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Old January 8th 18, 11:00 AM posted to uk.transport.london
Roland Perry Roland Perry is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Aug 2003
Posts: 10,125
Default TfL rolling stock crisis

In message , at 10:35:41 on Mon, 8 Jan
2018, remarked:

mix of internally generated surplus and govt investment grant pays for new =
train fleets. I can't recall a train fleet being "flogged off" to pay for a=
new one. It was Caroline Pidgeon who remarked that the proposal was "craz=
y" (or some similar term).

And will almost certainly cost TfL more in the long run. Whoever buys the
trains won't be doing it for the good of mankind, they'll want a long term
profit. As ever short termism rules in british government.


What government wants is stability (whichever political party in power
we are talking about).

Thus, raising taxes to fund those trains could result in voters making a
change at the top, which tends to cause all sorts of costly consequences
reversing earlier policy decisions.

A long term lease (which is the opposite of short-term-ism actually)
does at least make things predictable.


Oh please. It'll cost a damn site more long term,


How do you know what the cost of political upheaval after raising taxes
is likely to be?

its just kicking the actual costs down the road for the next
government/administration to have to explain to the public.


The thing is, they don't ever have to explain it [again]. It's nailed
into the long term (that's good isn't it) operational costs, just like
the rent for the new HQ building they are leasing rather than buying.

I don't know what the ratios are for TfL (maybe PaulC can help) but on
National Rail leasing the rolling stock represents only 11% of the fares
basket.
--
Roland Perry