Hopes are growing that the government will fund a Bakerloo Line extension into southeast London – possibly as early as the spring of next year, according to a senior TfL official.
Alex Williams spoke at the launch of a new business-led push to get the Tube line extended to Lewisham and onto Hayes.
He said that Transport for London would be submitting a specific request for money to pay for a Bakerloo line extension and upgrade before the chancellor’s comprehensive spending review next spring.
TfL’s chief customer and strategy officer added that the government’s drive to get more homes built had boosted the prospects of the project.
The line would run in a tunnel from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham, with two new stations on the Old Kent Road and one at New Cross Gate. A further extension would run on to Hayes and Beckenham Junction, using the existing National Rail route via Catford Bridge and Lower Sydenham, although Bromley Council has opposed a takeover of the Hayes line.
TfL has said most of the project would need government cash, but none was forthcoming in Rachel Reeves’ first budget last month. In February the cost of an extension to Lewisham was put at up to £8 billion.
Williams told the Business4Bakerloo event there were “peaks and troughs” in planning major rail projects.
“It feels to me, in that peaks and troughs thing, that it’s on the way up, that there’s some good planets aligning to make sure that we are going to proceed with the scheme,” he said.
Plans for the project were already “very clearly defined”, Williams pointed out. He said there was also a “compelling” case for replacing the line’s existing 52-year-trains as part of the upgrade.
As well as the scheme creating jobs, Williams said that Labour had made homebuilding a central focus and had given London a mandatory target of constructing 81,000 new homes per year.
“You aren’t going to get anywhere near that unless you invest in infrastructure – and this is a great project for that,” he said.
Williams said that business had helped push the case for Crossrail and could do the same for the Bakerloo extension. “In some ways what we need to do for the Bakerloo is make it unstoppable,” he said.
“So I’m much more optimistic about the scheme now. There’s a lot of hurdles to overcome, but if the money is made available, we can absolutely deliver this.”
In the mayoral election in the spring, Sadiq Khan pledged to create a “Bakerloop” bus between Lewisham and the Elephant as a standby measure while funding for a new Tube line was obtained. A Lewisham Council meeting on Wednesday evening was told that council officers were in talks with TfL about how best to introduce the service.
Seb Dance, Khan’s deputy mayor for transport, said a Bakerloo extension and upgrade was “imperative” and stressed the urgency of securing modern trains to replace the current 52-year-old fleet.
“It’s quite astonishing, frankly, that they still run. They’re very well built,” he said. “But there are increasingly fewer people who know how to fix them. Unfortunately, the number of people we are relying upon to fix these trains, as and when they fall out of service, is reducing.
“We cannot go on in a situation running the oldest trains in western Europe on our network. We have to upgrade it.”
Dance said that London would not be “putting a begging bowl out” as the scheme would deliver substantial economic rewards. He added: “This project is a no-brainer – back it.”
Noah Vickers is the Local Democracy Reporter for City Hall, based at the London Standard. Additional reporting by Darryl Chamberlain.
Follow The Greenwich Wire on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Threads. You can also sign up for WhatsApp alerts – or subscribe to our emails through the blue box above.
Comments are closed.