Funding the Tube

The terms of reference announced by the government for the review of TfL's governance and finance make the direction of travel clear: cuts and privatisation.

References to "alternative operating models" and alternative "structures and governance" are coded language for taking TfL out of local...

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With the Tories' audit of TfL's governance and finances now underway, we need to prepare our fightback. Although we don't know exactly where the axe will fall, the audit's terms of reference make clear that it will be...

The main four unions organising across Transport for London - RMT, Aslef, TSSA, and Unite - held a joint rally against cuts, via Zoom, on 15 July.

Officials from all unions spoke in favour of industrial action to resist cuts, albeit with varying degrees of emphasis and enthusiasm. Exactly how to...

Driverless trains, every union-hating Tory's favourite imagined panacea, are back in the news again.

Weeks after LU made a commitment to unions that the new stock on the Piccadilly Line, the next line to be refurbished, would have drivers' cabs fitted, the Prime Minister suggested in an interview...

One of the orchestra of strings attached to the government financial bailout of TfL is that the company now has to report staff absence data to the government.

This is pretty obviously a precursor to 'improving' attendance figures by cracking the whip once we are back to 'normal' times.

But if the...

When the Tory Government held a gun to the head of TfL and made them sign a bailout deal last week, one thing they had in their sights was disabled people's Freedom Passes.

Yes, in true Tory style, they declared that they would consider restricting the times at which disabled people could use their...

Mayor Khan needs to brush up on his negotiation skills. Mere hours after he announced TfL was on the verge of running out of money, and services may stop running if additional funding wasn't forthcoming, he managed to secure... a package of less money than is needed, with more strings attached than...

It might have taken a global pandemic to force it from him, but Mayor Khan has finally admitted that running a major metropolitan transport system on massively reduced funding simply isn't feasible.

Khan told the media on 14 May that: "Unless the government today gives us confirmation of the grant...

55 Broadway is to be 'disposed of' according to an article on the TfL intranet. That is crass language for the privatisation of such an iconic LU building; funded by taxes or passenger fares.

This happening as a result of a political choice to end tube subsidies, made by the Tory party as they...

Apparently, LUL pays £1,300 a go for a Track Retrieval Device.

That might sound quite reasonable if it were actually a 'device' in the popular understanding of the word. But it is a stick with a sticky pad on the end. Hence its usual moniker among station staff - the 'sticky stick'.

Private...