The long-overdue Crossrail line in London may never be finished because of a lack of funding.
That’s the revelation from Transport for London’s Chief Financial Officer Simon Kilonback who told the organisation’s Board that only £825 million of a promised £1.1 billion of the final tranche of Crossrail funding had been received but the latest estimates of the cost of getting it open ranged from £950 million to £1.1 billion.
“There remains a sizeable risk we don’t have enough money to complete Crossrail as things currently stand,” London’s Evening Standard quotes him as saying.
The report adds that there are no other “mega-projects” being planned, but that there was no mention of whether that did or did not include the planned new Silvertown Tunnel.
Kilonback is quoted as saying, “Our plan sees a conscious step away from the megaprojects from previous business plans, which were built on the case for economic and population growth.
“Projects such as Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo line extension are paused, with no further funding committed during the next two years.
“We now have very few growth projects left. There aren’t a huge degree of overly ambitious projects in what we can afford to do. As a starting point, this will not deliver the MTS (Mayor’s transport strategy).”
(Picture – TfL)
