FURTHER FUNDING REVIEW FOR CROSSRAIL 2

THE TIMELINE for Crossrail 2 looks set to slip following the Government’s call for an independent financial review of the project, which will not report until the autumn.

The new north-east to south-west link across the capital has been targeted for opening in 2033, concurrent with the completion of Phase 2 of HS2. Transport for London submitted an outline business case to Government in March 2017, following which Government asked the organisation to look again at how the project would be funded with a view to TfL covering half of the project’s estimated £30 billion cost up front. Following the Chancellor’s autumn budget, the Government has now ordered an independent review of the project to look at how costs might be reduced.

Speaking to the London Assembly Transport Committee, Deputy Mayor for Transport Val Shawcross said TfL had ‘answered the exam question’ regarding providing funding up front and had ‘jumped through every hurdle we’ve been asked to’. She told the committee that while the project ‘seems a long, slow process’, it is ‘still moving in the right direction’.

TfL had been hoping to move to the next stage of consultation on the project this year ahead of the submission of a hybrid bill to Parliament in 2019, with the aim of starting construction in the early 2020s. Ms Shawcross cautioned that Crossrail 2 is a joint project with Government and would need an ‘agreed funding structure’ before it could proceed to the hybrid bill stage.