Monday, 17 March 2008

TfL nationalise Croydon Tramlink

TfL have announced they're buying Tramtrack Croydon Ltd, the private consortium that built, owned, ran and in part paid for the Tramlink network. TfL are planning various service improvements, which are outlined in the press release.

This page has a nice overview of who Tramtrack Croydon are. The consortium's owners contributed £75m towards the project, and TfL are buying them out for £98m. Blithely ignoring any money that's gone in or out in the intervening years, I make that 5.8% APR. Not bad.

5 comments:

  1. For me this is marvellous news. Whilst the system is generally excellent, in my opinion, it is clear that "tensions" have prevented it being as good as it could be. Various farces - the non-existant extra tram, refusing to stop trams at the Centrale stop, refusing to run more frequent services in the evening have shown some of the bad effects of the ownership structure. I believe that there are now a lot of "quick wins" that could be achieved with a change of attitude.

    However Ken can no longer promise this as an election pledge as it has already happened!

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  2. Hi - the ownership of Tramtrack has changed since the page you link to was published. Basically Bombardier and First are no longer shareholders. However, First currently operates the trams for Tramtrack.

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  3. Not so much 'nationalised', but taken into public ownership - which is different to being taken into government ownership.

    Whatever the detail, it's very welcome news!

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  4. will this help push the crystal palace extension along? i live right next to the proposed penge road stop :D

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