Tonight:
4°c
The regular weekend closures on the Jubilee line are frustrating for passengers and infuriating for the owners of the 02 entertainment venue in Greenwich.
It now seems that they will have to get used to the prospect of more of them. The upgrade to the Jubilee line, which is meant to increase passenger capacity by a third, should have been completed by June.
If we are lucky, and if Tube Lines, responsible for maintaining the line, gets permission for four more weekend closures, it may be finished by December, though Transport for London thinks it unlikely.
This is shoddy performance by a company with £73 million in pre-tax profits in 2007-08.
The Mayor, irritated, is threatening to withhold consent for three of the weekend closures.
But there is in fact little that he or Transport for London can do except accede to the company's request for more time, more closures.
If the work is to be done, and it must, then it has to be done off-peak. What TfL can do is require from Tube Lines a clear deadline and what penalties it will pay if it fails.
Tube Lines was one of the two original PPP or public-private-partnership companies established to upgrade the Underground.
It was a project for which Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, was entirely responsible, forced on a reluctant Mayor, Ken Livingstone.
It has been a disaster, for which Londoners should unhesitatingly blame Mr Brown. But for a time, the mismanagement of the failed Metronet consortium meant that the patchy performance of Tube Lines went relatively unnoticed.
Now that Metronet has been taken into the control of TfL, its performance has improved and the problems with Tube Lines, responsible for the Piccadilly and Northern lines as well as the Jubilee, have become more apparent.
There was always going to be tension when a large part of the Underground system is maintained by a company effectively in public hands, while the rest is maintained by a private company.
But those tensions have become even more obvious with the deadline approaching for the settlement of a new PPP contract for the seven and a half year period starting next June.
The Tube upgrades for the Olympics depend on both companies working well.
As we report today, Tube Lines is requesting a budget of £7.2 billion to upgrade the lines for which it is responsible. Transport for London puts the real cost at £4.1 billion and the PPP arbitrator seems inclined to compromise.
This bodes ill for the Tube. What if Tube Lines reluctantly accepts a lower budget, only to fall short of its commitments halfway through its contract, blaming a funding shortfall?
It is too late now to scrap the PPP system before next year, but it may be worth taking Tube maintenance into public hands when that contract ends.
Online pirates
The practice of swapping music and films in copyright is ubiquitous and damaging. It undermines the creative industries; it is theft from artists and their companies.
So it is right that the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, should be considering a Draconian crackdown on online piracy in the Digital Economy bill this autumn.
The new proposals envisage warning illegal filesharers that their activities are unlawful; if they persist, their broadband connection would be cut, though it may be possible to retain access to basic services.
This would be a controversial measure, particularly since the onus would be on the internet service providers, like BT, to police the system.
Perhaps this penalty could be preceded by reducing offenders' broadband speeds. But without swingeing measures, online piracy can only get worse.
Crime on camera
It turns out that only one crime is solved for every 1,000 CCTV cameras in London. Certainly this is better than nothing.
But it raises the question of whether the cost of maintaining the million-odd cameras might have been better spent on a few more real live policemen.
Reader views (1)
Well this dose not suprise me i use the Jubilee line most days and at the weekend when its running but i think the Northern Line is better at wekkend as it is running at the weekend at least.
- Richard Coughlan, London,England, 27/09/2009 21:54
Report abuse
