[original thread on uk.railway]
[x-posted to ik.transport.london]

On May 7, 11:59*pm, Bruce wrote:
Quite a surprise except to those who knew about the negotiations:

"Tube Lines' shareholders agree £310M buyout deal with TfL

Shareholders of London Underground contractor Tube Lines have tonight
agreed a buyout deal with Transport for London (TfL) for the PPP
arrangement with a price tag of £310M.

The dramatic decision follows months of rows between the two parties
over the cost of the upgrade and maintenance of the Piccadilly,
Northern and Jubilee Lines over the next seven and a half years.

However, the parties confirmed that Amey will continue to provide
management and maintenance during that period under the existing
contract with Tube Lines and that Bechtel will remain for an interim
period to ensure a smooth transition of the capital improvement
programme into TfL."

First Metronet, now Tube Lines. *The effective end of the PPP!

Blimey - didn't see that coming, not at all!

Dunno where the above came from, but there's more from the FT (if
people can access it - still not quite clear on how their pay wall
works):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ec35512-5...nclick_check=1
or via http://tinyurl.com/2eogf8y

A short extract from the FT piece:
---quote---
Chris Bolt, the contract’s arbiter, had been close to ruling that TfL
would have to raise £600m in new finance towards the £4.46bn cost of
Tube Lines’ maintenance and upgrade work on underground track,
stations and trains over the seven and a half years starting from July
1 this year. TfL had been furious at the prospect that it, rather than
the contractor, would have to raise the money.

The deal to pay the US’s Bechtel and Spain’s Ferrovial £310m for the
business had been proposed two weeks ago, according to one person
involved. But it had been postponed until after the general election
because of rules preventing controversial public sector decisions in
the period immediately before a general election.
---/quote---

Of course Tube Lines had been saying that the amount due from TfL /
LUL was £6.8bn - LUL had argued that it should be £4.0bn, whilst the
PPP arbiter Chris Bolt had issued a draft determination of £4.46bn
[1].

When I first read the post I was going to say something like what a
coincidence that this should happen on the day when the (political)
architect of the PPP, Gordon Brown, got his marching orders - or
rather, a somewhat muddled but polite request to vacate the premises
once he finishes his drink as time had been called (I think Mr Cameron
will assume the Premiership within a few days, with or without a deal
with the LibDems). However as the above excerpt from the FT piece
makes clear, my reflex thought process totally managed to overlook the
crucial issue of the election purdah - the announcement was in fact
being delayed until today.

Anyhow, the messy, wasteful experiment of PPP seems to have bitten the
dust, seemingly quite out of the blue. Let's just hope that money for
upgrading the Underground doesn't completely dry up - the primary
reason for the big investment programme of recent years was because of
the eons of underinvestment (or just a total lack of any investment)
in the network.

-----
[1] The source for those figures being the Guardian he
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yzra69b