Funding for Transport for London has been cut as part of a £545m programme of asset sales and budget reductions at the DfT ordered by the chancellor, George Osborne.
The lion’s share – £345m – will be met by the Department selling its share in the King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership, which owns land north of King’s Cross station.
The remainder comprises:
£124m of reduced contingency held by the Department
£31m grant reduction to TfL
£23m recovered from expected underspend this year in the Cycling City Ambition Programme (the DfT awarded £114m over three years to eight cities last November)
£16m underspend in the Regional Air Connectivity Fund
£5m underspend on the Station Commercial Projects Facility
£1m underspend on the Sheffield tram-train project
On the Cycling City grant cut, a DfT spokesman said: “The savings announced reflect the funding requested by the participating cities this year.”
Osborne announced £4.5bn of measures to cut public debt. Further cuts will be announced in next month’s Budget.
The blow from the cut in TfLs grant should be softened, by the increased sale in new private hire licenses. Income from new driver and vehicle licence applications could add an approximate £20m to TfLs coffers.
American smartphone app Über expect to expand their fleet to 42,000 mobiles by the end of 2016. The company is presently expanding at a rate of 1000 next licenses every month.
Last month, we received reports that the NSL passing station in Coulsdon, was refusing to book Taxis for licensing as they needed to concentrate on clearing the backlog of new Prius, clogging the system.
We have now been informed that after complaints from a local Taxi proprietors, the situation has now reverted back to normal.
A spokesperson for NSL said the decision not to accept Taxi bookings was made by TfL.
