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Given the scale of the public spending blood-bath that lies ahead, it will be amazing if the Tube is not affected by cuts.
Whichever party wins the general election, there will be a need for a near stop in spending increases on most services. Chancellor Alistair Darling has already said Labour would cut government capital investment by about half from 2011-12 to 2013-14.
London Underground has been a massive consumer of cash in recent years. Since Gordon Brown pushed through the public-private partnership for the Tube, over £1billion a year has been paid to the companies rebuilding the antiquated system.
With the additional money the Government had to use to bale out bankrupt Metronet, the overall sum spent on reinvestment since the PPP started will, by the end of this year, be close to £10billion.
Most of this comes from Whitehall. The remaining PPP firm, Tube Lines, is trying to negotiate additional funds from TfL for the investments it has signed up to deliver in the second 7.5 year period of the PPP, starting late next year.
The firm says it needs upwards of £1billion more than expected due to rising costs. This money is to deliver new the track, signalling and trains originally promised. The ghost of Metronet, now inside LU, must need equivalent sums.
Either there will be severe reductions in improvements on the Tube and/or fares will have to rise more rapidly than the "inflation plus 1 per cent" pattern we have been used to.
The modernisation of the Tube is nowhere near complete. The real concern must be that much-needed improvements, including air-conditioning and better signals, will be postponed or cancelled. Then London would be back to the spiral of decline the PPP was supposed to end. It is impossible to exaggerate just how bad that would be.
Tony Travers is director of the LSE's Greater London group.
