The Mayor's Ambient Noise Strategy - Greater London Authority

108 Mayor of London
The Mayor’s Ambient Noise Strategy
London Underground
4B.22 The London Underground provides for some three million passenger trips
each weekday, including the journey to work trips of 35% of those
working in central London. However, many parts of the basic
infrastructure are in a poor state of repair after decades of inadequate
investment. London Underground has estimated that 60% of delays (in
terms of total passenger minutes lost in delays of two minutes or over)
are caused by infrastructure and rolling stock failures.
Box 37: Investment in the Underground
The Mayor’s Transport Strategy seeks to overcome the backlog of
investment on the London Underground rail network, so that the service
provided to passengers is consistently reliable, comfortable, easy to use,
safe and secure. It also seeks to increase capacity by bringing the system
into a state of good repair.
Considerable resources were devoted by Government to preparation of
Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts. However, full engineering
assessment and quantification of the capital investment needed to restore
the system to good repair were not carried out. London Underground Ltd
was merged with Transport for London on 15 July 2003, after the signing
of PPP contracts, which will govern maintenance and asset renewal by
private companies, Metronet and Tube Lines.
Concerns remain, both over the complex financial and operational structure
inherent in PPP arrangements, and at the limited level of investment,
relative to need, available from Government grant and fare revenue.
4B.23 One of the legacies of historic under-resourcing is poor track quality in
many parts of the Underground. The Mayor’s Transport Strategy proposed
(Proposal 4C.3) that Transport for London would conduct a proper
engineering assessment to determine the cost and the time required to
address the deficiencies of the existing Underground infrastructure, and
to identify immediate and long term priorities. Noise and vibration could
have been straightforwardly integrated in enhanced asset condition
monitoring, and in planned, preventative maintenance programmes.
Complex Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements were, however,
imposed (see Box 37).
4B.24 Many asset renewals should provide opportunities for improvements in
noise and vibration. However, arrangements already agreed between
London Undergound Ltd and PPP partners or suppliers are likely to
constrain Transport for London’s ability to introduce new noise and
vibration requirements. Changes which require Engineering or other