A meeting 'agenda supplementary' document from the office of Mayor of London indicates major budget cuts for Capital Investments, as well as maintenance for the Transport for London (TfL). It is for a meeting this morning (June 2, 2020 at 10:00am)
Page 52 of the document indicates that original Capital Investment budget of £1,333m is decreased by £525m to £808m. It is a 39% decrease.
These figures do not include Crossrail works which is a different beast on its own. No changes planned for Crossrail budget. It remain at £725m (on the same page 52). My gut feeling says, they did not decrease its budget because they know expenses will exceed the budget. In such big projects, the actuals are traditionally goes to the north of the budget amounts.
Renewals Budget (just to get the existing system working, by maintenance and renewal of rolling stock etc) also gets its share of cuts. It goes down from the original budget of £532m to £332m. Document gives the cut at £201 (probably due to rounding). That is another 38% cut for you. You can check the table on page 50 of the document.
The reason for the cuts is thought to be the financial fallout caused by the coronavirus. The scale of looses in income in this financial year is thought to be up to £4 billion.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20200602-agenda-and-papers-supplentary.pdf
Silvertown tunnel seems to be spared from TfL's budget cuts. `Silvertown Tunnel will go ahead despite massive cuts in TfL budget'
Interestingly all ongoing construction work not effected either because `price of scrapping construction or cancelling contracts outweighs any savings'.
By Jessie Mathewson, Local Democracy Reporter Transport for London (TfL) must “completely overhaul” its business
We should all be worried about our jobs in the next few years. During the COVID-19 lockdown, operators of subway, railway and road tunnels have lost enormous amounts of revenue. Soon or later this would bounce back. It is already bouncing back in London Underground case. This is bad guys.
Current Crisis are less likely to effect current ongoing projects. We are lucky that nature does not forgive half-completed infrastructure projects, especially when they are tunnels. Half-completed tunnels are catastrophe in progress for the overground. Project owners have to finish the ongoing work.
Problem is with the new projects. There will be far less work. This will be bad really.
cover tunnel photo by: Matt Brown from London, England / CC BY
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Thank you Keith for the doc.
I think Construction News has a good summary for the whole of the document:
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/civils/tfl-to-slash-spending-by-525m-01-06-2020/
TfL to slash spending by £525m
www.constructionnews.co.ukTransport for London’s (TfL) emergency budget has revealed it plans to reduce capital investment by £525m for 2020/21. In papers released ahead of a TfL