Tube goes from bad to worse under PPP

Written by Graham Tope and published in London Newspaper Group on Tue 13th Jan 2004

Has the Tube improved since it was part-privatised last April? Are passengers enjoying a so-called 'good' or even 'normal' service, to paraphrase London Underground's customer information boards?

According to internal documents leaked to the media last week, the Tube has actually got worse. The number of train failures rose by 23 per cent, track problems increased by 20 per cent, while point failures soared by 38 per cent.

That all adds up to continued misery for passengers, despite the Labour government's claim that the public private partnership (PPP), which handed over track maintenance to private companies Tubelines and Metronet, would improve the Tube system.

The reality is that £32million worth of fines has had to be levied on Tubelines and Metronet for missing their targets. Yet that is a paltry amount compared to how much money the companies will make under the 30-year deals set up by Labour.

Admittedly, when the Tube was handed over it was in a much worse state than had been anticipated. Tubelines and Metronet have had more ground to make up than they realised.

That said, handing over the network to firms that knew little or nothing about it has been followed by a dramatic collapse in its reliability. Just five lines out of eleven have met targets for reduced delays.

This deterioration cannot be allowed to continue. The Mayor of London - who, as chair of Transport for London, supposedly oversees the running of the Tube - should commission the London Assembly's transport committee to carry out a thorough examination of how well the PPP contracts are working, and seriously consider any recommendations the committee makes.

There have been calls on the government to allow Network Rail to take maintenance back in-house, as it has with the overground rail. At the very least, the London Assembly Liberal Democrats think the government should work with Ken Livingstone to review the present lack of progress and report back to Londoners in April when the larger of the two companies, Metronet, will have completed its first year of operations.

The review could then suggest whether to axe the PPP or how to revise the contracts. If the PPP must remain, extra government funding for faster upgrades of track and signalling, conditional on tighter performance targets and penalties, is needed. Maybe then a 'good' service could become the reality.