I saw on the news the government have blocked the plans for now that were due to start coming in 2018.
More details here http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/mayors-bid-to-take-over-londons-suburban-railways-stopped-in-its-tracks-a3413281.html
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I’m happy to stay away from politics on this issue as it is worth looking at the transport issues here. But it is worth noting that rail devolution in London has been seeing growing cross-party support from Assembly members and London MPs.
We happen to have two different models running on our live, so we are in a better position than most to judge the quality of the services. On Overground we have a service that is one of the best performing in the country, it has very high customer satisfaction rates, and these figures are particularly high on our East London Line.
TfL has taken a number of under-utilised and under performing lines and made them some of the best rail services in London. The North London Line was a horrible line that nobody wanted to take, it was chronically unreliable and had short and often overcrowded trains (for short distances). The East London Line was a pointless service that connected almost nothing to nobody. Both of these lines have seen massive investment (mainly from DfT funding) but continued investment in everything customer service related (from staff to lifts) from TfL (sometimes with DfT funding). At present GOBLIN (Gospel Oak to Barking Line) is closed for electrification, possibly the last diesel only line left in London. This only happened once TfL was in charge of the line and lobbying for it (the money almost certainly came from DfT budget).
LOROL (Overground) under the TfL terms, has a no strike agreement with drivers, so there has been almost no impact of industrial action in the last six years since it opened. Expanding the TfL railways is a particularly easy way to expand the area of no strike agreements, but is not in itself a good reason for expanding TfL rail.
TfL have proved that they are good at making agreements with private operators to deliver better quality services, and a more flexible structure to allow for modifications in terms and conditions without it costing the taxpayers massive amounts of money. It would be possible for DfT to adopt a similar franchising model, and the current Southern consultation does take some steps in that direction, learning from some of the best practices adopted by TfL (but not going far enough from what I understand, although I can’t remember the precise details).
The Southern consultation has been deliberately put together to allow for the separation of metro services, this was under the instructions of DfT. Until a few weeks ago this seemed to be a clear direction of travel from the DfT, which may have changed over night, but it is also possible that Grayling’s decision is purely in relation to the Southeastern franchise. I have to say that in my opinion, the separation of services is actually easier on Southern than Southeastern, primarily because so many trains run fast from Croydon to central London. Essentially our services have been segregated already on Southern, despite having three or four different operating companies running through the same stations. So I still have some hope that rail devolution for London will continue, and it makes sense, just like TfL control of the tube, DLR, trams, and buses.
But I’m possibly more interested in the experiments with greater cooperation between Network Rail and operating companies that DfT have demanded. A change in the thinking of Network Rail is long overdue. Their focus for the last 18 years has been on preventing serious rail crashes caused by poor maintenance, and this is something they have done very well. They deserve credit for this great safety record on British Railways that was achieved by effectively renationalising track ownership and maintenance.
However, Network Rail has at the same time become inflexible and this is preventing new thinking, such as later running services for two days a week. All the London train operators wish to run later trains on Friday and Saturday (if included in their franchise agreements) but they see Network Rail as the barrier to achieving this. It sounds like the government has got the message and may be looking to replicate the success of TfL in 24 hour services on the tube, onto other services, particularly metro services.