News: easyJet twilight check-in at Glasgow, first photos of new Piccadilly Line tube trains

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• Lady London says:

  3 Aug3 August 20:08

  So where’s all the ULEZ and Congestion Zone money going if it”s not enough to fund the line management computer systems that will make better use of rails and train eqpt as well? ISTR one of the Central Line system upgrades ended up taking 10 years or something. So might as well start now…

  • Londonsteve says:

    6 Aug6 August 13:16

    It’s going to Capita to fund the operation of the CC and ULEZ. While the CC might generate a positive income flow for TFL, ULEZ is barely going to be able to wash its own face as people get out of non-compliant vehicles. I can see what’s coming: the ‘success’ of the scheme will result in a new target, namely, cars in the highest road tax bracket also having to pay ULEZ (of which there are a great deal driving around London, especially in the smarter parts). They, along with minicabs, black cabs and delivery vans effectively form London traffic. You seldom see a private car on the road that ISN’T a Range Rover, Mercedes S-class or a Lamborghini, anything lesser generally has the private hire roundel in the window indicating it’s a minicab. Considering the ULEZ is a low emissions zone, these polluting cars should have been scoped in from the outset and ULEZ would have a steady income stream guaranteed in the years ahead.

• Ben says:

  3 Aug3 August 22:25

  The government should have funded upgraded signalling so the trains could be driverless.

  • Amy C says:

    3 Aug3 August 22:33

    It would take more than that. They simply don’t have the money and I can’t see that happening for decades.

  • ChrisBCN says:

    3 Aug3 August 23:25

    You are aware there already are driverless trains on the underground? Central, Victoria, plus the DLR. You still have a member of staff on the train though, so you don’t save any money of note.

    • Sharka says:

      3 Aug3 August 23:42

      Because the unions insist on it. For example, on the Central Line the only thing that the driver does Monday-Saturday is open and close the doors: on Sunday, because of union insistence to avoid the obvious argument, they may do something else. The drivers get £70k+ for this door-opening, 6+ weeks holidays, a defined benefit pension and an agreement that, if Tube driving were to be removed, they would be reassigned on the same conditions to another TfL job. Is it not clear why TfL has a deficit and the taxpayer has a subsidy to pay?

      • northernline says:

        4 Aug4 August 01:05

        I’m afraid you are incorrect.
        “Because the unions insist on it.” – unions have never “insisted” on it because it has never been proposed as a realistic project. Only the DfT (very recently) has asked for it to be looked at, and the latest estimates showed it would take longer than 40 years for the capital investment to offset the savings in drivers’ salaries.

        “On the Central Line the only thing that the driver does Monday-Saturday is open and close the doors”
        The driver on automatic lines is still trained and qualified to drive the train manually should the need arise, which happens relatively frequently. For example the signalling system on the Central line tends to break when it rains in open sections, the driver takes over. The driver is responsible for identifying and fixing faults on ageing train stock, as they’re the only qualified person on the train to do so.

        “The drivers get £70k+ for this door-opening”
        The salary for all full time drivers is £63,901. There is no overtime or bonuses available apart from working Boxing Day.

        “6+ weeks holidays”
        The annual leave allowance is 28 days. The additional days each year are for the 8 bank holidays, and 7 banked rest days due to working 36 hours a week and being paid for 35. This leave dates are allocated by management.

        “a defined benefit pension”
        A healthy pension which produces a surplus each year and allows people to retire comfortably after spending 40+ years in a tunnel.

        “an agreement that, if Tube driving were to be removed, they would be reassigned on the same conditions to another TfL job”
        No such agreement exists. There is an expectation that if grades change, staff are redeployed wherever possible, rather than being made redundant, but there’s no agreement of any sort like what you mention.

        “Is it not clear why TfL has a deficit and the taxpayer has a subsidy to pay?”
        The wage bill of Tube drivers is less than 5% of TfL’s annual operating costs. TfL has a deficit (not LU though which generates a surplus, which goes to fund other loss-making modes of transport, mainly buses) which is caused by a lack of interest or funding from central government which is unparalleled for any major city’s transport system worldwide.

      • Amy C says:

        4 Aug4 August 01:50

        Oh dear Sharma,

        I suggest you listen to Northern Line and stop parroting what the Daily Fail inaccurately report on an almost weekly basis. Your post could have been lifted straight from their maddening and highly ignorant comment section.

        • Alf says:

          4 Aug4 August 04:30

          northernline has done a far better job of accurately reporting what is typically not accurately reported in the Daily Mail comments section: £64k and 43 days holiday a year (7 of which are for working 36 hours a week instead of 35 hours a week). Cry me a river. And as if working on the underground for 40 years can be assimilated to working down the pits. Now that’s a proper job. Although in this day and age pit workers might find themselves being slammed for ‘blacking up’ if there were more of them.

        • Rob says:

          4 Aug4 August 08:53

          Yet, bizarrely, I doubt anyone on here would take £64k for a job where you’d be working random shifts, including all night at weekends on some lines, and requiring being in for 4am-ish most days or finishing at 1am.

          I would be shocked if, for example, there is a single plumber in London earning under £65k for a more 9-5 life.

        • Sharka says:

          4 Aug4 August 12:07

          My source was not The Daily Mail. As I understand it, one impediment to automation (other than union opposition) is that you would need to fit screens on other deep lines as on the Jubilee extension and this is hard to do, not least with curved platforms. The T&C set out by nothernline seem fiscally unsustainable (as Alf comments): there will be changes.

          This site was much better back in the original days in which the comments were all about arbitraging FF schemes: the comments started to go a bit off track during Covid lockdowns and have not really recovered.

        • Amy C says:

          4 Aug4 August 14:27

          Sharka, nice pun there re “off track” but no acknowledgement of your inaccurate spouting or it’s source. There are so many reasons why I can’t see it happening I’d be here all day listing them, but the union argument is the least of them. These are deep tunnels. You want a truly driverless experience? Who is going to help evacuate you from a stranded train down there? What if passengers start self evacuating onto live rails? I don’t know how the far more modern subterranean driverless railways work abroad but I bet they aren’t half as deep and probably use OHE rather than 4th rail current. Then there’s the little problem of people throwing themselves in front of trains all the time (or attempting to). To prevent this you’d need platform doors at every single station. Vast cost and upheaval.

• Amy C says:

  4 Aug4 August 14:28

  *OLE not OHE

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