In this section, we discuss what contemporaries said about the variations between countries and overtime in the costs of constructing subways. As early as the 1920s, journalists noted that subway construction costs were rising faster than general inflation. On 27 December 1925, the New York Times printed an article that discussed the various factors that the city’s Board of Transportation had cited in explaining why costs had increased 129% since 1915.
In London, the pre 1945 picture was slightly different. The vast 1935-40 ‘new works’ programme to extend the London Underground had cost an estimated £45 million by 1938, but when the works were suspended in the face of impending conflict 1939 there was no sense in the official report into progress at that stage that the money been mis-spent or that the costs had ballooned unreasonably over the period. The situation is similar in the 1920s and early 1930s when official trips to France and America by LT officials produce detailed reports looking at comparative running costs and fare system, but no concern is evinced about variations in the actual cost of construction. We can only assume that officialdom was content that it was paying a reasonable price to build London’s system. But what about the general public? The newspapers did carry occasional items discussing the progress of London’s transport system but the cost was seldom mentioned, and the general tone of the articles was sense of pride in such enormous investments – for example in the new station complex under Piccadilly 1925-28 – which were seen as marvels of engineering.
The pre-First World War world in London offers a subtly different picture. In the popular press, the pride in the engineering advances that the new, electric ‘Tube’ railways represent remains. Concerns about the cost are visible – but only in the financial sections read by shareholders. On these pages, the cost of construction as a topic is less prominent here than concerns over passenger numbers, revenue and fares.
Financial worries, both official and public, concerning the cost of building first the Victoria and then the Jubilee Line, emerged in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Even the names implicitly linking them to monarchy reflect a requirement to maintain their popularity in the face of rapidly rising costs – the Victoria was originally ‘Route C’ and the Jubilee the ‘Fleet’ – but there are nevertheless clear indications both in the official archival record and in the popular press that the cost of construction was felt to be accelerating too rapidly. These perceptions arose out of general resource scarcity (post-war austerity and then the post-1973 economic crisis) combined with the understanding that it would be the ordinary taxpayer who was footing the bill. Neither had been the case to the same extent in the Pre-Second War world where tube construction had been seen as a minor, but desirable, palliative to unemployment and taxes were both lower and fell on a far smaller proportion of the population.
It would seem that the very different institutional arrangements in different periods under which the London Underground was built did indeed play out in very different perceptions and rapportage concerning the money invested in its development.
The Past Speaks 