheduled for completion by December 2011. By this month, work was supposed to be 72 per cent complete — in fact, only 10-12 per cent has been done. A report for TfL this month by contractors Serco notes that “slippage experienced to date suggests that if this programme were to proceed then it is likely that the upgrade would not be complete until late 2013” and that “even this estimate may be optimistic”.
Piccadilly Line
New trains and signalling were originally scheduled for completion by 2014. Future now very uncertain: TfL are cagey about the timetable and even 2017 is now seen as optimistic by insiders. By then its existing trains will be 40 years old.
Bakerloo Line
The last line to be upgraded: new trains and signalling originally scheduled for 2020. When it gets done is now anyone's guess.

Reader views (2)

 Add your view

I love this ironic comment from Tony Travers: “The Treasury just don't trust London Underground any more.”

The Treasury's record on transport over the years is unbelievably bad.

The disastrous PPP was cooked up in the Treasury. But their greatest transport crime was the crazy industry structure forced on the railway industry at privatisation, completely against the advice of all the experts who knew anything about railways. This almost lead to the complete collapse of the network in 2000, and has resulted in a tripling in the subsidy without anything like a tripling in the quality. Our railway is now very expensive by European standards, but nothing like European quality. Have we ever has an apology from Sir Steve Robson, former deputy permanent secretary to the Treasury, who Christian Wolmar says "pushed through the structure of rail privatisation...that is at root of so many of the railway’s problems"?

There are many other examples.

More generally, the Treasury (and the ex-treasury hacks who dominate the upper reaches of the DfT) has an obsession with competition, which just doesn't work with public transport. See for example the book by Paul Mees.

London desperately devolved control over tax and spending. We need to wrest control of the purse strings from the dead hand of the Treasury, and allocate the money according to local priorities, and not according to Treasury prejudices and dubious cost/benefit models.

- Kev, Bromley, 29/07/2010 14:41
Report abuse

The problem is that the tube is run for the benefit of greedy union employees and private contractors with the paying customer only an afterthought. Its fairly simple

- George, London, 29/07/2010 14:21
Report abuse

Add your comment

 

Name:
Town and country:
Your comment:Terms and conditions Make text area bigger You have 1500 characters left.

We welcome your opinions. This is a public forum. Libellous and abusive comments are not allowed. Please read our House Rules.
I agree to the House Rules.
Remember me - this will save your name and location for when you leave your next comment.
For information about privacy and cookies please read our Privacy Policy.

KHOODEELAAR! is telling Boris Johnson to quit repeating Big Business propaganda and lies for the Big Biz agenda scam CRASSrail. We are also telling the back room controllers of Boris Johnson's careerist propaganda operations that Crossrail will come to sink a big part of Boris' 'credibility', or , to be accurate, a big part of Boris Johnson’s 'claim to credibility'. Why? Because CROSSRAIL is crass. Because the utter, the overwhelming majority of its peddlers, backers and tellers of untruth and they are as ignorant about the economy as they are of the needs for proper transport facilities and services, provisions, deliveries both in London and in other parts of Britain. [To be continued]

1625 [1600] Hrs GMT

London

Saturday

03 July 2010

Editor © Muhammad haque

We told you so! For coming on to seven years now! That CRASSrail is a crassly conceived, crassly peddled, crassly over-the-top-funded scam for big business interests that is being touted for by stooges in the uk parliament as well as in the 'mainstream' 'British media' at the behest of the military industrial complex which owns the ‘big decision making apparatuses’ in the uk. This has been demonstrated, proven, again and again over the past years since the then ‘transport ‘secretary’ Alistair darling formally tabled the [‘then] ‘CRASSrail bill’ in the uk house of commons in February 2005.  All attempts to extract evidence from the stooges and the touts about the economic rustication of the CRASSrail cam have been foiled by the stooges and their controllers. All evidential criteria, auditing criteria, ethical criteria have been suspended when it came to the examination of CRASSrail. All allegedly party political differences have been suspended by the three main numerically [so far] largest parties in the UK parliament and outside through their agencies, employees and canvassers. So we find that when the NHS, the schools, the colleges, the rest of the transport funding are being cut, when the over the top-misrepresented welfare programme is being subjected to further misrepresentation and curtailment, when even the UK's over the top glorious sub-imperialistic programmes are being treated with increasing scepticism, the one name, the one tile that is being fiercely shielded by cult-like dedication by agents of all three parties is CRASSrail! Why? Because all three ‘numerically largest’ parties are made up of stooges whose souls are owned by big business, military industrial complex. And these stooges dare not apply the starboards of ordinary economic, financial accountability and cost-benefit analyses to CRASSrail. They play their crass roles as the CRASSrail causes wastes and abuses the UK public’s constantly maintained [by the targetters the BBC, ITV, SKY and assorted other outlets of powerful broadcasters and couriers of Big Biz agenda items and messages direct, subliminal and otherwise] zombie-status in relation to the mainstream media of propaganda including the propaganda networks of the BBC. 

[To be continued]

_________________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23851980-six-figure-salaries-treble-in-one-year-at-crossrail.do

Six-figure salaries treble in one year at Crossrail

Ross Lydall
02.07.10

• Blog: TfL publishes its rich list

Ads by Google

Transport in east London

East London has the fastest growing transport infrastructure

Win a Taste of Texas Life

Texas history, culture, festival & cuisine in your reach! Enter Now

Latest IT Vacancies

Want an IT job? Visit one of UK's leading IT job boards

Docklands Minicab E14

Cheap, clean, reliable minicabs. 10 minutes service to E14, E16, E1

The number of six-figure salaries at Crossrail has almost trebled in a year and its chief executive has become the biggest earner within the Transport for London empire.

Rob Holden took home £554,495 in pay and benefits, more than £160,000 above the pay package received by TfL commissioner Peter Hendy, who has refused to take his £132,409 bonus.

The number of staff earning £100,000 or more at Crossrail — the long-delayed £15.9 billion project that is not due to be completed for seven years — has risen from eight to 23.

Crossrail, a subsidiary of TfL, is facing an anxious wait to see if it is targeted as the Government imposes major cuts across Whitehall.

Before the election, Chancellor George Osborne refused to safeguard it from cuts, saying he wanted to have a close look at the books.

The Transport Department is contributing £5.1 billion to the project and Network Railis paying £2.3 billion, while the Mayor and TfL are providing £7.7 billion, of which £3.5 billion comes from an extra levy on business rates.

Mr Holden joined Crossrail in April last year after successfully overseeing the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to St Pancras. Neither he nor Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan, who earned £209,598, received a bonus.

A Crossrail spokesman said the organisation, which is also funded by the City of London Corporation, BAA and the Canary Wharf Group, had to pay market rates for the best staff.

He said: “The scale of the operation has gone from birth through adolescence and into the state of adulthood. To do that, and to meet the very challenging targets that Crossrail has been set, we have got to find the best resources available in terms of infrastructure and leadership. We are competing directly with the private sector for project management expertise. If we don't compete and don't get the resources we need, the project won't be completed on time and to budget.”

TfL appoints only one member of Crossrail's independent board and does not control its salary structure, except the pay of the chairman. Mr Hendy declined to comment directly on Mr Holden's earnings but said it was right the public sector directly employed the best available people rather than having to rely on consultants.

Mr Hendy said: “It's probably the biggest construction project in the world, certainly in Europe, and it ought not to be a surprise that we have got to recruit people with sufficient calibre... and the experience and clout to manage it.

“If we didn't have these people, the likelihood is that we would be having consultants — whose salaries you wouldn't see.” The figures emerge in TfL's annual accounts for the financial year 2009/10, which detail in full for the first time the names, positions and earnings of those on £150,000 or more.

A DfT spokesman said: “Crossrail Limited is a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Transport for London Group. As such the salary and bonuses paid to the executive and non-executive directors are a matter for the Mayor.”

Crossrail will run from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, linking Oxford Street, the City and Canary Wharf via twin underground tunnels through central London. It is intended to boost rail capacity by 10 per cent and ease crowding on the Central line.

 

Also on this topic

Underground chiefs want more mobile phone apps

 Add your view

As someone who truly knows believe me you would be amazed if you knew the base salary of many of the people in CrossRail and TfL, the specialists rail and transport designers are worth their premium as they are sought all over the world but the back office functional staff are grossly overpaid 9-5 ers, just stand outside the building at 5 you will get killed in the rush and the concept of working in the evening or taking work home - not on your life

- Commuter, London, 03/07/2010 13:53
Report abuse

Somebody has to step in here and stop this legalised robbery,surely there is somebody with a backbone,who has been voted in!!!!

- Davey_buoy, Chertsey, 02/07/2010 17:32
Report abuse

Terry, the wages paid to some of the people working on it may be absurd, (as may the cost of the project and length of time it's taking) but why is the line itself a white elephant?

It's a hugely necessary increase and improvement to the tube's infrastructure.

- John T, London, 02/07/2010 15:04
Report abuse

scrap it--a white elephant in the making. boris do it!!!!!!

- terry sullivan, morden england, 02/07/2010 14:14
Report abuse

I suspect that the amount they've spent farting about on this project, so far, could have paid for and built one or two tube lines by now.
The Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern line middle sections were all built within about 5 years. Without any huge machines, or modern technology.
Progress eh?

- Alex Mckenna, South Woodford, 02/07/2010 13:04
Report abuse

Mr Hendy needs to explain why they are paying senior management six figure salaries AND employing so many consultants to manage the project!

Two delivery partner (management) contracts were awarded by TfL during the recession for £500m when all those consultants had no other work in the UK and could have been employed directly for one third of the cost to we taxpayers.

With PPP falures and over spending on projects like CrossRail, TfL are in danger of rivaling some of the banks in terms of putting taxpayers money at risk.

- jim, london, 02/07/2010 12:27
Report abuse