• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

I was trying to be very polite and not antagonise you in the way you have been by other questioners!

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Could I take you to outer London as opposed to inner London? What proposals do you have, if any, to improve the North Circular?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Is there any truth to the rumours that the burgeoning costs of the Olympics may endanger the Crossrail project? Could you alleviate our concerns on that particular one?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

So what is your shopping list then? What goes? What is Plan B?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Even if you excise your expenditure, the PPP and Crossrail from your total planned expenditure, the increase in income from the fare box, if fares only increase by RPI, is not going to cover your shopping list is it?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Can I draw your attention to the Eddington Report which I would not think gives much comfort to those of you who support the idea of a West London Tram. He has looked at heavy infrastructure projects to alleviate extra pressures and has pointed out that the cost of delivering them is likely to be very high which may well constrain the relative returns from such fixed infrastructure. Of course we know his report is directly on behalf of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and he will be taking that as a good argument against giving the kind of funding that...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

So how are you going to meet that gap?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

I think you and I would agree about the desirability of Crossrail being funded, but whenever I talk to colleagues who seem to have spent half their lives in the House of Commons on the Bill Committee, they frankly say: `We think we may be wasting our time because there is absolutely no prospect of the money coming from Government'. What concerns me is that we have seen the Treasury, quite wrongly as I think you and I agree, fighting like cats in a sack over the Woolwich station, which is a tiny percentage of the cost, but clearly essential...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

All of that is entirely dependant on the goodwill of Government. At the end of the day, you are going to have to seek to find the funds yourself. There are three alternatives which you set out in Transport 2025. There is the option of increasing fares, and I would like you to set out precisely what your proposals are for increasing fares over the period because you indicate that you can keep down the increase in fares over the period to an increase in the Retail Price Index (RPI) but, as I have indicated, for you to meet all...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

My concern is obviously the construction costs, peoples' ability to get off of trains and the length of time. The Circle line is so important in that sense.