On 21/01/2013 08:15, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:46:51
on Sun, 20 Jan 2013, remarked:
As I keep saying it's high time the evil nonsense of the BAA (or
whatever it's called this week) monopoly was brought to an end. It
should
be incorporated into the London public transport network
Given that BAA paid for it to be built, are you prepared to buy it
off them at cost (or some other larger figure)?
Like the PFI companies and Croydon Tramlink?
Was Croydon Tramlink built to be a separate privately-operated line?
It was horribly complicated. It was a 99-year PFI concession awarded in
1996, with the Tramtrack Croydon Ltd consortium which won the concession
then awarding assorted subcontracts for things like the actual day to
day operation.
It opened in 2000 but soon got bogged down in legal and contractual
arguments which made it difficult to get anything done and had perverse
outcomes: a retail developer was required to fund an extra tram stop,
but the tram company couldn't stop trams there without breaching
contractual performance requirements; there was a long-running argument
about who had to fill in some holes in a road; there was a messy court
case about who pays what if fare policy is changed (such as pensioners
getting free rides on bus services, and thus abstracting traffic from
paid tram to free bus).
In 2008 TfL bought TCL, which gave TfL full control and ended payments
TfL had to make because of the ticketing issues. The consortium members
were happy because they got their money immediately rather than over
decades.
/AIUI BICBW
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK