The final cost of the Jubilee line upgrade came in at £721m - more than 2.5 times the original estimate of £285.3m, it has been revealed.
The work was planned under the now-defunct Public Private Partnership (PPP) which was brought back under the Transport for London umbrella last year. It's unusual to see a colossal overspend being held up as a good example but in this case, TfL are using it to demonstrate what a massive waste of money the PPP actually was.
TfL are no strangers to the budget over-run - the recent news that the cable car costs have risen to £60m was mitigated slightly by the fact that Emirates sponsorship for the project will partially plug the funding gap, though it will still leave a £24m-shaped hole to be filled by raiding the train budget.
It does seem like the Jubilee line upgrades have been going on since the dawn of time and Boris Johnson has come under fire for 'broken promises' over the elastic deadlines for the end of weekend closures. Lest we forget, the work which has been done consists of upgrading the signalling system so frequency of trains could be increased, adding an extra carriage and track work to allow faster journeys.
