Adonis offers to run capital's transport

Friday, February 19, 2010

"It is not acceptable for you to ask government to bail you out if you cannot balance your accounts," the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis told Boris Johnson after the London Mayor asked for more money to upgrade the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines on the London underground.

Pointing out that government money given to Transport for London (TfL) had more than doubled in the last 10 years – most of them when Johnson was not Mayor – Adonis also said: "Under devolution, it is for the Mayor and TfL to deliver the Tube upgrades within their generous budget - not for me to bail them out if they fail to do so.

"If Boris wants me to take charge of TfL then he should say, and I would start with more sensible priorities like not cancelling the Western congestion charge zone and not replacing a modern bus fleet needlessly – both of which are costing Londoners hundreds of millions of pounds which could be spent on upgrading the Tube."

At £4.4bn, the underground upgrades are expected to cost £400m more than was originally expected.