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TfL fined £25m over Jubilee line delays
Peter Dominiczak and Maisie McCabe27 Jan 2012
Transport for London has had to pay about £25 million in penalties to Canary Wharf's owner because of delays to the Jubilee line upgrade.
Canary Wharf Group, housing the European HQs of global banks, ploughed hundreds of millions into the Jubilee line project in the late Nineties.
As part of the deal it demanded strict performance figures be reached by the end of 2009. But a series of failures and delays as a result of the failed public-private partnership agreement meant its deadline was not met and TfL has been paying it huge fines ever since.
Transport bosses agreed in the original deal between CWG and London Underground that "new signalling and train control systems will be introduced, enabling a service of up to 30 trains per hour in the morning and evening peak hours by December 2009".
Work on the line was delayed four times and the upgrade project has repeatedly been described as a "fiasco" by critics on the London Assembly. The delays cost nearly £16 million in lost fares as a result of weekend line closures, it emerged last year.
The Standard understands that although the penalties are continuing, the last fine will be paid in March when the Jubilee timetable changes - allowing 30 trains to run every hour.
Lib-Dem Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon, who chairs the transport committee, told the Standard: "Users of the Jubilee line have faced years of misery as the upgrade programme over-ran. "To learn now that millions of pounds has been shelled out to Canary Wharf Group, while passengers have not been compensated, adds insult to injury."
More than 30 million passengers have been affected by repeated closures of the line at weekends.
CWG said: "There have been penalties but they are not related to disruption, rather to the performance capability of the line prior to the upgrade."
The group is now part-financing the Crossrail station at Canary Wharf. TfL said: "There was no credible plan to complete the Jubilee line upgrade under the legacy we inherited from the former PPP arrangements.
"We have quickly turned that around, completing the upgrade in July 2011 and increasing capacity and reliability for our passengers.
"More trains are being run on the line than ever before and further trains will come into operation this spring to deliver a total increase in capacity of 33 per cent, providing space for an extra 12,500 passengers every hour. CWG has made a financial contribution towards the cost of the improvements and upgrade of the Jubilee line."
Ms Pidgeon added: "It is time the Mayor and TfL were honest with Londoners over the real cost of this long-standing fiasco.
"We are entitled to know the details of every penny that has been spent."
Clashing carriages 'are safe'
Jubilee line carriages are crashing together as trains slow down, severely jolting the passengers inside, because couplings are wearing out.
Bodywork on the trains is damaged when the ends of the carriages smack together, particularly when slowing to come into stations.
London Underground today said safety was not being threatened. An overhaul of the
15-year-old fleet will take until the end of June, only weeks before the start of the Olympics, for which the line is the main Tube route.
A source claimed that 12 trains of the
63-strong fleet have had to be taken out of service for the hydraulically operated couplings to be replaced.
A senior source said: "Some carriages have severe dents in them where they have come together violently as the train decelerates. Not surprisingly, this alarms the passengers."
The line was converted to automatic train operation last June. Nigel Holness, LU network services director, said: "This wear and tear is entirely consistent with trains of this age and is not related to the increase in speed of trains as a result of the upgrade. It poses no safety risk."
He insisted no trains had been taken out of service because of the problem. "As part of our maintenance regime we have begun replacing the parts," he said. "This maintenance is having no impact on service."
LU has failed in its promise to have "visible and helpful" staff at many ticket barriers, a London TravelWatch survey found.
Dick Murray
Reader views (17)
Stop all this moaning . How will we get Boris back in chaps-chapets .
We are walking into a Ken livingstone term so come on you rich Londoners let's do it for London England and good egg Boris .. Hooray
- Tory Rory, London, 29/01/2012 20:23
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The Jubilee Line is a disgrace - a national disgrace.
That said, I am assured that it will be, like all the other lines, OK for the Olympics!!!
What a farce our transport system is. Hong Kong built from scratch an underground railway in half the time it is taking to make Farringdon capable of servicing twelve coach trains. As for Blackfriars!! Now it is mooted to build an airport on reclaimed land. Hong Kong did that in under nine years - our estimate THIRTY years!
Mind you, in defence of the 'construction wallahs' of these projects, Hong Kong had two advantages.
Firstly: NO POLITICIANS.
Secondly: NO EUROPEAN SOVIET UNION.
- David Davies, London, a Region of the European Soviet Union, 27/01/2012 20:34
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Nobody seems to have grasped the fact that TfL is funded by the taxpayer. Therefore, the £25 million fine, which is payable largely to the banking sector, is to be paid by US!!
- Dudley, Dorking, 27/01/2012 16:55
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TfL fined £25m over Jubilee line delays
It will all be passed onto the passengers in next year's fare rise!!!
- Hello Kitty, NW London, 27/01/2012 15:59
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What good will trains be when we're all on strike.....what better time to overhaul them...
- John Hardon, Watford, Herts, 27/01/2012 15:02
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Benny, Manchester. wtf really is there no news in Manchester? Was the removal of the western extension not enough for you? London doesn't like your pollution either...
- I know why, Hackney, London, 27/01/2012 14:32
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And supposing they don't pay the fine? Are they going to round someone's house and demand a tube carriage or two? It's ludicrous. They're playing games. The tube and underground systems need radical overhauling and money frittered away on the Olympic Freak Show should have been diverted to it.
- Dave, Devon, UK, 27/01/2012 14:19
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Please folks don't and I mean Don't ask Boris for his thoughts on the outcome .I heard him speak on the Radio the other morning and believe it This man spends more time dithering over what he's going to say and at the end its just waffle.Just another Tory Buffoon.
- Hamilton Straker, Ealing West London., 27/01/2012 13:03
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Calm down folks, the air pressure on the couplers is immense and if there were to be a “break away” the emergency brakes will come straight on, the one beauty of Tube trains is they are designed to “fail safe”, the one that ran away on the Northern Line was an engineer’s train.
The only problem is in the event of a break away then nothing is running on the effected section of the Jubbly for about 6-8 hours while they try to get around 180 tons of dead metal moving.
You can’t really blame TfL for the £25m as all this was meant to be done under PPP, the fine should really have been taken off Tubelines who started the mess but they don’t exist anymore.
- ASLEF shrugged, East London, 27/01/2012 12:46
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What is £25 million to TFL at the end of the day, what about the 'poorer' disgruntled communters getting compensation ? Train fares rocketed once again this year, bad service,over crowding,delays and very limited weekend rail cover get worse monthly. Then you see the staff have had to be bribed with £2.500 payouts to work during olympics, says it all !
Transport Service during Olympics will be a disaster, they can't even cope now and that's before the million + arrive!
- Errol Clements, London. UK, 27/01/2012 12:34
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Surely that's not good? If they are throwing away £25m to the Canary Wharf owners then what about this apparent surplus that can be used to lower our train fares?
There should be a clause for us long suffering commuters that when a certain target isn't met, we should all get a reduction in our Oyster fares or something.
- Matt, London, 27/01/2012 12:29
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Bit of unwanted news for chairman of the board at tfl one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
- London, Sceptic, 27/01/2012 12:23
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So just another £25 million pounds the motorist has to find in Congestion charges to subsidise the tube and rail network within central London.
- Benny, Manchester, UK., 27/01/2012 12:16
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Another failure for Boris I think.
- joanark, London, 27/01/2012 12:13
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It must be Bob Crows fault.
Come on someone's got to blame him.
- Bazza, London, 27/01/2012 12:09
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I look forward to receiving my £25 miillion compensation too for the years of hassle and disruption caused by the Jubiliee Line's upgrade fiasco.
- JO, Kilburn, 27/01/2012 11:46
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"London Underground today said safety was not being threatened. An overhaul of the 15-year-old fleet will take until the end of June, only weeks before the start of the Olympics, for which the line is the main Tube route."
Oh dear. That doesn't sound good.
- John David, London, 27/01/2012 11:31
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