please empty your brain below

Please start with the number 1)-10) of the bit you're talking about
1) I wonder how much the payment providers charge TfL for facilitating contactless per transaction compared to say, the cost of producing and issuing paper Travelcards.
3) Is Crossrail open already? How did TfL get £90m of revenue from it in 2016/17? They are predicting nearly a billion of revenue a year by 2022/23. And over £300m of profit. Quite the cash cow.

10) Why is the Dangleway reported under "rail"? Is it operationally treated as part of the DLR? How odd.
5) Particularly unpleasant. We don't want more advertising. We want more information to HELP passengers rather than clogging our lives with intrusive advertising.
6a - why not just say they want to reduce private car use from 35% to 20%, although by 2041 most of those involved in coming up with the figures will be dead or retired, so no comeback.
1) Sorry to be a pedant, but "Contactless payment is now used for 43% of pay as you go journeys" doesn't mean "that's 43% of passengers who aren't using paper tickets or Oyster". Surely it's the percentage of pay as you go journeys split between Oyster and contactless, so excludes paper and travelcard?

dg writes: Updated, thanks.
3) Perhaps Crossrail’s revenue is from TfL Rail fares and advertising revenue, if TfL Rail is a brand of Crossrail (business) until Crossrail/Elizabeth line (brand) is public facing.
8) 'London's drivers aren't paying for London's roads....cough, splutter....you what? What is the f'ing congestion charge and t charge going to be used for then? Especially as there are plans to extend the t charge. Very soon it will be too expensive for some small businesses to operate anywhere near London so all that 9) Growth fund action to generate more travelling by tfl opportunities could well fall very flat.
@b, re 8): "Who pays for roads" is a complex thing. Vehicle Excise Duty is now ringfenced for the "Strategic Road Network"- motorways and trunk roads, under the control of Highways England and the equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Fuel Duty and VAT on Fuel is counted as general taxation, so local authorities do get this, but not hypothecated to be spent on roads. Overall VED + fuel duty is much less than annual spending on maintaining roads, never mind building them. TfL gets some of this then.

But what TfL is saying here is that the income they get from their own motor vehicle specific charges (C-Charge and T-Charge) is much less than the cost of maintaining the TfL road network, so has to be topped up with block grant and fare box income. Of course, quite a bit of that fare box income is from buses, which use those routes, so should be funding the roads anyway- but still the implication is that even with c-charge and t-charge motor vehicle drivers are not paying their way. If higher charges make some businesses non-viable, then what it means is effectively public transport has been subsidising those motor-vehicle dependent businesses through low charges. Whether or not it is right to subsidise those businesses is another, more complicated, discussion.
9) The tram to Sutton gets a mention!

There are some interesting route possibilities at the northern end and consequently where the best connection for the Northern Line will be.

However, the most fascinating aspect is the St. Helier protuberance (0.4 miles) to accommodate the large hospital there on its route.

Yet, in the local press there are about three times as many articles on closing said hospital (part of a consolidation with Epsom, and sometimes St. George's, Tooting), as there are about said tram extension. It could end up with a pointless kink!
2) that demand would be lower if fares were higher is 'The Law of Demand'.
1 re contactless payment. Ah, TfL like percentages - and leaving out other tickets and how much they are being used. What we should be told is:
1. How many individul contactless cards were used in the last year?
2. How many individual oyster cards were used?
3. How many paper tickets were purchased?
I bet TfL have this data.
8b) wow. So money from public transport, that could be spent directly improving public transport, is subsidising private transport instead? Shocking
@b 8) Thousands of people will also use tfl roads every day without ever reaching the C/T zones so tfl will never get a contribution from them unless they happen to get on a bus or the tube. "sorry sir, your bus fare is £2 today because our records indicate you drove on the A2 yesterday."

I'm shocked by this cross subsidy and disappointed that either fares are higher or investment in public transport is lower to account for this.
1) @ Roger French - I think TfL's view is that they are paying far too much and not what they expected. There was a Board Paper a few months ago saying that TfL were challenging the costs imposed by the banks to process contactless payment cards.

8) @ Rob - welcome to a capital city that receives no grant for several aspects of its transport system. If you work through the numbers the Tube almost gets to the point in 2021/22 of earning a sufficiently large operating surplus that it covers its investment spend. That's a ridiculous position to be in - a surplus of over £1bn from Tube passengers' fares.
3) @ Andrew - yes the existing revenues from TfL Rail are shown for the Lizzie Line in the plan. There is a step up in revenue next year when services start out of Paddington and then very large step ups in revenue and operating costs as the main cross London service builds up through to 2019/20.

10) @ Andrew - the Dangleway has always been part of DLR in terms of how it is reported within TfL. And no I don't understand why either!
6) Could our transport network cope?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But bundling walking, cycling and public transport together makes this hard to call. If most of the increase is on the walking/cycling side (as it may have to be, if not enough extra trains and buses are provided), then yes.

Further bashing displays an expectation of 31% fewer car/van journeys by that date. Which must be a good thing.

It is also unclear whether for this purpose taxis and minicabs and uber are considered "public transport" or not.
dg, would be interesting to see what your version of the tfl business plan would be.
If you were boss, which would be key projects on the list.
10) Since when is the Emirates Air Line (I mean cable car) a “rail service”? See page 71. I had to read it 3 times to believe it.

dg writes: See comments at 8.20 and 11.42
1) I hope they never get rid of Oyster!
I keep a record of the household expenditure and can cope with entering one £10 or £20 top up a week, but to have to go through my online statement looking for a £1.50 here or a £3.50 there, multiple times a day, would do my head in!!
8) The issue seems to be the lack of grant from central Government that other local government entities (including the boroughs) get to partially cover their responsibilities like road maintenance (with local taxation - something totally ignored here by TfL - topping up the rest).

There's also the issue that some roads TfL maintain (just Red Routes and traffic lights) would be part of the SRN if London wasn't devolved*.

Roads are an important part of the sustainable and public transport networks - most of TfL's road upgrades are about improving things for the sustainable users of these roads: pedestrians and cyclists. And much of the maintenance needs of roads come from heavy vehicles such as the many many buses that provide public transport along the roads.

They talk about this as sowing seeds for getting either
1) their grant back
2) a road user charging system
or 3) both

*Currently the only roads on the SRN that cross the border in Greater London are the M1, M4, M11 and M25, with the M25 spurs (x2), A1, A2, A3, A12, A13, A20, A23, A30, A40, A316 and A3113 ending at the GLA boundary.
1) @ Cornish Cockney - Contactless transactions are aggregated daily (and capped if appropriate) and charged as one transaction per day.
Of course, transport planners and the rest have to go about their business on the assumption that society continues on the trajectory it is currently on - mostly upwards.

Ignoring, like all politicians, the really big issues we do have to consider pdq. AI, robotisation, huge job losses all round, etc,etc. And that's without any moves to de-centralisation. regionalism, federalism - which we really ought to be setting in motion.

Unstoppable (it would seem) changes to our society will result in far less demand for what TFL currently offers.

And the wretched Brexit can only speed up these shrinkages. Elizabeth Line could yet be a beautiful white elephant.










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