I beg to move,
That this House has considered Transport for London funding.
I wish to express concerns about the impact of the cuts to Transport for London’s funding that were announced in the spending review. I am especially concerned that a future Mayor, or even the sitting Mayor, might want to raise fares, which will hit my constituents particularly hard. I also want to suggest possible solutions to help plug the holes in TfL’s books.
Let me give the context to the Chancellor’s decision. Transport for London runs the public transport services and manages the major road network in the most important city in Britain. London is the gateway to the rest of the United Kingdom. TfL’s work is critical to Londoners’ ability to work and play, and to get to school and hospital; to business’s ability to get its workforce to work and its goods and services to and from customs; and to London’s many visitors’ ability to arrive, leave and travel to other parts of the UK.
London’s population is growing and is projected to rise from some 8.6 million today to about 10 million by 2030 and 11 million by 2050. London is seeing the fastest urban growth of any city in the European Union. Only a relatively small proportion of my fellow Londoners enjoy the luxury of being able to walk or cycle to work. In short, the vast majority of new and existing Londoners will be reliant on public transport.
The pace of the growth in the number of journeys on the tube is rising fast as well, from a growth of 8.7 million in 2010-11 to an expected 11.7 million this year, which is an increase of 26% in only five years. The docklands light railway has seen an even faster rate of growth in usage, up from a growth of some 6.3 million journeys five years ago to an expected 9.6 million this year—an increase of 52%. In only four years, the number of passengers served by TfL has increased by almost 0.5 billion a year; eight out of 10 of the busiest days in tube history were in the past two months alone; and, indeed, the busiest day ever on the tube was 4 December, when almost 5 million passengers travelled on TfL trains.
The need for further investment in London’s tube, rail and bus networks and in its roads is widely recognised. There are already problems safely managing passenger flows. At some locations, peak-time travel is not only uncomfortable, but close to unsafe.