Challenge on the Tube

The part-privatisation of the London Underground has had its critics, but the Tube’s management has always been, at least in public, in favour of the controversial PPP deal. Until now that is.

This week Tim O’Toole, LUL’s managing director in charge of the day-to-day running of the Tube, attacked the two infracos Metronet and TubeLines in The Guardian, criticising them for the slow pace of improvements, despite racking up profits of nearly £2m a week.

In O’Toole’s view the infracos should be accelerating their programmes by putting additional resources into the contracts. He grumbled that the infracos were supposed to be the cavalry charging in to save the day, but that so far, they were the same old world-weary infantry as before.

But such is the nature of the contract that LUL can bring very little pressure to bear on the infracos. It can’t touch the areas of the improvement programme under the PPP contract; bafflingly, the first seven years concentrate on station improvements, rather than on the track and signalling failures that cause most of the delays.

But LUL does have one trick up its sleeve; there is at least another £5bn-worth of work over the next five years that isn’t included under the PPP deal.

On the face of it, the most efficient route might be to dole out the work to the two infracos already present on the ground. But LUL isn’t playing ball. Instead it will make the infracos compete for the work with outside framework contractors (see p3). However, whether this will galvanize the infracos into accelerating the pace of work under their sole control remains to be seen.

No one is saying upgrading the Tube is easy (see feature p25-27), but if the contractors outside the PPP prove more efficient it might provide a useful benchmark with which to measure and challenge the infracos and placate, to some extent, a disgruntled public looking for fast and real change.