Thread by @garius

Worth noting that the last time London Underground had to enter a period of managed decline, the ultimate consequence was the King's Cross fire.

Wasn't the only factor of course, but it was a major contributor.

Railways, like air travel, rely on the "Swiss cheese model" of layers of error protection. All layers have holes, more layers stops them lining up and causing disasters.

Proper funding is one of those layers.

And yes.

I know what day it is.

Nor was this a one off problem. It's well known that managed decline kills people and destroys networks.

It has been happening on multiple metro systems in the US, most notably in New York, for decades.

And escaping it inevitably costs more than entering it.

Managed decline will kill Londoners. It will increase the poverty by disproportionately impacting bus users and it will set back accessibility and green travel in London by a decade.

But the Tories get to shit on London again to try and distract from their failures in the North.

And that's all that matters to this government.

They know they can't get elected in London again. That's why they're also trying to kill our limited autonomy now as well.

They're happy to burn this entire city down, economically and socially, if it wins a few marginals.

Still. He was funny on TV wasn't he? And he annoys the woke liberals. Plus I heard London gets all the money anyway. Etc. Etc.

It should be astounding for a former London Mayor, as PM, to not just oversee but actively engineer the crippling of the city's transport network. The driver of its social, economic and environmental growth.

But that former Mayor is Boris Johnson. So it's not.

This government mandated that TfL run as full a service as possible during COVID. It believed that was critical to this city, and this country, despite the enormous financial cost to TfL.

Transport workers died delivering that service.

This city has been betrayed.