Transport for London (TfL) is a financial basket case. Its income is much less than its costs so it has a budget for 2023/2024 of income from passengers of £5.2 billion but costs of £10.5 billion. In other words, it is spending twice its income! The difference is mainly made up by Government subsidies of various kinds including regular bail-outs when it runs out of cash.
A summary of the finances can be seen on page 4 of the TfL Quarterly Performance Report last published – see https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-quarterly-performance-report-q2-2023-24-acc.pdf
TfL is in essence a business that provides transportation to the public and it should be run like one. Some borrowing to finance capital expenditure may be justified but the approach by Sadiq Khan who chairs the TfL Board is simply financially reckless. Income from fares should cover operating costs.
Financial mismanagement is the key problem at TfL.
Roger Lawson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London
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Which is why Sadiq Khan was so desperate to find other revenue streams and why he so rapidly expanded the ULEZ zone to the Greater London boundaries, despite previous denials that he intended to do so.
History repeats itself, he currently denies planning to replace ULEZ with pay per mile for everyone, even though there is evidence a team of people have been employed at great expense (when you find out how much many of these people in TFL are paid you realise why their operating costs are so high) but pay per mile will not be a flat per mile fee, the amount charged will vary depending on time of day, route taken, how many passengers you have and of course type of vehicle and emissions, perhaps even whether TFL think you could have used alternate public transport, this will be designed to fill the TFL black hole and to hell with the financial devastation it will cause to so many people and businesses. If he gets away with it similar schemes will be rolled out all over the country.
Khan must be booted out at the next Mayoral election, see Roger’s last post re a Parliamentary petition that needs your support, please consider supporting and sharing it.
Exactly so.
This is a disgraceful waste of public funds that must be terminated. Those responsible must be held to account. Only then will they stop wasting taxpayer money that is precious for essential basic cost of living.
I think we can all come to this conclusion but how do we change things.whose ear should I be bending for changes?
Completely agree. I think the best thing would be to divide it up. The Main roads go to Highways England. The remainder of the roads go back to the relevant Local Authority and the Buses and Underground go back to being run by Central Government and funded by National Taxation as London’s Transport is relevant to the rest of the Country.
TfL’s organisation of bus routes and schedules is admirable, but its (mis-) management of traffic is abysmal. Its system of intrusive and often punitive control turns the road network into an obstacle course that costs the earth (in both senses) and fails to keep us safe. As I wrote in a 2020 post (at equalitystreets.com), “TfL is getting a £1.9bn bail-out because revenue from fares and the congestion charge have collapsed. When I last looked, TfL’s budget was over £5bn a year, with 100 managers on salaries of over £100,000, with BUPA and generous pension provision among their perks. Much of TfL’s vast budget is spent on vexatious traffic control, and the con charge was introduced before the sociable Equality Streets approach was even tried.”