All change, please
DENNIS Tunnicliffe, London Under- ground's long-serving chief executive, has concluded that now is the time to press the green button and step off the train. If John Prescott or Lord Macdonald of Transport or Ken Livingstone agree with him they are all too polite to say so. For his part he does not publicly blame the political pressures which pushed London Underground to spend the money where the customers weren't. There was no obvious demand for a new railway from Bermondsey to the site of Greenwich gasworks, but the Dome must have its sta- tion and the Prime Minister once used it. That railway project ultimately proved too much for London Underground to manage. Running far over time and over budget, it absorbed the investment and attention that the rest of the system needed. A current poster attempts to explain the notorious black hole in the Aldgate area, into which so many trains disappear, never to be seen again. We are told that the computerised signalling must have its software rewritten, and that electrical circuits are being con- fused by metal dust ground down from wheels and rails. So the old technology is wearing out and the new one doesn't work. All change, please.
Previous page
