In news which will probably surprise absolutely no-one, Transport for London have admitted that they cannot afford to fund the once planned extension of Tramlink to Sutton and that they don’t see that the situation will change in the future. This pretty much puts an end to the hopes that the tram system may be expanded at any point in the foreseeable future as there remain no other active plans on TfL’s radar.
The admittance came from Trish Ashton, Director of Rail and Sponsored Services, who was appearing at the Greater London Authority Transport Committee at the end of September. During the meeting she said: “From a TfL perspective, we are no longer able to commit the funding that we were at that time. The other thing that is worth flagging is that when we look across our infrastructure projects, the costs are likely to have increased significantly since 2019 because of inflation and rising material costs. I know there has been some interest recently in revisiting that business case but we would be looking for something that has a great journey time impact and benefit to offset the considerable costs we are looking at.”
Plans for an extension to Sutton had got as far as public consultation with several routes considered along with the possibility of bus rapid transit rather than trams. This saw a preferred route selected which would have seen trams leave the current Wimbledon line at Belgrave Walk and run to Sutton Town Centre as well as running the opposite direction to Colliers Row. This route would have included a loop around Sutton Town Centre.
At the time it was estimated that the extension would have cost £560 million. However, despite funding from both TfL and local authorities there was a still a huge gap of £440 million – this led to the project being paused in 2019 and now it appears that it gone from paused to officially cancelled.
During the same meeting Trish Ashton also stated that they were reviewing other commitments towards the trams (as part of the Mayor’s 2018 Transport Strategy) including the increase of passenger numbers by 85% by 2030. This comes as the tram network remains the undertaking within TfL which has struggled the most with the recovery of passenger numbers.