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Farewell to the Chief

After 10 years as Managing Director of London Underground, and two as Chief Executive of London Transport, Denis Tunnicliffe, is leaving the organisation this summer as the new body, Transport for London comes into effect. Anne Taylor asks him about the changes he has seen in the Underground and within Engineering over the years

Q. Are you leaving LT for good or staying on in any capacity?
A. I'm leaving completely. Old soldiers should die. And that's what is right for me. It wouldn't be comfortable for me otherwise as I'm not good in those sort of situations.

Q. Are you sad to leave?
A. Yes, I suppose so. Sad, but there's a recognition that things must come to an end. There's an arguable case that you shouldn't do a job for more than six to eight years and that indeed was my plan. If you do a senior job too long, like MD of LUL, you suffer two disadvantages: you end up with too much baggage because you've seen everything before and you can start to run out of energy. The problem with the role is that it is 168 hours a week because at any time, something can happen and there's a strong sense of that.

Q. What significant changes have you seen in the Underground in the last decade?
A. I think the most dramatic change is in the character of our environment. We now have a station and, to a lesser extent, train environment which is full of CCTV, universal station radio, universal train radio, and a whole raft of fire technology that simply did not exist in 1988. We are much more dependent on these systems, the extent to which control centres now have comprehensive understandings and information about the lines. So the character has become more system-intense.
Perhaps at a more philosophical level is understanding the assets. When I arrived, we thought we understood the assets quite well. But over the years we put a lot of energy into this and found an asset base that is much inferior to what we thought it was.
In some ways, we have made great steps forward, such as in our understanding of civil engineering and stabilising earth works. We've not been so successful on track because we have constantly found ourselves at the mercy of funding. Track has consistently suffered because of short-term planning. Although you could say one of the reasons we're not as good at this is because of short-term funding.
Earlier this year I could have said we had got on top of the escalator problems. Indeed we had, but it is the characteristic of the asset and it is a tribute to our approach to safety that we are constantly trying to find out what we don't know. Unfortunately if you go looking at old assets in a safety critical environment, you will, from time to time, find unwelcome results.
I think some of the high tech programmes have been disappointing. So far, our vision of what we could do 10 years ago has exceeded our abilities to deliver it. The vision is all right, but delivering signalling systems and control systems have not been good experiences over the last 10 years.

Q. Have there been any projects that gave you grief?
A. What gives me grief also gives me happiness. I suppose it's the Jubilee line Extension which we got strategically right. But a lot of the high tech side of it proved more difficult than we anticipated. We ended up delivering the project late and over budget. Frankly in these sized projects, that is sadly not unusual. However the impact it has had on the funding situation for the rest of the railway was because of Government's refusal to see the project as a national project which should be funded constantly.
Funding has been a constant battle. Indeed the vision of the PPP is that it will create stability in funding. This will allow engineers to take their considerable skills and apply them in a consistent way.

Q. Do you think Engineering has been too conservative or too liberal towards using new technology?
A. I've never felt that engineers in LUL were other than enthusiastic for new knowledge and new ideas. If anything, we have been guilty of over-optimism of new technology. I think the conservatism that is in Engineering has consistently been justified. It is an extraordinarily, heavily-used asset and one finds again and again that over-engineering is right engineering. Heavy, strong solutions are often best value solutions because if it can be broken, it will be broken. I generally feel that the engineers I meet are coming from the right place.

Q. Is the PPP a logical step for the government to make?
A. I think it's a logical step for governments to make. What I mean by that is I think governments struggle to sustain long-term relationships with the industries they own, and therefore struggle to sustain the chances of delivering engineering in the public sector as efficiently as in the private sector. It's not realistic to believe that the public sector would be able to make the gains that the Infracos will make when privately owned.

Q. Will there be increased traffic on the Underground in the future and what will that mean for the system?
A. Yes, there will be an increase in traffic on the Underground. In my time, the number of train kilometres covered has gone up 30 per cent and it will go up again by about 30 per cent over the next decade.
We have, and are, operating to full capacity. The peak will grow relatively gently and we will probably cope for as much as a decade by just taking more out of the present system. But if we don't start planning for some genuine extra capacity across London soon, then by the end of this decade we could have some real problems. It's very important to do the schemes on the current railway and take all we can out of it. Equally, it will be as important to do new schemes.

Q. Any parting messages?
A. My dream is that by 2010 the railway will be brought up to the maximum value and capacity that can be taken out of the inherited assets. I hope in 2010 for two things: that we'll be looking back on a golden age and that there will be new lines under construction to allow that golden age to be undimmed by congestion.
When I arrived, I said it should fun and I think it has been fun. Working for London Underground in Engineering, even though it will be in new institutions, is tremendously exciting and very challenging. I believe that excitement and challenges is what is special. I believe it will continue into the future.

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