New trains for the Piccadilly line and Bakerloo line could be delayed unless the Government plugs a £500m gap in Transport for London’s investment budget, it can be revealed.
TfL is desperately seeking assurances about long-term capital funding from next April. It wants a five-year deal to allow it to plan major improvements and capacity upgrades, including £500m for the first year, but has received “not a penny” to date.
TfL commissioner Andy Lord told the Standard that TfL would have to start making “very short-term decisions about how we pare back our capital spend” if financial guarantees were not received in or soon after the Government’s Autumn statement.
This could result in delays to the arrival of a full fleet of new Piccadilly line trains – meaning the unreliable old trains remain in service for longer.
Mr Lord said TfL would never compromise safety but could “end up with a slightly less reliable service”.
It could also mean that Bakerloo line passengers, already reliant on 50-year-old trains, have to continue using them until they are 60 years old.
The Bakerloo upgrade is currently unfunded but considered a priority – with an extension of the line to Lewisham on TfL’s “wish list”.
TfL also needs to upgrade part of the Croydon tram fleet by 2028, when some vehicles reach “end of life”.
At the moment, TfL expects to spend £2.1bn on major projects in 2024/25, including new schemes, upgrades and renewals. Of that, £500m is needed from the Government – or the budget will fall to £1.6bn.
TfL has already signed a contract with Siemens for 94 new Piccadilly line trains, which are due to enter service from summer 2025, as part of a £3bn upgrade of one of its most strategically important Tube lines.
They will be the first “deep level” trains on the London Underground to have air conditioning and walk-through carriages.
They will provide extra on-board capacity and an increase in peak hour frequencies from 24 to 27 trains per hour.
The Piccadilly line is of crucial importance to TfL and London’s economy because it serves both the West End and Heathrow airport and carries more than one in 10 of all Tube passengers.
Mr Lord said: “At the moment, our absolute intent is to drive the Piccadilly line upgrade as per the plan. But if we don’t have £500m, we will have to work out what to do. We are going to have to think long and hard about what other decisions we have to make.”
Research commissioned by TfL has revealed that its “order book” is worth £5.9bn a year to the UK economy and supports more than 100,000 jobs.
The report, by Hatch, found that in 2022/23 TfL spent money with 2,072 suppliers – 93 per cent of which were based in the UK.
These include an engineering firm in Lancashire that makes parts for the Metropolitan, Circle, District and Hammersmith and City line trains. TfL is buying zero-emission buses from factories across the UK, including Falkirk and Ballymena.
Half of the new Piccadilly line trains are due to be built by Siemens at a new £200m factory in Goole, creating 750 direct jobs.
Mr Lord said the size of the economic benefit that TfL delivered to the rest of the country was “astonishing”.
He told a conference at the Railway Industry Association on Thursday: “I significally underestimated the sheer value of our contracts.”
He insisted that TfL was not approaching the Government with a “begging bowl”, nor that it was “fat and inefficient”. TfL is due to declare an operating surplus in excess of £78m this financial year.
Sambit Banerjee, joint chief executive and director of rolling stock at Siemens Mobility UKI, said: “With manufacturing of the new Piccadilly line trains set to commence in Goole from early next year, we are keen for the certainty of future orders to ensure our factory can continue to be operating at full capacity, supporting the local economy.”
