Tube Lines have finally admitted what we told you a month ago: the upgrade to the Jubilee line won't be finished by December. The work to install a new signalling system should be done by January according to the PPP company, but LU are still waiting for the revised date and think it could run beyond that. All Tube Lines could do was whinge to the Guardian about not getting as many line closures as they wanted:
"We got roundly half the closures that we needed. As a result you become a lot more inefficient and you do not get as much productivity"
Hang on. Half the closures? The Jubilee line's been closed virtually every bloody weekend since... since forever, it feels like. How many closures did they want? Would this have involved inventing extra days - Friturday, Tunday - to get it done? No wonder LU's acting managing director, Richard Parry, is hacked off:
"I am not at all surprised by this. We need Tube Lines to admit what it is actually capable of doing and just come clean"
Indeed. LU have also reached the final straw on the quarrel over funding; you remember, Tube Lines say they need £x to do the work, LU says that's ridiculous etc? The two sides are now closer in their estimates than they've ever been, but they've still had to call in the arbiter to settle it. This move will probably cost LU more than they want to pay (the arbiter's consistently come up with costs somewhere in between the two), but at least we'll finally find out exactly what we'll be getting over the next few years. Even if 'when' is a whole other subject. (Image by Andy Wilkes from the Londonist Flickr pool)
