MIND THE FUNDING GAP

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: july/august 2009 :: RMTnews 13 RMT has warned that services in London are facing a £6 billion funding gap which threatens to wreck modernisation schedules and plans for the 2012 Olympics while leaving thousands of jobs under threat. A new London Assembly report points to a £1.7 billion transport income gap as a result of the recession which it predicts will open up between now and 2018. This latest funding bombshell comes on top of TfL’s existing £2.5 billion savings programme and a £2 billion finance row between TfL and the Tube Lines consortium. With the costs to the taxpayer from the failure of the Metronet privatisation thrown in, the total cash gap racks up to over £6 billion. METRONET CUTS The cuts being proposed to save money on former Metronet lines includes a new £60 million cut in maintenance. The latest package of cuts will slash £26.1 million from track and signals, £18.9 million from fleet and trains and £18.5 million from stations on the former Metronet lines. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that tube bosses had claimed during the recent strike that they could slash budgets and axe jobs without hitting services. “But these are real cuts that will hit track, signals, trains and stations maintenance as well as putting yet more tube staff jobs on the line. “The consequences of these kinds of cuts on the Tube could be potentially disastrous. “These cuts are just the start and if we don’t stand up and fight together there will be much more to come as the scale of the funding gap from the collapse of Metronet blows a massive hole in budgets across the tube network,” he said. OLYMPIC THREAT In the run up to the Olympics, the funding crisis puts the entire future of services across the capital on the line. RMT has repeatedly warned that the threat to jobs is part of a wider package of savage cuts to the transport budget in London which can all be traced back to the failure of privatisation. As a result the modernisation of the Tube is under serious threat and the ability to deliver in time for 2012 is left in serious doubt. Bob Crow said that the solution was simple, reverse the privatisation experiment. “Bring Tube Lines back under public control and draw a line under the privatisation disaster and then demand government investment to protect London’s transport services. “If the government can find billions to bail out the banks then they can find the cash needed for world- class transport services. The alternative is real cuts in jobs and services and transport chaos,” he said. TUBE LINES FUNDING ROW The latest example of why privatisation does not work is the funding row that has broken out between Tube Lines and TfL which could put essential works and thousands of jobs at risk in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. Tube Lines, which holds the contract for the repairs and refurbishment of the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee Lines, has attempted to hack £2 billion from it's estimated costs of £7.2 billion on the work programme for the next seven and half years with a significant scaling back of the scope of the planned works. TfL has estimated that the full scope of the essential upgrading and modernisation programme could be delivered for £4.1 billion and the government arbiter concluded it should cost no more than between £5.1 billion and £5.5 billion - leaving a £2 billion black hole on the Tube Lines budget. Bob Crow said that it was clear that there was a £2 billion stand off between Tube Lines and TfL on the works programme on the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee Lines with tube users and tube workers caught in the middle. "This row all stems from the botched PPP privatisation of the Tube and it is not out of the question that we could see another failure similar to Metronet or National Express on the East Coast with Londoners left to pick up the pieces. "Meanwhile, jobs and essential works on these lines are left at risk in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. “Our advice to Boris Johnson and TfL is to seize this opportunity to get rid of Tube Lines, take these works back into direct public control and work out a funding programme which protects jobs and the upgrade programme in the run up to 2012 and beyond," he said. MIND THE FUNDING GAP RMT warns that the estimated £6 billion funding gap for transport in London stems from the privatisation of Tube infrastructure which should be reversed once and for all