LUL - In the Brown stuff...

Telegrammed by Spinning Charles Yerkes
The pink ‘un had an interview on Friday with London Underground MD Mike Brown.

Brown, recently restored to us from his sabbatical at Heathrow, throws full light on the fall out from the collapse of Tube Lines.

• Northern line resignalling delayed until after the Olympics

• Piccadilly line upgrade postponed sine die, with further development work required on the signalling interface between the Picc and District in west London where they share right of way but not Infracos.

• The interface between the Met line and the Jubilee line – another rubbing point between Metronet (dead) and Tubelines (almost deceased) – is cited as a project where things could have gone better.

• The £1 billion resignalling of the Sub-Surface lines is being rescoped and relet next year, much to the dismay of Invensys (formerly Westinghouse) who had been a shoe-in under the Metrodebt tied supply chain but must now compete in open contest. Completion is not expected until 2018, until when the new S Train fleet will potter around under the old electro-mechanical arrangements, with train stops, and not get anywhere near the 50% increase in capacity promised.

• Jubilee line resignalling, due for completion this autumn, won’t be. “We have not yet got into the detail of where we are on the programme and where its delivery schedule should get it,” Mr Brown told FT hack Robert Wright.
  

Beg pardon?

TfL agreed to buy Tube Lines in early May.

In two months, with full access to everything Bechtel and Amey ferrovial were doing, is it such a shag up that LUL still can’t discover an end date? (Yes. Ed)

Dame Shiti Vadera is 48 (ish, according to wikipedia) and Gordoom Brown is missing.

So farewell Tube Lines - sister to Metrodebt

The Devil's Lantern appears much exercised by the Tube in Turmoil.

Eye is surprised that the Metropolitan media hadn't seen this coming.

To lose one Chief Exec to unfunded Crossrail, might be considered a misfortune.

To lose a second within weeks... to National Express!!!, looks like carelessness.

In the words of ITV's Simon Harris "Still the signals don't work."

Ford in The Thunderer!

Captain Deltic lets National Express off the hook, in an Op Ed piece in tomorrow's Times...

So the National Express bid was not uniquely optimistic. Nor, given the prescriptive nature of franchise specifications, did it make unrealistic promises. The problem was that the franchising process was locked into an expectation of perpetual growth. It was a perfect system until the economy failed to play by the rules.

Steel hand, velvet glove.

Fortunately the Prime Minister assures us the downturn started in America.

How effing much?

More good news for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

The NAO report on the collapse of Metronet says it has cost the taxpayer £410m (this figure of course excludes the millions paid to consultants to set up the deeply flawed part privatisation of the Tube).

Caroline Pidgeon, quoted in the Grauniad, tells it like it is...

"This is simply a devastating report for the architect of the public private partnership contract – Gordon Brown. It is unforgivable that as much as £410m of taxpayers' money has been wasted. The PPP deal that was forced on Londoners by Gordon Brown has been totally exposed as a bad deal for taxpayers and for passengers."

Sadly it's not worth pointing out that had Brown and Vadera presided over such a monumental balls-up in the private sector they would have been out the door so fast their arses wouldn't have touched the ground.

UPDATE: This from Accountancy Magazine...

Ernst & Young was paid £33m in fees for handling the administration of Metronet, the firm set up to modernise the London Underground, a report by the National Audit Office reveals.

Why?

"PPP a success" says Nobody

This from Supply Management...

London Underground (LU) and supplier Tube Lines (TL) have only a few months to resolve a major dispute over maintenance costs.

The organisations have a difference of more than £3 billion in their calculations of the cost of upgrading the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Northern Lines by 2017.

No shit Sherlock