Underground underwater

摘要

The public-private partnership (PPP) on London's Underground, under which responsibility for the rails, stations and trains was contracted out to the private sector, has been controversial ever since it was first suggested in 1997. The scheme has now been running for two years, but the criticism shows no signs of abating. The National Audit Office, a respected watchdog, has attacked the project on value-for-money grounds. The House of Commons Transport Select Committee published a scathing report in March. In April Bob Kiley, the boss of Transport for London (TfL) and a vocal opponent of the scheme, said that performance on parts of the network was "bordering on disaster". All that calls for close scrutiny of the latest report on the scheme, from TfL. The government body responsible for transport in the capital quite reasonably concluded in its first report, published a year ago, that it was too early to tell whether the scheme was working or not. Its second report, published on July 27th, is much more forthright.