Monday's Friday Reads – 28 September 2020

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My guess would be, on the West London Orbital railway, that they don’t see themselves having the money to be able to build anything like that for a very long time. They have huge renewals liabilities building up that they can’t fund either. So why spend even £1.4m on passive provision when, as far as TfL can see, it’s become unimaginable?

This is sad. My own view is that a scheme like WLO is precisely the kind of scheme that makes best sense as a post-COVID recovery scheme. It is modestly sized, can be delivered relatively quickly, produces benefits quickly, and clearly enables extensive further development. These are the best kinds of schemes for economic development, not megaschemes. Even if I don’t believe TfL’s costings of it.

I went to presentation on the West London Orbital railway given by a TfL person, I think speaking with her corporate hat on, at the Transport Economists Group last year. She indicated WLO was much the best value expansion rail project in TfL’s portfolio of options, mainly it appeared to have a much. much higher self-funding ratio than any other option. This was a combination of serving numerous development areas, and low cost of implementation, as it ran entirely on an existing working railway line. No other scheme they had examined had this perfect combination. The cost would therefore lie “only” in a signalling upgrade, stations, a junction enhancement, and track quality improvement. Some enhancements could be delayed to get the service going, for quick impact, and catalyse future funding abilities.

A number of options were presented, which allowed varying amounts of service, but inevitably required varying amounts of money. I discussed these options/costings with some colleagues, and the costings did not pass the sniff test. We thought that these are the kind of typical early cost estimates that end up being two or three times that in reality. So we were concerned it wasn’t going to have anything like the self-funding ratio TfL was forecasting in the presentation we saw. But I can still believe it will remain much the best value scheme available.

Meanwhile, even before Covid, TfL’s finances were approaching crisis and it decided that even its most urgent capacity relief scheme, Holborn station, was now unfundable for the foreseeable. And even before that, it had already pushed its most urgent modernisation requirement, the Piccadilly Line signalling (full) modernisation, down the queue – (it has had the most essential modernisation now done). Now we have Covid which has seriously damaged TfL’s already near-crisis condition finances. It is easy to see why TfL thinks it will have no money for anything like this for a long time. It may also perceive the government’s transport funding ability diverted elsewhere for a long time.

2 comments

Greg T says:

28 September 2020 at 18:49

The last three items – all based on events in the USA – seem to show that, no matter how badly we perform many Public Transport functions, the Americans can be guaranteed to make a much bigger mess of it!

On a brighter note, I do hope the (revivified) “Wapping Tunnel” proposal gets going – a very sensible idea.
Ivan says:

29 September 2020 at 10:26

My guess would be, on the West London Orbital railway, that they don’t see themselves having the money to be able to build anything like that for a very long time. They have huge renewals liabilities building up that they can’t fund either. So why spend even £1.4m on passive provision when, as far as TfL can see, it’s become unimaginable?

This is sad. My own view is that a scheme like WLO is precisely the kind of scheme that makes best sense as a post-COVID recovery scheme. It is modestly sized, can be delivered relatively quickly, produces benefits quickly, and clearly enables extensive further development. These are the best kinds of schemes for economic development, not megaschemes. Even if I don’t believe TfL’s costings of it.

I went to presentation on the West London Orbital railway given by a TfL person, I think speaking with her corporate hat on, at the Transport Economists Group last year. She indicated WLO was much the best value expansion rail project in TfL’s portfolio of options, mainly it appeared to have a much. much higher self-funding ratio than any other option. This was a combination of serving numerous development areas, and low cost of implementation, as it ran entirely on an existing working railway line. No other scheme they had examined had this perfect combination. The cost would therefore lie “only” in a signalling upgrade, stations, a junction enhancement, and track quality improvement. Some enhancements could be delayed to get the service going, for quick impact, and catalyse future funding abilities.

A number of options were presented, which allowed varying amounts of service, but inevitably required varying amounts of money. I discussed these options/costings with some colleagues, and the costings did not pass the sniff test. We thought that these are the kind of typical early cost estimates that end up being two or three times that in reality. So we were concerned it wasn’t going to have anything like the self-funding ratio TfL was forecasting in the presentation we saw. But I can still believe it will remain much the best value scheme available.

Meanwhile, even before Covid, TfL’s finances were approaching crisis and it decided that even its most urgent capacity relief scheme, Holborn station, was now unfundable for the foreseeable. And even before that, it had already pushed its most urgent modernisation requirement, the Piccadilly Line signalling (full) modernisation, down the queue – (it has had the most essential modernisation now done). Now we have Covid which has seriously damaged TfL’s already near-crisis condition finances. It is easy to see why TfL thinks it will have no money for anything like this for a long time. It may also perceive the government’s transport funding ability diverted elsewhere for a long time.

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