Can we afford to keep running an antique Tube?
Post categories: City Hall, London Underground, Politics
| 15:24 UK time, Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Walking into the signal box at Edgware Road you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in a Transport Museum.
The signal box is all well-worn steel levers you'd associate with The Railway Children.
The box is 85 years old and it controls the District and Circle Lines through the station.
London Underground showed us this to make the point that the Tube upgrades are vital.
Without them the service will rapidly start to get worse. This 1920s technology is reaching the end of its life and needs replacing.
The Unions have said it is "rotten infrastructure", although LU say it's extremely safe.
Budget cuts though are looming and the Tube upgrades look vulnerable.
The Department for Transport has a budget of £12.7 billion pounds.
Of that Transport for London gets £3.2 billion (as part of an annual £9bn budget) and £1.7bn goes on the Tube upgrades.
So if the DfT's budget is cut by 40 per cent some say the upgrades may never happen.
It's up to the Treasury to decide the level of cuts.
The Department for Transport says it's arguing the Tube upgrade is crucial to maintain economic growth.
But there will be cuts to TfL's grant. At the moment we don't know by how much. The DfT says it will be up to the Mayor to prioritise.
But if the cuts are large - worse case scenario 40% of TfL's grant - then it will be services, fares and upgrades that'll be affected.
London Underground's Howard Collins gave me a tour of the Control Centre at Earl's Court.
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Seems rather contradictory that the Unions are complaining about old infrastructure. it is the old infrastructure and controls that keep a significant number of the Unions' members employed.
would the Unions rather the tube was modernised and huge swathes of LU staff made redundant as computers take over their jobs? or will they oppose modernisation in the end?
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It seems to me the question that must be asked is Why Now?
If the Tube equipment is truly over 80 years old, there must have been many opportunities in the past to upgrade the system. Is equipment from the 1920's less suitable now than it was in the 1950's? Or the 1980's? Why would London Underground wait 80 years and then decide that a period of Financial Disaster is the correct time to make changes?
Perhaps upgrades on this scale should be done at a time when the city actually has the money to do the job properly. A hack job done on the cheap could be worse than doing nothing. It certainly wouldn't have much chance of producing a system that would still be working in the year 2090...
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Rik, why would upgrades lead to job losses? Any new equipment would still need to be maintained, you don’t just fit something and leave it; well we don’t on the railway, very dangerous thing to do.
Shawm, we’ve been saying that the Tube needs upgrading for decades and no one listens. Probably nothing will be done now, in 10 years time we will be saying that 90-year old equipment needs replacing if it hasn’t fallen apart by then.
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The old equipment if it is looked after correctly would be working great.
It is still a lot more reliable that the new equipment and the many hodge podge quick fixes put in over the years.
Granted, the only way to increase line capacity is with moving block signalling.
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