There’s a warning that transport network is headed for “managed decline” to echo the 1970s if central government refuses to fill a growing funding black hole. 

London’s financial paper City AM reports that late on Wednesday evening, TfL’s finance committee published the “bleakest assessment yet” of the future of London’s public transport network, outlining an 18% reduction in bus services and a 9% decline in tube services unless emergency funding is found. 

It quotes TfL Commissioner Andy Byford saying that “without meaningful sustained investment we will see a damaging vicious circle of underinvestment and service cuts, dragging London back to the 1970s and ‘80s era of an ageing, infrequent and unreliable transport network.” 

TfL has received three emergency bailouts since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the latest of which runs out in just over three weeks.

(Picture – Highways News)