But what might be more important is what the 80-page document doesn't contain. One major Underground project, I'm sorry to say, has completely disappeared. It should be in this list and it isn't.
The Metropolitan line extension to Watford Junction appears to have been cancelled.
There is mention of the Bakerloo line extension, which Sadiq is attempting to fast-track. There is mention of the Northern line extension to Battersea, even if somebody at City Hall can't spell. And there is mention of the London Overground extension to Barking Riverside, which will unlock the development of tens of thousands of homes. But of the Metropolitan line extension there is no mention at all.
The previous version of the TfL Business Plan was published in March by the outgoing Mayor. It specifically mentioned the Metropolitan line extension, indeed the project had its own paragraph. The new draft Business Plan has nothing.
The 'vision for the London Underground' in the previous version specifically mentioned the Northern and Metropolitan line extensions. The new draft Business Plan mentions only the Northern and the Bakerloo.
In the appendix to the new draft Business Plan we learn that the Northern line extension is due to cost £612m over the five years from 2017 to 2022. We learn that the Barking Riverside extension is due to cost £82m over the same period. But the list doesn't mention the Metropolitan line extension at all, even though contributory funding from Hertfordshire County Council and the DfT is already confirmed.
The Metropolitan line extension was due to link the existing Watford branch to Watford Junction via a new viaduct and a disused railway line. Trains would no longer serve the current terminus at Watford Met, but two new stations would be built at Cassiobridge and Watford Vicarage Road. Or at least that was the plan.
The Metropolitan line extension was given the go-ahead by government five years ago this week, with Hertfordshire County Council originally in control. They found running the project difficult, with the end result that budgets rose and timescales slipped. Last year full responsibility for the extension was handed from HCC to London Underground, with the project due for completion by the end of 2020.
And now it seems that London Underground have decided not to proceed. They might have kicked the project so far into the future that it falls outside the scope of a five year business plan, but that seems unlikely. They might have decided there's insufficient money for the extension, and published the draft Business Plan hoping nobody will notice. Or they might have accidentally forgotten to mention it, and all is still on track.
Here's why I don't think the omission is an accident.
Every three months TfL hold a Community Liaison Group to discuss the Metropolitan line extension with a panel of local stakeholders, and the minutes of these meetings are posted on the project's webpage. In the latest minutes, dated 5th October 2016, we learn that the project is being held up while TfL try to find a new construction partner.
Nothing has happened on site since that liaison meeting except some minor work relating to the diversion of two sewers and a few BT cables. I've even been down and looked. Much vegetation has already been cleared and the trackbed has been levelled, but no construction vehicles are present and no start on the key connecting viaduct has been made. While TfL reconsider their finances and escalating costs, any work of any physical significance has been put on hold.
Most tellingly, the minutes contain this exchange between Philip Brading (Three Rivers councillor, and Chair) and Paul Judge (TfL's acting lead for the Metropolitan line extension project).
In other words, when the councillor asked in October whether the new Mayor was still interested in the project, he was told to wait for publication of the Mayor's Transport Strategy. We now have that document, in the form of the TfL Business Plan, and the Metropolitan line extension gets absolutely no mention whatsoever. The only logical conclusion is that the Metropolitan line extension is no longer a priority, and has been dropped.
If that is the case, it's enormously disappointing. A project that's been on the drawing board for 40 years, and funded for five, has slipped silently back into oblivion. It's also perhaps not unexpected. Sadiq's fare freeze has put TfL's finances under enormous pressure, so it was always looking likely that a major project would have to be cut. And it's also highly embarrassing. Sadiq has made a big thing of being trustworthy enough to take over suburban rail services around the capital, and here he is scrapping a project just outside London transferred to him by the local county council.
As a Croxley boy, born and bred, I'd very much like to be wrong. I'd like to hope that the omission of the Metropolitan line extension from the draft TfL Business Plan is nothing more than an administrative error, but it appears to be more deliberate than that. Who deleted it, and why, and when were they thinking of telling us?
✉ Today sees the official start of the first direct railway service between London Marylebone and Oxford. But unofficially the first trains ran yesterday, because the second Sunday in December is St Timetables Day when all the schedules change. A couple of years ago Chiltern Railways spent a few million joining their mainline to the previous Bicester spur, and today's fresh connection to Oxford is the end result. I didn't get the first train because that was always going to be full of Men Who Like New Track, but I followed close behind and had a splendid easy scenic hour-long ride.
✉ Bicester Village must be the only station in Britain where on-train announcements are made in English, Chinese and Japanese. It's probably also the only station whose name has been changed from XXX Town to XXX Village, such is the dominance of the adjacent designer outlet park. The train cleared out quite a bit after that. Next up is Islip, a proper village with a fortuitous service, and then Oxford Parkway. Until yesterday this car park was the end of the line and you needed to board a bus for the last bit. Now fresh rails and two new platforms deliver all souls to Oxford proper, avoiding the often nightmarish traffic, in a far-sighted triumph of infrastructural planning. A man in a top hat greeted us as we alighted.
✉ What a wonderful museum the Ashmolean is. Not only is it Britain's oldest, but in 2009 the Queen opened a huge extension and the end result is magnificent. The space is divided between art and archaeology, with rather more of the latter, and the end result is like walking round a modern cross between the British Museum and the V&A. As well as reams of Roman and Greek treasures, the Ashmolean intelligently celebrates the contributions of several civilisations from further east, and all the Chinese and Japanese tourists thronging Oxford's streets would do well to look inside.
✉ Every December for the last ten years a sea of dressed-up Santas has run through Oxford in support of a local hospice. They run on a Sunday morning, to minimise disruption, and they run early, so by the time I arrived most of them had finished their two mile stint. What was amazing was then seeing the centre of Oxford overrun by two thousand red-suited participants, either milling around waiting for the shops to open or heading home. There were Santas queueing at bus stops, Santas swarming over the Christmas market, Santas filling the windows in Starbucks, and whole families of Santas wandering aimlessly dangling their celebratory carrier bags. Oxford when the students have gone home is a very different city.
✉ It's Interview Time at the University, when potential students arrive for a brief stay and try to impress enough to come back properly next year. They wheel their suitcases across unfamiliar cobbles, in expectation or in awe, and try to locate the historic rooms where they'll be lodging overnight. A few of this year's students have stayed on to make them welcome, while all the others have been cast out so sufficient beds are free. I remember my parents dropping me off here a third of a century ago, for brief immersion into a peculiar world of tradition, drinks parties and open-ended questions. I must have answered them OK, because they invited me back, but none of the other 24-hour friends I'd made ever resurfaced.
✉ In common with the majority, my college was closed yesterday to all visitors, even old students. I could have nipped in through the back gate, past the stairs down to the washing machines, but better not. Instead I crossed the street to reminisce about the student accommodation I lived in during my first year, designed by no less an architect than the bloke who dreamt up the Skylon. I was disturbed to see that my room appears to have been turned into a communal kitchen as part of a recent refurbishment, although anything that got rid of the previous kitchen with its clunky electric ring has got to be an improvement. A potential student with a wheelie suitcase was looking lost, so I claimed former knowledge, and she then walked off in the opposite direction. I bet she wondered who the old bloke was.
✉ The Cowley Road has changed a lot since my year spent living out of college. The shops have perked up rather, or maybe it's just that consumerism has moved on, selling trifles that no previous student or local resident would have needed. Burgers are now served sitting down, the Thai restaurant that once seemed novel now seems commonplace, and there's a betting shop where the Chinese takeaway used to be. Checking out the prices in the estate agent's window beneath my former boxroom I'm disturbed to see that rents are now so high they'd have wiped out my entire grant in one month flat. I bet the pelican crossing beneath the window still keeps the current occupant awake at night. Glory days.
✉ I never walked to Iffley when I lived here, nor ever realised what was at the end of the Iffley Road, but a mention in Bill Bryson's latest book persuaded me I should go. Head south and Oxford's suburbs slowly merge into a medieval village, with Cotswold stone cottages and a pub along one meandering street. It's not quite as lovely as an actual Cotswold village, but an impressive survivor given its location, and St Mary's has been described as the finest Norman church in Britain. The interior has lofty Romanesque arches, and several of its stained glass windows are genuine 12th century, rounded off with some splendid John Piper infill. By dropping in between Sunday services I got the entire building to myself.
✉ The Thames Path runs past Iffley Lock, and a chain of (partly-flooded) water meadows. This is the furthest point on a popular constitutional stroll from the centre of town, which perhaps explains the survival of the Isis Farmhouse, a pub inaccessible other than by towpath. In summer the outdoor tables overlooking the banks are full, whereas winter opening hours are rather shorter and yesterday only a couple of couples braved the weather. Now that term is over hardly any rowers are out on the river, being shouted at by an encouraging cyclist, and the long row of architecturally-intriguing college boathouses stands empty awaiting next year's glories.
✉ The train's £25 return, off-peak, whether you choose to travel the new way via High Wycombe or the old way via Reading. An easy day out, and with plentyto see, even in December.
