Elizabeth Line (CrossRail) opened 24th May 2022

Looks so odd having it as Elizabeth line, why cant it just be Elizabeth? Would fit it more with the other lines. TFL really are stubborn about branding!

Although it won't go to Battersea Power Station Station.

Why? It still will be. It doesn't say "Arriving December 2018", does it?

I think there's perhaps more important things to be spending money on.

Plus the cost of the time to design the replacement, the printing, distribution, the time of the person/people doing the pasting. Then the extra cost to recycle it all later.

Not that much in the grand scheme of things, but it all adds up.

ianvisits posted a picture on facebook of the notice about the meeting (I'm not sure where). It confirms it is about Crossrail funding:



(any typos are mine)

Good. Got any images of these?

Click/tap here if embedded tweet fails to display.

Probably by kicking the can down the road by borrowing more in the debt capital markets. Tfl is the largest public sector issuer of debt in the UK after the DMO (Debt Management Office). I am away from a Bloomberg terminal as out of the office, but will try to check the exact figures of their borrowings over the weekend.

I've read elsewhere that this form of short term finance is repayable within 12 months. If that is true then TfL have a real mess on their hands for the next Business Plan and Budget. Trying to take £350m out of the budget on top of everything else that has already been delayed / postponed / quietly cancelled will inflict huge problems. Note this comes on top of an expected revenue shortfall due to Crossrail being delayed, other revenues flatlining, the £100m TfL have already had to find for Crossrail overruns plus all the other projects that have or are going wrong like the contract for the new Picc Line stock, the 12 month delay to new Overground rolling stock, rumblings of cost problems on the Barking Riverside project before it's even started and the multi hundred million pound claim for station redesign issues on the Northern Line extension. I appreciate TfL make risk provisions for some of these issues but we are talking about big money here even in the context of an annual £10bn spend.

I suspect some form of additional longer term debt is the only viable answer to get this short term loan repaid but that affects later years of the Business Plan when the level of TfL debt is already projected to be at the maximum viable extent. The problems on Crossrail are going to do nothing to improve the rating agencies view of TfL's competence and therefore the cost of TfL debt. That's yet another compounding factor to add on top of all the rest. If TfL can't raise additional debt then it will be huge budget cuts that are likely to cause all services to be reduced - buses, tubes, Overground, DLR, everything. Cycle hire would have to be seriously looked at as it makes a huge loss.

The other factor to bear in mind is the "put option" provision in the Crossrail Agreement and funding package. This allows the DfT to effectively take over all the shares of Cross London Rail Links and thus the ownership of the Crossrail core infrastructure. It would also mean that the access charge revenues (payable by MTR Crossrail) would no longer flow to TfL Rail Infrastructure (currently expected to own the Crossrail core) and neither would the projected "profit" from those charges given revenues will be far in excess of maintenance costs for many years. This may mean (I don't understand all the fine detail) that TfL would be left to repay Crossrail loans but without the access charge profits to do so. (Note - I may be wrong on this as the DfT may take on the loan repayment commitment if they grab the infrastructure. It's not an easy concept to understand and working through all the legalese is a bit much). This is Mr Grayling's most powerful immediate tool to clobber and humiliate the Mayor. Let's see if he uses it.

Sitting behind all of this is some rather nasty and poisonous politics. I won't detail my musings but I can't see a Tory government wanting to help a Labour Mayor at all as we start the run up to the May 2020 Mayoral Elections. That aligned with the "let's pretend to help the North" rhetoric puts TfL in an extremely perilous position (IMO). Of course the real prize is to force the Mayor to abandon his Fares Freeze - I imagine he has been put under enormous pressure to do that in return for a more generous funding settlement. "You only have to make this one policy change and instantly everything will be better" (PS - we will chuck "you broke your manifesto commitment" accusations at you every 5 mins from now to May 2020). What interesting times.

The figure of £350m sounds familiar, maybe from the side of a bus a couple of years ago?

Simon Wright was leaving anyway so all this has done is brought it forward perhaps 6-months +/-.  Mark Wild was already overseeing Crossrail as his MD LU job was subsuming the Elizabeth line as it progressively transitioned from Crossrail Ltd (the builders) over to TfL (the operators).  Once Crossrail is up and running and Mark resumes his MD crown there will be no discernible difference as he will be doing the same job as he was always going to be doing!!!   All this has achieved is giving TfL full control at Board level 6-months early and looks good from a 'political' point of view even though it's meaningless in reality!

A little more info related to the post above regarding the difference of opinion between Terry Morgan and Sadiq Khan.

www.cityam.com/271345/sir-terry-morgan-hits-back-sadiq-khan-over-crossrail-delay

There aren't any definitive figures in this article. However there is an interesting line about Bond Street

www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/exclusive-crossrail-to-pay-contractors-lump-sum-to-finish-job/10038800.article