London Crossrail Delay Will Cost TfL as Much as $968 Million in Lost Revenue

(Bloomberg) -- A fresh delay to London’s $20 billion Crossrail project will cost the city’s cash-strapped transportation authority as much as 750 million pounds ($968 million) in lost revenue.

The impact will range from 500 million pounds to 750 million pounds over the four fiscal years ending in 2023, Transport for London said Wednesday in a statement.

The agency said in November that the opening of the central section of the cross-city rail line, which had first been planned for December 2018 and was then pushed back to 2020, had been shunted further back and the opening would instead be “as soon as practically possible in 2021.”

The Elizabeth Line will stretch 60 miles across central London, connecting Heathrow airport and Reading in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood to the east.

Costs on the project have been escalating, with November’s most recent update adding as much as 650 million pounds to a toll that already stood at 15 billion pounds.

The transport body had been hoping to overturn a wide operational deficit by 2021/22 and is facing challenges from the loss of a government grant to what it has referred to as a “subdued national economy.” The huge rail development is expected to provide a boost with fare income, but the repeated delays have sent its original projections off-track.

TfL said the revenue impact assumptions will be fully addressed in its 2019 update to its business plan, which is due to be published in December.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Smith in London at rsmith599@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sunil Kesur at skesur@bloomberg.net, Anthony Palazzo, Frank Connelly

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