Will she ever learn?

Massive subsidies ?

Transport for London (TfL) had been told in 2013 it would eventually have to be self-sufficient with its operating costs.

Today it was told by when.

There will be no more general grants from the government for day-to-day running of services from 2018 - earlier than TfL thought.

What it means is by 2018 London will be the only city in Europe where there is no day-to-day transport subsidy.

Gwyn Topham Wed 25 Nov 2015

Transport has been dealt the deepest cut to its day-to-day spending of any government department, with the subsidy for London services to be removed entirely.

The only reason there are "subsidies" in London at all is because these are recouped from taxes on employers and their employees for whom Public Transport is a necessity, and from tourists who spend their money around the Capital.

All removing the subsidy will do is shift the burden onto employers and employees by fair rises and similarly make London less attractive to tourists.

Given the state of rush hour tubes and buses its fairly obvious no one would want to use them were there any possible alternative. It's not their being "subsidised" up to now at least that made them attractive. And so removing the subsidy won't achieve anything - there's no "nudge" potential in this, all its doing is rearranging the deckchairs for purely ideological reasons.

michael adams

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Or there are no speed cams

Northern Line.

Grants by _central_ government for TfL's operations[1] are being phased out. TfL will still get grants from _local_ government. The Greater London Authority makes them - so far, out of taxes (business rates) paid in London. Some might see that as a good example of devolution of decision-taking to Londoners and their elected representatives. Some - including the Mayor - ask for more devolved powers.

And as a London resident I'd find it hard to explain to people outside London why central government should give TfL more of their taxes to subsidise travel in London while Londoners' enjoy a fares freeze. The current Mayor campaigned on, and implemented, a 4 year freeze that was expected to cost £1.9 billion.

I'd guess the difference is the pretty comprehensive PT system in the SE - and much denser traffic. Which would tip the balance of journey reliability.

Leaving out the blip caused by those unrealistic new timetables on some routes. The 'something must be done' syndrome.

Tooting station isn't on the northern line.

But the discussion was about rail, not tube.

In message , at

There will nevertheless continue to be a substantial subsidy from London Council Tax payers.

In message , at

And overnight turned out to be a much weaker freeze than he had promised.

That's to pay for the "Free if you are over 60" fare

Given most will have workers and or customers using PT, why not? It is simply a facility of use to them. Same as police, etc.

Be very interesting to know its true cost. Ie, if removed, how much the increase in fares take would be. My guess is not vast, as many use the free travel for journeys they might not make if having to pay. I certainly do.

Free travel for "over 60 but not State pension..." is funded by the Mayor and TfL. I don't know if that can be attributed to a particular source of funds.

The much bigger amount is to pay for the free travel for people over state pension age for women ("Freedom Pass"). That's based on fares foregone. The cost (£325 million a year) is apportioned to London

In message , at 16:03:15 on Wed, 25 Jul

I suspect you are confusing commercial rates payers, and residents paying council tax.

I wasn't judging whether the subsidy was right or wrong, just that there's a massive gap between the fares box for *paying* TfL users, and what the cost of provision is.

In message , at 18:01:13 on Wed, 25 Jul

Fares 47% it says here:

I agree, but we weren't discussing that.

You must be indeed fortunate, there are parts of the UK where a journey by car is predictable, but I dont use many of these routes.

As for the train service, trains in Britain are like the food, you only have to go abroad to see why we have built up the reputation we wallow in.

AB

Well you could start by pointing out that London, followed by the South East, and to a very small degree the East of England are the only areas of the UK which actually make a positive contribution to the UK economy

As the graph, half down this abstract from the ONS shows

In short London contributes around 28 billion, The South East around 15 billion and the East of England around 2 billion. The North West of England on the other hand produced a 22 billion deficit, Yorkshire around a 14 million deficit, and Scotland around a

Now I personally don't begrudge these regions this money as the wealth of the UK was built on their labour in the past; their mines, their mills and their shipyards. Just as London's wealth has always derived from her geographical position in the SE and her relative proximity to continental Europe. Unfair maybe, but that's geography for you.

So that before anyone starts bandying around loaded phrases such as "subsidies" or "subsidising", I think it best to be determine who is actually subsidising whom, and by exactly how much.

As to your other point about Londoners enjoying a fares freeze, I'm rather astonished to learn that you weren't aware that this freeze only applies to single journeys. There is no such freeze on the cost of travel cards or on Oyster card daily and monthly caps.

I assume the reason the freeze has been prioritised on single fares is simply because this is the easiest way of helping poorer people who might otherwise find such fares a burden. Unemployed people travelling to job interviews or to visit a sick child in a hospital on the other side of London.

The assumption being I suppose that people who travel most regularly on public transport, by doing so have already demonstrated their ability to pay, unlike those who may already regard use of public transport, the tube certainly as a luxury of sorts.

Now whether there's any evidential basis for such an assumption I'm not sure, and short of means testing passengers in some way I can't see how there ever could be. Nevertheless it seems reasonable enough to me.

michael adams

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Just so as I can be clear as what you mean by "subsidy" there.

Let's say A subsidises B in respect of C, if, and only if D

Could you possibly fill in the blanks ?

I only say that, because quite obviously Council Tax Payers and beneficiaries of any TFL subsidies, whether real or potential beneficiaries, are not only, not mutually exclusive, but apart from the bedridden who can't travel, and infants, children and young people who don't pay Council Tax, would appear to be exactly the same people.

Or am I missing something ?

michael adams

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In message , at

All council tax payers subsidise the fares of the subset who choose to use TfL. As it happens, the last time I was a London Resident (for a period of about 3yrs) I don't recall ever using a bus, there were no tube lines where I lived, so only used them on occasional trips to WC1, and Overground was just a gleam in someone's eye (and even today nowhere near where I was living then).

I got by on a mixture of walking for very local things like taking the children to school, maybe once a week a National Rail train to Waterloo, and everything else by driving.

But I did recognise that my ability to drive was significantly enhanced by the number of others who had been incentivised to use buses and (national- rather than local-taxpayer) subsidised mainline trains.

In message , at 09:09:49 on Thu, 26 Jul

It's not a universal freeze, but you've got the formula wrong.

The freeze turned out to be only applicable to fares set by TfL (which includes TfL-only singles, of course); however tickets which are within London, but inter-available with National Rail (which includes some singles but especially Travelcards and Oyster capping which emulates Travelcards), have an element set by those National Rail TOCs, and haven't been frozen.