TfL forecasts costs of fixing bridges and tunnels will exceed £35m
Fixing London’s tunnels and bridges will cost Transport for London (TfL) a total of more than £35m by financial year 2024/2025.
According to documents released ahead of tomorrow’s committee meeting, TfL has set aside £6.8m for interim and reactive safety measures during the coming financial year, spending £6.2m last year on interim and reactive safety measure for its tunnels and bridges.
The body said it is currently unable to carry out all the upgrades needed across the network due to a precarious financial situation based on government short-term funding, whose latest round is expected to expire in late June.
If it weren’t to reach an agreement with the government over long-term funding, TfL said it would fall into a status of “managed decline,” which will only increase operational expenditure.
“Under this scenario, asset condition will deteriorate more rapidly than the ‘do minimum’, resulting in increased likelihood of restrictions and asset closures in order to keep the network safe,” the documents read.
“The backlog of renewals will increase in both scale and time to address it, and renewals schemes are likely to need more extensive, and therefore costly, interventions as works are no longer optimised.”