TFL & "Managed Decline"

[Bletchleyite]

It's worth noting that while London has the lowest single bus fare in the country, London taxpayers also subsidise extra help for passengers who are in receipt of means tested benefits, such as Universal Credit and those on legacy benefits such as Employment & Support Allowance and Jobseekers Allowance, which allows them to have a discount photocard for Bus and Trams, so they pay 75p per journey or 1/2 price on passes as a discount added to an Oyster card.

The scheme was originally brought in by Red Ken who was able to get discounted fuel for buses from Venezuela. Boris axed that scheme, but reintroduced it using taxpayers money and has been kept by Khan.

If that is the case, you could increase the basic bus fare to say £2 or £2.50 (still cheaper than many places), but keep it at 75p for people with those photocards. You'd not be able to do it at once, but an above-inflation annual increase would step it up over a reasonable period.

 

[bramling]

Indeed. London and the SE is vilified by those from the north especially, yet is essentially the financial engine room of the country!

What people often don't take into account is the following stats:

Population of Greater London - 9 million
Population of Scotland - 5.5 million
Population of Wales - 3.1 million
Population of Northern Ireland - 1.9 million

On top of the above, you can essentially double the London figure if including the wider south-east.

There's always been an issue with unrealistic expectations throughout the UK, and devolution has essentially made this unresolvable. Another problem left by Tony Blair.

Interestingly, however, if one looks at spend-per-head, London actually comes out quite well, albeit the value derived from this spending will be lower because things cost more in London. Given how spending-per-head is rather poorer for the south-east area, I'm not sure there's an argument for the south-east subsidising TfL. If anything there's more of an argument for the UK as a whole doing it, which is probably what would happen if it weren't for the Johnson/Khan issue.

As a curved ball, one wonders to what extent lack of home-counties commuting is contributing to TfL's revenue issues. Just looking at my road alone I can think of good few unrenewed season tickets, no doubt many of which will have included a TfL element.

A lot of TfL's provision has been excessively lavish for some time. Suburban London doesn't need the number of buses it has, and the outer ends of Tube lines don't need a train every couple of minutes right through the day, as has become customary.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A lot of TfL's provision has been excessively lavish for some time. Suburban London doesn't need the number of buses it has, and the outer ends of Tube lines don't need a train every couple of minutes right through the day, as has become customary.

To be fair they don't universally have a train every couple of minutes. Chesham and Amersham are half-hourly each, if I recall.

 

[Cantab26]

Every single Londoner pays £3,000+ more in tax than they receive -2017 seems to be the last time this was updated by the ONS - so tell me again (and again) how London shouldn't get even a fair share of its own revenue......

If you crudely divide the net fiscal surplus for the London region by the total population, perhaps.

However, the reality will be that the majority of London residents will be net recipients, not contributors, with the bulk of the surplus coming from a minority of high earners.

Any meaningful analysis is further complicated by the impact of corporate and property taxation as well.

 

[bramling]

To be fair they don't universally have a train every couple of minutes. Chesham and Amersham are half-hourly each, if I recall.

Indeed, however never forget Chesham and Amersham are very much in Hertfordshire!

I guess the difficulty with LU is that the current service is pretty standard across the traffic day in many places. Saturdays are very busy in places and at certain times, yet at other times it's empty trains running around. The problem is that experience has tended to show that it's easier to provide the service in this way, but unfortunately it's also quite expensive in terms of resources. A boundary charge for road users might actually significantly *worsen* this, as (in addition to losing potential car park revenue) you'd lose people who in the main do join the network at the outposts.

It remains the case we wouldn't be having this discussion if it wasn't for Johnson's personal vendetta against Khan, and London in general. Johnson does seem to want to self-destruct the remaining Conservative seats in London, which is possibly not the cleverest strategy when one such seat is his own. If I were Labour, I'd be throwing the kitchen sink at Uxbridge.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Indeed, however never forget Chesham and Amersham are very much in Hertfordshire!

Buckinghamshire (you're thinking of Watford) - but it doesn't break your point.

It remains the case we wouldn't be having this discussion if it wasn't for Johnson's personal vendetta against Khan, and London in general.

And Khan's against Johnson, to be fair (and I don't vote Tory). It's definitely a two-sided political battle. Khan is at least in part setting up policies that he knows will turn Tory voters against Johnson (e.g. a charge for those driving their big SUVs from Buckinghamshire to Zone 2/3 stations to park and ride, or potentially binning the Travelcard agreement which is irrelevant to the vast majority of Londoners now but very relevant to leafy commuterland) rather than ones that will upset Labour voters (e.g. increasing bus fares to a level more like the rest of the UK).

 

[urbophile]

the outer ends of Tube lines don't need a train every couple of minutes right through the day, as has become customary.

Isn't the reason that so many do, because of the operational difficulties of turning them round short? Others will know better than me, but it must be a more practical way of doing things in many cases.

 

[Nicks]

TfL is in a period of adjustment - the expansionist days are over and retrenchment is going to be painful for everyone involved. The inefficiencies and waste are well known (the sub surface signalling contract failures for example). I've been expecting my own work for TfL (through a contractor) to be cut for a couple of years now - but somehow it lingers on! I can safely say that it is completely unnecessary!

 

[43066]

That's because Government policy favours it being that. Capital-centricism is not there in the same way in most other European countries. We should spread the wealth and work better here, too. The resentment is completely understandable.

Only really France is like the UK in this regard.

There’s a bit of chicken and egg there. I’d suggest current government policy merely reflects London’s status as Europe’s’ only truly global city.

We can debate about whether or not the imbalance in the UK is entirely healthy, levelling up the regions is a laudable aim, but there’s no point strangling the golden goose.

Population of Greater London - 9 million
Population of Scotland - 5.5 million
Population of Wales - 3.1 million
Population of Northern Ireland - 1.9 million

On top of the above, you can essentially double the London figure if including the wider south-east.

There's also ways been an issue with unrealistic expectations throughout the UK, and devolution has essentially made this unresolvable. Another problem left by Tony Blair.

Those figures are quite stark. It’s shocking how much we hear about Scottish moans and gripes, with their prominent parliamentary presence. Whereas London, with approaching twice the population of Scotland, barely gets a look in. And of course Scotland is a net benefactor of tax revenues!

However, the reality will be that the majority of London residents will be net recipients, not contributors, with the bulk of the surplus coming from a minority of high earners.

But a far higher % of Londoners will be “high earners” than the national average.

 

[Craig1122]

Isn't the reason that so many do, because of the operational difficulties of turning them round short? Others will know better than me, but it must be a more practical way of doing things in many cases.

Yes, on some lines providing a service sufficient to meet demand in the central sections means over provision further out. Fixing that would require spending on expensive infrastructure to provide more or faster turn back facilities. Or possibly unattended operation in places but that's a whole other can of worms...

 

[Busaholic]

. If I were Labour, I'd be throwing the kitchen sink at Uxbridge.

I'm 100% certain Johnson won't be fighting another General Election - if he's deposed as PM he'll be out of Parliament, in practice if not in theory, like a Bat out of Hell!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Yes, on some lines providing a service sufficient to meet demand in the central sections means over provision further out. Fixing that would require spending on expensive infrastructure to provide more or faster turn back facilities. Or possibly unattended operation in places but that's a whole other can of worms...

Yes and no - back in the day , the tube used to almost pride itself on economic short workings to beef up central area frequencies by running shuttles - e.g White City to Liverpool St on the Central , East Finchley to Kennington on the Northern and several others. Some of this infrastructure has been removed , but some are still there , just not used. The trend having been "end to end" line services , often in some cases carrying copious amounts of fresh air. I recall even back in the early 90's a "train mile" was about £18 , - and we know public transport is a subtle balance between frequency / service attraction , and hard economics - but a good hard look at some of this (even if it pans out as not really worth it) , must be worth a punt. If only to show - awful contractual term "best endeavours".....

 

[SynthD]

TfL is in a period of adjustment - the expansionist days are over and retrenchment is going to be painful for everyone involved. The inefficiencies and waste are well known (the sub surface signalling contract failures for example). I've been expecting my own work for TfL (through a contractor) to be cut for a couple of years now - but somehow it lingers on! I can safely say that it is completely unnecessary!

The well known ones have been reduced in the last 12 years of austerity.

 

[bramling]

Buckinghamshire (you're thinking of Watford) - but it doesn't break your point.



And Khan's against Johnson, to be fair (and I don't vote Tory). It's definitely a two-sided political battle. Khan is at least in part setting up policies that he knows will turn Tory voters against Johnson (e.g. a charge for those driving their big SUVs from Buckinghamshire to Zone 2/3 stations to park and ride, or potentially binning the Travelcard agreement which is irrelevant to the vast majority of Londoners now but very relevant to leafy commuterland) rather than ones that will upset Labour voters (e.g. increasing bus fares to a level more like the rest of the UK).

Good point about Buckinghamshire!

Yes I agree it isn’t just one-way, both these politicians are failing the people of London. At the end of the day, though, Khan is just a seedy legacy of the Blair years, whereas the government should be expected to behave better than this. It’s extremely grubby politics, and I for one don’t like it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

TfL is in a period of adjustment - the expansionist days are over and retrenchment is going to be painful for everyone involved. The inefficiencies and waste are well known (the sub surface signalling contract failures for example). I've been expecting my own work for TfL (through a contractor) to be cut for a couple of years now - but somehow it lingers on! I can safely say that it is completely unnecessary!

There’s certainly still a lot of excess fat in TFL. A horrible Blair-era creation, which has always behaved very much as a political organisation rather than merely as a provider of transport - no doubt because it’s one of the few things the mayoralty actually has some power over.

A lot of the New Labour damage such as the disastrous PPP has to some extent been repaired, such as making LU back into an engineering company again, but the problem is this sort of damage is very hard to put right.

As an aside, I had a long(ish) journey in a taxi yesterday, which is always an interesting barometer on opinions. Aside from not having a good word to say about Johnson nor Starmer, the cabbie was even more scathing about Khan. Politics doesn’t seem to be pleasing anyone at the moment.

 

[Nym]

LU is far from an engineering company. Not least because all of their engineers, with the exception of the Ex. TubeLines ones were TUPE'd out of LUL and into TfL. See "Engineering Transformation" aka. the mass exodus of anyone who wanted to protect their pensions, job security or specialisms.

The majority of "Engineering" that matters is now done by contracting out the actual work with a significant contractual and review overhead, it is not an efficient way to make things work.

 

[Horizon22]

As a curved ball, one wonders to what extent lack of home-counties commuting is contributing to TfL's revenue issues. Just looking at my road alone I can think of good few unrenewed season tickets, no doubt many of which will have included a TfL element.

A lot of TfL's provision has been excessively lavish for some time. Suburban London doesn't need the number of buses it has, and the outer ends of Tube lines don't need a train every couple of minutes right through the day, as has become customary.

It's certainly a major part, if not one of the bigger parts - Inner & Outer London commuting held up fairly well throughout the pandemic, but Home Counties commuting really hasn't returned anywhere near as much. This is because (broad generalisation alert) many of these are white-collar office workers on higher than average salaries that are able to WFH more consistently and easier. They would have had travelcards, some revenue of which would have gone to TfL.

Also lets not forget about the tourism sector, a big boom to London transport, especially Zone 1 tube journeys.

Also some places in Zone 5/6 beyond are of course useful places to terminate trains for operational reasons although not always "every couple of minutes". Its much of a fallacy as was previously mentioned about running buses from one end of London to another or TL Horsham-Peterborough; very few (if not nearly zero) are doing the full journey.

 

[davetheguard]

As an aside, I had a long(ish) journey in a taxi yesterday, which is always an interesting barometer on opinions.

I've always found taxi drivers to be an interesting barometer on working class Tory opinions. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[43066]

I've always found taxi drivers to be an interesting barometer on working class Tory opinions. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not an Uber user, then.

 

[bramling]

I've always found taxi drivers to be an interesting barometer on working class Tory opinions. Nothing more, nothing less.

In other words, exactly the sort of floating voters who often decide general election outcomes.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2022 ==

LU is far from an engineering company. Not least because all of their engineers, with the exception of the Ex. TubeLines ones were TUPE'd out of LUL and into TfL. See "Engineering Transformation" aka. the mass exodus of anyone who wanted to protect their pensions, job security or specialisms.

The majority of "Engineering" that matters is now done by contracting out the actual work with a significant contractual and review overhead, it is not an efficient way to make things work.

I did say "to some extent". There is a very long way to go before things return to the pre-PPP state, but equally things have progressed from the days when LU was merely an operator. You are quite right that there now seems to be a move to stick things under the broader TFL umbrella, which I think we're right to be suspicious of.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Not an Uber user, then.

An Uber isn't a "taxi".

 

[Bletchleyite]

An Uber isn't a "taxi".

It isn't a Hackney carriage, rather a private-hire vehicle, but in most parts of the UK "taxi" is the word used to describe any form of small motor vehicle where you hire it with driver for your personal use for a single journey.

 

[AlbertBeale]

It isn't a Hackney carriage, rather a private-hire vehicle, but in most parts of the UK "taxi" is the word used to describe any form of small motor vehicle where you hire it with driver for your personal use for a single journey.

In London, "taxi" - to everyone I know - has always meant a properly licensed "Hackney carriage" (considered part of the pubic transport system), ie what's often called "a black cab". Anything else - including Uber - is always called a "mini-cab". No-one I know (though maybe it's partly generational) ever calls a private hire car such as an Uber "a taxi". The distinction is useful - and indeed has a legal basis in terms of, eg, a bus lane where "taxis" are allowed.

 

[43066]

In London, "taxi" - to everyone I know - has always meant a properly licensed "Hackney carriage" (considered part of the pubic transport system), ie what's often called "a black cab". Anything else - including Uber - is always called a "mini-cab". No-one I know (though maybe it's partly generational) ever calls a private hire car such as an Uber "a taxi". The distinction is useful - and indeed has a legal basis in terms of, eg, a bus lane where "taxis" are allowed.

Everyone I know calls mini cabs taxis, and uses the terms interchangeably. I seem to remember we discussed this previously!

 

[jumble]

But that also quite clearly shows it was a council decision to remove them. They were built using money Harrow bid for from the TfL pot central government gave them for Streetscape. If anything it shows a council happy to bid and take what they can, then realise they've cocked up later. It's not TfL's job to know every single detail of road usage on every single road in London. If Harrow made a compelling case that this dual carriageway needed a cycle lane for Streetspace purposes, TfL would - and should - have accepted that case.

I don't see how this particular charge can be laid at TfL's door. A general mishandling of money and budget by TfL might well be reasonably in the spotlight, but this case (and others like this) don't reflect that.

Perhaps TFL should make it a condition that things they pay for should last longer than a few months
The fact remains that TFL threw away money on this

 

[bramling]

Perhaps TFL should make it a condition that things they pay for should last longer than a few months
The fact remains that TFL threw away money on this

I don't think it should come to anyone as a surprise that TFL throw money away right, left and centre. They always have done.

In that sense, the government isn't wrong in their assessment of TFL. The trouble is, I don't believe the government are serious about attempting to rectify it, they're simply using is as a cheap way of scoring political points against Khan / Labour London.

 

[davetheguard]

In other words, exactly the sort of floating voters who often decide general election outcomes.

I think I worded it badly. I meant opinions of working class Tories, not the opinions of working class voters on the Tories.

 

[domcoop7]

If you crudely divide the net fiscal surplus for the London region by the total population, perhaps.

However, the reality will be that the majority of London residents will be net recipients, not contributors, with the bulk of the surplus coming from a minority of high earners.

Any meaningful analysis is further complicated by the impact of corporate and property taxation as well.

I had this debate on here a few months ago. To take one example, Sainsbury's head office is in London. So it's expensive headquarters, high paid executives, and entire corporate revenue would appear to be attributed to three floors of an office block and a few hundred staff on Holborn. But of course in reality, the money itself is made elsewhere in all their supermarket branches throughout the UK (and further afield). It seems to me generally unfair that my local area should be deprived of investment in return for London getting more money on the basis that "Londoners pay more tax" when the figure is distorted by issues such as this.

There’s a bit of chicken and egg there. I’d suggest current government policy merely reflects London’s status as Europe’s’ only truly global city.

We can debate about whether or not the imbalance in the UK is entirely healthy, levelling up the regions is a laudable aim, but there’s no point strangling the golden goose.



Those figures are quite stark. It’s shocking how much we hear about Scottish moans and gripes, with their prominent parliamentary presence. Whereas London, with approaching twice the population of Scotland, barely gets a look in. And of course Scotland is a net benefactor of tax revenues!



But a far higher % of Londoners will be “high earners” than the national average.

London is indeed the only real global city and for that reason alone does justify having more investment in transport than the rest of the country.

On the other hand, if Londoners are all high earners paying high taxes, then surely there's less need for TfL to be funded to give Londoners the cheapest fares in the country? When people say that, though, even if they don't mean it, it's the hidden undertone I don't like, which comes across like "we're better than you because we earn Loadsamoney so we deserve better things than you peasants who aren't good enough to match our superior income levels".

As for "London... barely gets a look in", I respectfully have to disagree. The entire political system is run in London, by London and mostly for London. The reason why "levelling up" even exists as a newsworthy concept is because it has rarely occurred to the national government in the past that places outside the capital deserve investment (whether Tory or Labour).

Of course someone like Khan would say he doesn't get enough money, although I can 100% guarantee you that if he got the same budget tomorrow as he has today, but Keir Starmer was in charge, it would be miraculously be a fair settlement and we'd hear about how the same money that today is inadequate would be Labour boosting London, etc.

 

[Dstock7080]

We have today agreed with the Department for Transport a further extension of our current funding package to 18 February.

We are, as ever, grateful to Government for continued financial support in the short-term but I assure you that discussions continue to secure the sustained, longer-term funding arrangement for at least three years, which we need be able to fully support London’s recovery, enabling the capital, in turn, to drive the recovery of the national economy.

I know that yet another short-term tranche of funding makes it difficult for us to effectively plan for our city’s future and work as efficiently as we could with the certainty that a long-term settlement would provide. Because of this it’s more important than ever that we focus all our effort on the things we can do to improve our income and reduce our costs. With Plan B’s restrictions now lifted, people are once again returning to the network, and I have every faith in you all to provide London with the excellent, safe and reliable service that TfL is trusted to deliver.

TfL Commissioner Andy Byford.

 

[Tube driver]

I’d be surprised if the can can hold water any more considering how many times it’s been kicked down the road…

 

[Recessio]

Greater London boundary charge sounds like a great idea a) to raise cash and b) finally look at redrawing the borders that were pretty crap even in the 60s. Ridiculous that rural areas like North Ockendon are considered part of the capital while lots of the built up area inside the M25 isn't.

Tbh, making the border the M25 might be an option, it's a pretty inescapable physical border dividing communities at most points, seems like a better place than arbitrarily choosing streets (Chessington/Kingston borders, for example). Or, make the inner edge of the green belt the border.