Q51 Mr Bacon: May I ask where do you commute from in the morning, which tube station?
Mr O'Toole: I commute from High Street Kensington or from Notting Hill, I live in between the two of them.
Q52 Mr Bacon: Mostly you go round on the Circle Line?
Mr O'Toole: I do. I arranged my life so I could take on the line that has caused the most on-time problems.
Q53 Mr Bacon: If you are requiring to come round from High Street Kensington, you cannot take the District Line, you have to take the Circle Line. The Circle Line only seems to run every 20 minutes or so.
Mr O'Toole: Actually it runs on eight minute headways.
Q54 Mr Bacon: What does that mean?
Mr O'Toole: It means that it is scheduled to have eight minutes between trains. The Circle Line's problem, of course, is that the Circle Line does not actually exist. It runs on the District Line and it runs on the Metropolitan Line and it is sacrificed whenever there is a problem on either of those lines. Often you feel you have a poor Circle Line service inflicted on you but it is a problem that is on one of those other lines.
Q55 Mr Bacon: It is said because the Piccadilly goes out to Heathrow a special effort is made to keep the Piccadilly running more than most other lines. Is that broadly correct?
Mr O'Toole: No, I would not say that is broadly correct.
Q56 MrBacon: Given you are the boss, have you not made an effort to make sure the Circle Line runs a bit better?
Mr O'Toole: Actually I have in the sense I do not believe you should sell something you cannot make. I have said to the operating department we have to find a way to make the Circle Line run better. We have run one experiment which gave preference to the Circle Line at the corners, both when it ran into the Met and when it ran into the District Line. It may have gone unnoticed so far but in the last two periods the Circle Line has been turning in performance it has not turned in in about seven years in terms of the number of trains run in the peak periods. We are running now in the mid 90s, it typically has been in the low 80s.
Q57 Mr Bacon: Mr Rowlands, can I ask you about the extra costs of the private debt compared with public debt?
Mr Rowlands: Yes.
Q58 Mr Bacon: The Report says that the extra cost is £450 million, what is the total cost of the debt?
Mr Rowlands: The total size of the debt is £3.8 billion.
Q59 Mr Bacon: The extra cost is £450 million?
Mr Rowlands: Over triple A.
Q60 Mr Bacon: If it had been publicly funded.
Mr Rowlands: If it had been publicly funded, triple A.