UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 837-xlix

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

taken before the

COMMITTEE

on the

CROSSRAIL BILL

DAY FORTY-NINE

Wednesday 5 July 2006

Before:

Mr Alan Meale, in the Chair

Mr Brian Binley

Kelvin Hopkins

Mrs Siān C James

Sir Peter Soulsby

 

Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.

The Petition of Mr Robert Wilson MP.

MR ROBERT WILSON MP appeared in person.

14025. CHAIRMAN: Can I first of all start off by saying that at 11.45 today we will suspend the sitting a little bit early for two reasons: Members who wish to go to Prime Minister's questions can get there for that; and also for those other people who cannot or do not want to can get a cup of tea along the corridor.

14026. The second announcement is we decided yesterday that visitors and counsel could dispense with their jackets if they so wish because of the heat. That was before David Elvin's tailor was actually identified, but nevertheless we will stick to what we decided!

14027. So the first Petition we have got today is from Robert Wilson MP. It is presented by Richard James Willis. Is Mr Willis here or is it just yourself, sir?

14028. MR WILSON: Just myself, sir.

14029. CHAIRMAN: Mr Elvin, do you want to outline?

14030. MR ELVIN: Mr Wilson is apparently raising a number of matters relating to, possibly, the selection of the route excluding Reading, service to Heathrow and City Airport and links to Heathrow, and issues relating to the access option. We are not 100 per cent certain which points he wishes to raise in the Committee this morning since numerous attempts to contact him through Mr Willis have failed. However, these are all issues which we have covered to some extent. I will see what Mr Wilson has to say. If I need to call Mr Berryman I will do so and if not I will simply respond in the usual way. Having said that, I have got some brighter ties which I can produce tomorrow if you would prefer them!

14031. CHAIRMAN: They do not go with your braces!

14032. MR TAYLOR: They never do!

14033. MR ELVIN: I have got some brighter braces.

14034. CHAIRMAN: Mr Wilson?

14035. MR WILSON: Thank you very much, Chairman. I have prepared a statement that includes a response to the Promoter's response to my Petition, so if it would be helpful I can give this to the Clerk of the Committee when he requires it.

14036. If I might go through a little bit of background before I go to the three key issues, I think it will help the Committee to understand exactly where I am coming from. Crossrail is a scheme that is of strategic importance for London and could have very powerful economic benefits for Londoners. Across the Thames Valley Crossrail is welcomed as having the potential to enhance greatly the transport infrastructure and improve vital economic links.

14037. Public investment in strategic rail infrastructure in the Thames Valley was felt to be a very exciting prospect in a region that has not had any public regional transport structure investment for over 20 years. The Thames Valley is a very wealthy and successful part of the UK economy but it has reached a point where it needs government assistance if it is to continue to be success it has been over previous two decades.

14038. However, since the detail of the current Crossrail scheme has been unveiled there have been major concerns that are shared by all groups in Reading and the wider region. In fact, it is most unusual that councils and politicians of all parties have come together to present a united front that is supported by businesses and residents' groups across the region. It is certainly the first time in my political memory that I can remember so many different groups arriving at the same conclusion despite their starting point, ideological or otherwise, being different.

14039. My concern and the concerns of my constituents focus on three main areas. The first is the decision to make Maidenhead, rather than Reading the western terminus; the second is the proposal it should be a slow stopping metro service rather than a fast or semi-fast service; and the third is the lack of integration with other parts of the transport hubs, in particular a direct link into Heathrow from the west as part of the scheme.

14040. I do not believe that the first two points have been adequately addressed in the Promoter's response to my Petition and the third point may in the future be addressed by the AirTrack proposal. I would certainly wish with this third point to ensure that all parties involved in the various transport infrastructure schemes that have been talked about at the moment are co-ordinated so the taxpayer and the travelling public get the best results possible.

14041. Despite the response to my Petition and the other information provided I still cannot see that a convincing a case for Maidenhead as the western terminus has been made when so many different organisations - and I have mentioned businesses, residents, political parties and councils - say exactly the same thing. One might assume that somebody making the decision might be getting a message but it does not seem to be a message that is getting through and I am not quite sure why that is. So let me share some of my constituents' thoughts about the western terminus with the Committee.

14042. As you heard last week, my colleague Theresa May MP suggested to the Committee that Maidenhead appears to be the default option after Reading had been ruled out on the grounds of cost. I believe this would be a mistake and I would like to see the basis for the commercial modelling that arrived at that conclusion. I would make two points in this respect.

14043. First, a proposal that puts the western terminus at Maidenhead fails to integrate with the national rail network effectively. Reading Station, which sits at the centre of my constituency, is one of the busiest rail hubs outside of London, second only I believe to Birmingham New Street, and it offers a logical point of integration for Crossrail with the national rail network. Reading is a pivotal hub for Wales, the South West, the North West and stations to the south and is served currently by four major train operators. Secondly, Reading is the centre of economic activity in the Thames Valley. It is a growth area and therefore also represents a logical terminus for Crossrail which seeks to provide a service beyond the immediate confines of London.

14044. Reading's connectivity into the transport network and ability to directly serve the wider Reading conurbation (which stretches from West Berkshire in the west, through Reading Borough into Woking District) is a huge source of strength.

14045. When the commercial modelling took place to look at the cost-benefit of a terminus at Reading were growth forecasts for the town and growth forecasts for rail travel taken into account?

14046. In the Promoter's response to my submission it is suggested that Crossrail would not be an attractive proposition to commuters from Reading because they would use a First Great Western fast train.

14047. I can understand this point of view as it is the view of my colleague Theresa May. She expressed it on behalf of her residents in Maidenhead last week. Similarly, my constituents would be horrified at the prospect of a slow metro service stopping at every station and therefore effectively clogging up the lines west of London with a service few would use.

14048. This is certainly not my vision for Crossrail to the west of London. We need a similar scheme to the RER for Paris, with a fast or semi-fast service serving some stations on the external sections of the route and a slower service stopping at all stations through the city. This is a real and exciting vision for Crossrail west of London and this is the vision that I believe local people in my constituency and businesses want. I believe this would prove an extremely attractive commercial proposition. Reading would be a national railway hub and regional centre able to bring large numbers of people to a Crossrail service that would cater for both commuters and for the local traveller.

14049. But, and as the Promoter says in his response, there is also commercial justification for Reading to be made on the grounds of reverse commuting. Reading is the high-tech capital of the Thames Valley region. It is the international headquarters for household company names such as Microsoft. Each day thousands of people commute for work and school into Reading. Many of these individuals come from villages and towns linked by the railway. Their numbers have grown with economic success and will continue to. An improved service along the lines I have set out above will certainly add to those leaving their car at home, something I am sure we would all agree is a good thing.

14050. Indeed, during his evidence last week to this Committee, Mr Berryman highlighted "significant inward commuting into Reading from the Twyford and Maidenhead direction" . Mr Berryman, I suspect, has made the case for me and perhaps the Promoter's response to me should have taken note of this.

14051. I hope Chairman, the Committee can see that by extending Crossrail to Reading the service will be far more attractive to commuters with the right type of scheme. Certainly a Reading terminus would attract far more additional commuters than Maidenhead. There is certainly a return on investment to be made if the service is made relevant to the travelling public.

14052. The Promoter's response does raise two important issues about Reading. The approximate £360 million required for the electrification of the line and, secondly, the substantial cost of redevelopment of Reading Station to accommodate Crossrail's trains.

14053. It is probably true to suggest that cost and return on investment are the real grounds that Maidenhead has been preferred, despite its many drawbacks, over and above Reading. I have looked closely at document A1 in the response to my Petition which outlines - and this is a bit of a mouthful - the Government in Guidance on the Methodology for Multi-Modal Studies (or GoMMMs for short).

14054. GoMMMs has been used as a basis for appraising the Crossrail options. There are five main categories, as the Committee will know: environment, economy, safety, accessibility and integration, and each section has a sub-category. Taking this guidance and comparing the merits of Maidenhead and Reading as the western terminus, under its own terms Reading wins on almost every category, in my view.

14055. Let me deal with the two issues of cost in the Promoter's response document and I would like to raise the following points, and questions indeed.

14056. Does all the electrification have to be done in one go? I understand that there are dual-mode trains that can switch from one mode to another on demand. Has this been considered as a solution or option to keep costs down while introducing the Crossrail service to Reading? Reading Station is already in need of major redevelopment, indeed it is a well-known bottleneck on the national network. Councils in Wales and the west of England are already supporting attempts by myself and Reading Borough Council to do something about these problems! Great Western would love to have the chance of hitting government performance targets which are destroyed by the bottleneck at Reading Station currently.

14057. But Network Rail is engaged in this problem already. There is a major opportunity for Network Rail, Crossrail and private commercial business to come together to bring about wholesale redevelopment of the entire area. Significant proposals for development all around Reading Station are currently under consideration and it would make sense to develop the station and surrounding area in a phased and sensible manner. There is no requirement, as I see it, that Crossrail should take all the strain and cost of the major redevelopment that is required in the area.

14058. Finally, I would add the sums of money we are talking about are small in comparison to the size of the project and in terms of the potential commercial gains.

14059. I have already alluded to Reading's strategic nature as a railway hub, so I do not propose to repeat this. I have also mentioned the business clusters around Reading as a sign of its economic importance. Yet a rail link to Europe's busiest airport does not exist from the west.

14060. I suggested in the Petition on behalf of residents that a direct link to Heathrow from the west would be extremely beneficial for the regional economy.

14061. The Promoter's response was inadequate. The response suggested first that Heathrow is served by the Heathrow Express (which of course is from the east and not the west) and that people could change for Heathrow from the west at Hayes and Harlington. For people travelling from other parts of the UK to Heathrow this would mean several changes of train to reach Heathrow. These people would justifiably choose to take their car rather than take the train if they had to change at Reading, Hayes and Harlington and possibly another station on the route. This is not what I would call modern, integrated transport.

14062. The platforms and the service from Hayes and Harlington are not adequate at present as the Promoter's response admits. A major upgrade is required to "make the interchange much easier". This is clearly the second-best solution to Reading providing a direct link to Heathrow. It would have neither the economic nor environmental benefits that a direct link from Heathrow would have.

14063. The Promoter, however, is right to raise AirTrack as a possible solution and one could argue it does not matter whether Stagecoach or Crossrail provides the service and the trains. However, it is essential that all parties involved in discussions where there are mutual benefits or cost savings to be made in terms of signalling or platform changes or track changes are talking to each other. My feeling is that all these projects are carried out at the moment in isolation and cross-project discussions would be beneficial to my constituents. Chairman, perhaps the Promoter could let us know what cross-project discussions are on-going at the moment.

14064. In conclusion, Chairman, the scheme as presently constituted does not make sense as measured by any of the five GoMMMs. It also does not serve the needs of my constituents and, indeed, could worsen services currently on offer. The project as now constituted to the west of London could be described as "half-baked" by those less charitable than myself.

14065. It is an easy option for the proposers to stop Crossrail at Maidenhead which avoids the need to tackle the long overdue upgrading of Reading Station and the electrification of the line. As a result the project is not supported by a single Thames Valley local authority. There is an unprecedented degree of unanimity across political parties and between diverse local groups and societies. In short, Chairman, there is a democratic deficit behind this scheme which needs to be addressed. I very much hope that commonsense will prevail and that the united voice of my constituency in Reading East, and others in the Thames Valley and its representatives will be heeded.

14066. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr Elvin?

14067. MR ELVIN: Sir, quite a lot of this has been covered already. You had the evidence for Reading in a combination of days 45 and 46, and Mr Wilson has already adverted to one section of what Mr Berryman said.

14068. On the question of inter-connection with Heathrow and other transport, you have got the letter from Mr Ferguson from the Department to BAA which is in the bundle from yesterday, P106, pages 34 to 35, which makes it clear that there are ample discussions going on about integration with BAA over terminals four and five which I read part of yesterday and secondly, Crossrail will not prejudice the AirTrack solution if BAA wishes to promote that, so AirTrack is not impaired by Crossrail. That is a different option which is for BAA.

14069. So far as Reading in general is concerned, you know our position on that and the Committee is well aware of what was said in the instruction debate on Reading. It is outside the Bill's scheme but the Committee may make recommendations to the House vis-ą-vis what may happen in future in terms of the Transport and Works Act extension.

14070. I do not know whether there is any assistance I can get further for you from Mr Berryman because I think you probably have the essence of our case. I know Mr Binley raised last week the question of the savings that there might be if the service were extended to Reading. You had a figure of £370 million

14071. MR BINLEY: £360 million.

14072. MR ELVIN: Sorry, £360 million. If you are happy to accept that figure from me, I will just ask Mr Berryman what the maximum saving is that could be had from works at Maidenhead or what the cost at Maidenhead would be. It is in the order of £40 to £45 million. That would assume a service pattern which took every train to Reading, which is perhaps unrealistic given that some of those trains are likely to be empty. However, assuming the maximum savings, you are still looking at a bill for Reading in the order of £320 million. If you would like to hear that from Mr Berryman, I am happy to call him.

14073. MR BINLEY: I am happy with that.

14074. MR ELVIN: Thank you very much. Sir, I have nothing else to say unless the Committee requires any further assistance on any of those issues.

14075. KELVIN HOPKINS: Just one point on the extra cost of going to Reading. Does that disaggregate what should be paid by Network Rail? Does it separate out what should be paid by Network Rail?

14076. MR ELVIN: Can I check with Mr Berryman, please. That does not include the costs that Network Rail would pay for rebuilding the station. That is the infrastructure work that we would have to carry out, so the £360 million does not include Network Rail's costs. They would be on top of that.

14077. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr Wilson, do you wand to respond?

14078. MR WILSON: It is not possible for me to ask questions in in my response, is it?

14079. CHAIRMAN: No, but I am quite sure if you posed them in certain a way that Mr Elvin may respond.

14080. MR WILSON: Let me just touch on the sort of areas that it would have been nice to have had the Promoter's response then. With regard to document A1, which I referred to in my remarks, I made my scepticism clear about whether the judgments made based on that document, weighing up the benefits of Maidenhead and Reading, were as they should have been. In the response on page 4 of paragraph 2 the Promoter does make it absolutely clear through inference that decisions being made to the west of London are clearly based only on London's increasing population and overcrowding. It seems to me that you could draw the inference from that that the concerns of the people west of London are not being taken seriously with regard to things like frequency of trains, speed of trains and where the terminus point should be. It seems that London does not seem to care too much what is happening to the west of it so long as it get its Crossrail scheme across London.

14081. Also in paragraph 4, I think that is on page 5 of the response to me, it talks about the timetable of the working group which has just published a report. I have not seen that report because I believe it was fairly recent, but it does describe the "emerging conclusion that Crossrail services can be accommodated successfully with existing levels of passenger and freight services without detriment to performance". I am a little bit surprised that you would base an answer to my Petition on an "emerging conclusion" that has not had any testing in the fire of public opinion, local councils, and rail groups and so forth. So it does strike me that that response was not misleading but stretching the credibility of that response.

14082. It was also suggested that post Crossrail it should be possible to have more trains on fast tracks. Yet certainly all the councils within the Thames Valley region and so-called experts do not necessarily agree with that line of thinking. It would have been helpful to have had a much clearer answer from the Promoter on that point.

14083. Also it would have been very helpful in some of the responses to the information I have given to understand why Reading suddenly changed from being the western terminus, because for a long period of time Reading was the preferred terminus. I just wonder was that solely made on cost grounds or were there other reasons why the Promoter has come to the conclusion that have not necessarily been given to me or other people in the area?

14084. I would also like to understand whether there is any organisation within the Thames Valley region that supports Maidenhead as the western terminus because, as far as I know, not one organisation, council, business, Chamber of Commerce, whatever it might be, supports Maidenhead as the western terminus. Indeed, I went to a meeting with the Mayor of London yesterday and the Mayor of London said in response to a question that he would also prefer the western terminus to be at Reading and does support the case for Reading. If the Mayor of London, who is providing a third of the funds for the project, is supporting Reading as the western terminus, if all the councils in the Thames Valley are, if all the businesses in the Thames Valley are, if all the residents' groups and all the politicians are, it does seem slightly strange that only the Promoter seems to be convinced that Maidenhead is the right terminus west of London.

14085. I would also have welcomed further evidence of the financial and commercial modelling undertaken for Reading and whether there was any work done on looking at the fast/semi-fast French-style system that I described in my comments because I do understand that just a single slow stopping metro service would not serve Reading well, would not be commercially viable and would not be welcomed by my constituents but a different form of service that could serve both commuters and local stopping services would be welcomed, I think.

14086. So, if I may, Chairman I will finish there. There is a lot of information I hope and some open questions that maybe could be responded to.

14087. CHAIRMAN: Mr Wilson, I think there are quite a lot of questions there, a variety of questions, and I wonder if we should hold back until after the next Petition because I suspect some of the answers that are sought are going to be repeated in the next Petition, so in the summing up to the Petitions Mr Elvin will be able to address all that and then I can make a judgment on that as to whether or not we need a note from Mr Elvin to cover any of the points you have raised or the next Petitioner may raise to clarify the position. Is that okay?

14088. MR WILSON: That is fine.

14089. MR ELVIN: That will be fine. I can answer the substance of those questions when convenient to the Committee.

14090. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed. We will move on to the next Petitioner.

The Petition of Martin Salter MP and Reading Evening Post.

 

The Petitioner appeared in person.

 

MR MALCOLM DOWDEN appeared as Agent.

14091. MR ELVIN: I see from the Petitioner's notes that the main issues are disruption to existing services, the western rail link to Heathrow, and the question of Reading. Those are all issues we have covered and I do not say any more about them at this stage.

14092. MARTIN SALTER: Chairman, I have with me our agent Malcolm Dowden. In August 2005, a petition was launched by myself and the Reading Evening Post the local evening newspaper in response to the news of the likelihood that Crossrail, far from not even coming to Reading, would not be considered by this Select Committee. Obviously the terms of reference have changed and you are probably hearing more about Reading than you ever wanted to. The case is strongly supported in the Reading area by leading businesses, Microsoft, Foster Wheeler, Yell and MCI, as well as Reading Borough Council, the Reading Chamber of Commerce, Transport 2000 and, in a very short space of time, around 250 businesses, residents and commuters.

14093. CHAIRMAN: Can we list this as A161.

14094. MARTIN SALTER: The wording of the petition is as follows: "We the undersigned are concerned that the Crossrail Bill currently before Parliament includes provision for the western terminus to be located at Maidenhead rather than Reading and that no provision is made for a western rail link to Heathrow Airport. It is our view that these two measures would yield significant benefits to the Reading area and enable Crossrail to properly realise its objectives, from the Crossrail publicity, to 'connect the UK'. We also urge Parliament to ensure that the final Crossrail scheme does not impede the current high speed rail services into Paddington from Reading and the West."

14095. Crossrail is undoubtedly an ambitious £10 billion-plus scheme. It is a once in a lifetime public transport project. Certainly for myself and many of my colleagues it is matter of regret that in this country we seem to lack the vision to take advantage of all the opportunities that a major public infrastructure scheme like this will provide and it is very disheartening to hear some of the excuses that are offered for not providing much needed rail links into Heathrow Airport or extending Crossrail to somewhere that does connect with the rest of the UK. I am concerned, as are my constituents and businesses in the Thames Valley - and bear in mind that Thames Valley is the economic driver for the South East, which in itself is one of the most dynamic regions in the UK economy - that Crossrail in the end is not so pared down that it comes to represent a series of missed opportunities due to poor planning, lack of vision or foresight.

14096. As Mr Elvin rightly summarised, there are three key points I wish to make in this submission. The first point is that Crossrail must not be allowed to disrupt the existing high speed commuter services into Paddington nor should it be responsible for reducing freight transport by rail, and I understand you will be having substantial evidence making similar points to those I am about to make as to the capacity of the network

14097. CHAIRMAN: We heard that evidence yesterday.

14098. MARTIN SALTER: I apologise if I repeat anything.

14099. The second point is on the need for a rail link into Heathrow. On my third point, I am in agreement with my colleagues Theresa May from Maidenhead and Rob Wilson from Reading East, and of course with David Sutton, the leader of Reading Borough Council, who spoke on behalf of all the councils of different political persuasions in the Thames Valley region. We argue that the case for Reading is the most unanswerable and is certainly not answered by the Promoter's document.

14100. I believe the Promoter's response to my petition and other points that were made has been inadequate, to say the least, on a number of these key points. If I may take the first issue, the disruption to existing services, Crossrail, as you know, is proposing a metro-style stopping service, whilst in fact the bulk of journeys into Paddington from the West are on the high-speed train services which take anything from 29 to 32 minutes non-stop to Reading. The majority of regular commuters avoid the stopping services, some of which can take over an hour. I am a regular commuter: I do not have a flat in London. I commute back four days a week. I know over the last nine years - and it is getting increasingly to be the case - of a number of times that existing high-speed services are forced on to the relief line, and it is frankly not sufficient for the Promoter to say in its response: "it is not the intention of Crossrail to cause displacement of any traffic from the existing relief lines to the main lines". I am sure it is not their intention but it may well be the effect. It certainly follows that if the existing HST services are using the relief lines far too regularly, which leads to poor punctuality on the lines into London, that introducing or overlaying an additional service, using the relief line that is required by the HST services, is going to exacerbate disruption to existing services.

14101. I have had the opportunity to read the deliberations of the Timetable Working Group which gave evidence yesterday. I would draw the Committee's attention to their conclusions. They say that the performance modelling simulations are clearly able to simulate some degree of "perturbed working" but more delays such as a train failure or infrastructure failure cannot be simulated without significant manual input at present." Therefore the modelling itself may not be present the true situation.

14102. They then go on to say (page 3 of 31): "On the GW, the Railsys performance modelling" - a computer system that they use - "shows a small increase in delay and hence a small worsenment" - and I am not quite sure what that means, but I think they mean worsening ("worsenment" sounds like a town in Germany, I think) - "in PPM at Paddington for Heathrow Express services. Again, it is the view of the Group that this is a modelling deficiency rather than a true reflection of the performance to be expected from the Base Timetable."

14103. My concern is that it may be a true reflection of what is likely to happen, if, by their own admission, on their own modelling, there is a difference between theory and practice that there will be potential "worsenments" of the existing high-speed train service. Are the Petitioners not right to draw this to your attention? Are the Petitioners not right to cite the Promoter's own evidence against its case? I am afraid, as a regular traveller - and anyone who travels that line will tell you the same - the practice is going to be very, very different from the theory.

14104. That is on the basis of existing capacity, and I am very grateful to First Great Western for providing me with figures at the bottom of the second page of my submission. They have identified that the number of customer journeys/commuter journeys between Reading and Paddington between 2005-06 was 2.3 million - a massive number of passenger movements - but the projected journey growth per annum is 6.6 per cent. Chairman, if we are not at capacity already, which I would suggest we almost are, we are certainly going to be so in the very, very near future.

14105. I also obtained the figures on how many high-speed rains are diverted on to the slow line. A staggering one in two late evening trains are running on the slow line. Siān James, who travels regularly on the First Great Western Railway, sometimes with me on a Thursday night, will be aware of slow running - not at the evening times, but often at the peak times or in the early evening - but one in two trains are already going on the slow line, the same line that Crossrail wants to run on . The capacity issue has not been dealt with by the Promoter and I would suggest that the Promoter's case is fundamentally flawed.

14106. The Committee will note that this is a petition not just from politicians or councillors, but is a petition from the business community in the Thames Valley. A recent report by the Thames Valley Economic Partnership, which represents the major business in the area, made it perfectly clear that the main reason for business investing and, importantly, remaining in the Thames Valley was the proximity to Heathrow Airport and existing fast rail services into London.

14107. I am sorry, Mr Chairman. Could I ask if Mr Elvin could stop talking while I am making these points. I am finding it very distracting and it is also a bit discourteous.

14108. MR ELVIN: No discourtesy was intended. I am discussing with my junior the response to the points that are being made for the first time.

14109. MARTIN SALTER: Business has made it perfectly clear that they remain in the Thames Valley because of the links with London and because of the links with Heathrow Airport, therefore it is vital that Crossrail improves services and does not worsen them.

14110. I have read some of the evidence carefully that you have received and there is a move to looking at Ealing Broadway as a possible option. If Crossrail is to extend beyond Ealing Broadway to the West, if there is a strong case for a proper western terminus, then, in order to avoid disruption to the fast and semi-fast services into Paddington, some increase in traffic capacity in the network ought to be considered.

14111. Moving on to an important point, Parliament empowered the Committee to consider the use of the Transport and Works Act to deal with an expansion of the scheme to Reading. The Petitioners and I would strongly recommend that the Committee recommend that to Parliament as an appropriate route. I understand, Chairman, you are now in your 50^th day of receiving evidence and life is probably too short to use the hybrid Bill process to deal with any potential expansion of Crossrail. If you looked at the precedent case of the Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) Order ----

14112. CHAIRMAN: Just for the record, it is 54 days, and we have felt every one of them!

14113. MARTIN SALTER: It was 50 days when I wrote this. Your stamina will doubtless result in you receiving some kind of merit award, I am sure. In conclusion, on that particular section, Chairman, I want to make it clear that there is a strong case for using the Transport Works Act. I get the impression that you and your colleagues may agree.

14114. Moving on to the western link into Heathrow Airport, we have a farcical situation. If the existence of Heathrow Airport and the closeness of Heathrow Airport to Reading and the businesses in the Reading area is vital - which it is - and it is only 20-odd miles away, why is it, if you want to go by train to Heathrow Airport, that you have the delightful prospect of a 40-mile ride to London and a 20-mile ride back on the Heathrow Express? You could not make it up: a 60-mile journey to go to Heathrow Airport, yet this Crossrail scheme does not have the vision or the foresight to include a western link.

14115. In fact, it is somewhat worse than that. Mr Elvin made reference to the letter in the exhibit pack dated 28 June 2006, from Mr Ferguson of the DfT Crossrail Bill provision to Mike Noakes of the BAA plc. It says: "Crossrail has been planned on the basis of operating four trains per hour to Heathrow Terminal 4 ... These four trains would subsume the Heathrow Connect service." What added value is there - and bear in mind this is an eastern link, not a western link - in subsuming the current service that already exists? Where is the added value in Crossrail's proposal? I am afraid these are questions the Promoter has to answer.

14116. Let us have a look again at a set of figures I obtained this week from First Great Western. They also operate the Reading RailAir link, a very good bus service from Reading Station: along the M4, a couple of pick-ups and it takes you into Heathrow Airport. Passenger demand is rising. In 2003-04 there were 127,400 journeys; in 2004-05 there were 158,000 journeys. There is projected growth per annum of 5.8 per cent - similar to the 6.6 per cent projected growth using the HST lines. There is a huge demand for surface links into London Heathrow Airport. They are only going to grow, and faster year on year. It is a lost opportunity for us not to look at the western link into Heathrow.

14117. Crossrail puts forward in its response, as my colleague Bob Wilson says, the prospect of a change at Hayes and Harlington. Looking at the figures, I think it is going to be longer to go a shorter distance because of the slowness of the service. Although Hayes and Harlington is not as far as Paddington or the Heathrow Express, in coming back, whilst you may travel less, it will take you longer to get into Heathrow. Again, that is something which has not been addressed.

14118. Another issue is the synergy between AirTrack and Crossrail's proposal or even existing eastern rail services into Heathrow Airport. As I understand it, Railtrack is going to follow the Waterloo line and come in via Staines and Egham, and end up probably at a set of buffers a few yards away from Heathrow Express coming in from the other direction. Transport experts far wiser then me tell me that there is something absurd about having a service coming into London Heathrow which terminates and then goes back the same way and a service coming from the other direction without the ability to provide an efficient circular loop. That is certainly an issue that merits more consideration. I am not an expert. I can only repeat what transport experts have said to me.

14119. In terms of the response that the Promoter has given us in terms of the western rail link, to be fair the Promoter has said that it may ultimately be beneficial, but it is rejecting a proposal on grounds of costs. I think the challenge for this Committee and for Parliament is to extract the maximum potential for our creaking transport infrastructure, particularly in the South East, from the opportunities that the Crossrail scheme gives us. I well remember the costs rose considerably during a similar process for the Cross Channel Rail Link, where other opportunities were bolted on to the scheme. There is a well-established precedent for that, Chairman.

14120. My third point is Reading versus Maidenhead. I will not labour this too strongly because I think you have heard it many times before. The good news is that this week Reading Station, which as you know is the second busiest rail interchange outside of London, was announced as due for upgrading. Within the priority list of network Rail's ten-year business plan this will go before government next year and be considered for funding. There is a partnership team, including Reading Borough Council, working on those proposals and it is certainly good news that the business case is going off to the DfT. I remain fairly confident that we will have a positive response in due course. The original Crossrail proposals boasted of "crossing the capital - Connecting the UK". Without being rude to Maidenhead, which is a fine place, you do not connect to anywhere from Maidenhead. From Reading, trains runs to Brighton, Gatwick, Portsmouth, Southampton, Cornwall, Devon, Bristol, Wales, Herefordshire, Birmingham, and then there are cross-country services operated by Virgin which take us up to Manchester and the North. Of course, the link between Birmingham, the busiest rail interchange, and Reading is a direct route. If you want to connect the service genuinely to the rest of the UK, the Maidenhead case just does not stack up because it has been put there on cost and cost alone.

14121. In my submission we have very strong quotes arguing for a properly constituted and visionary Crossrail scheme to come to Reading, by Geoff Poland, the President of the Chamber of Commerce, by Richard Duggleby, the External Relations Director of Yell, who have their HQ in the Reading area. I firmly believe that the case for Reading as a western terminus for Crossrail is overwhelming and that the Promoter has simply side-stepped the issue in their response, citing the need for the upgrade of Reading Station and cost issues, some of which are already in the pipeline.

14122. In conclusion, I would suggest that the original 1992 case that Crossrail should terminate in Reading is still valid, but only if these issues can be resolved.

14123. I cannot emphasise too strongly that it is not worth trying to extend Crossrail from, say, Ealing Broadway, from the West of London, to a western terminus unless the job is done properly, unless potential is realised. Finance may be an issue. There may be a need to phase. But of course the Transport and Works Act device gives us the opportunity, without going through this process again, to build on a Crossrail project - that is much needed by London, could be needed by Reading and by the thriving and dynamic business communities and the local companies to the West of London - but only if the job is done properly.

14124. My last point, Chairman, is that I have serious concerns - and Mr Binley has quite rightly sought to draw out these figures in his questions - about the figure of £360 million or £36 million - it actually appears as two different figures in the evidence - from the Promoter about the additional costs of coming to Reading. As I understand it, the re-signalling is already in Network Rail's forward plan and I do believe the Committee might want to probe further some of the top-of-the-head figures you have been given today and in previous evidence sessions.

14125. Thank you.

14126. KELVIN HOPKINS: Has any been estimate made of the likely usage of Reading as a Heathrow flyer service, in effect, should Crossrail be connected that far? The traffic that would come by rail to Reading and then go to Heathrow from Reading rather than going into London and using the Heathrow flyer coming out, and, indeed, the people who might otherwise go by car because they do not want to go into London, has any estimate been made of the amount of traffic that might be generated in that way?

14127. MARTIN SALTER: As you can see, I have done a fair bit of homework in presenting this submission but that is the one set of figures I do not have. Obviously it would be within your ability to get that. There are private car hire companies who make their living almost solely transporting the business community from Oracle, Microsoft, Yell and the major companies in the Reading area to London Heathrow. There are contracts that do no more than that. There is a horrendous amount of complaints from the business community about, for example, having to leave the Reading area at 5.55 in the morning in order to get a nine o'clock flight from Heathrow, and having to hang around in Heathrow for 90 minutes, in order to miss the peak-hour traffic. As you know, the morning peak on the M4 is now backing up, sometimes to junction 12 and even to junction 13 at Newbury, from as early as quarter to eight in the morning. It becomes pretty ridiculous to seek to drive to Heathrow from my part of the world at anything approaching peak hours. I am not aware - and I do not think the figures would be available - of the number of passengers that would take, as I do now, the HST services from Reading into London and then buy a ticket on the Heathrow Express, because you are buying two separate tickets and you cannot buy a through-ticket. Those figures are going to be difficult to apply for, but, take it from me, it is a huge, huge issue for people in the area.

14128. I also want to put on record that I do not mean in any way to denigrate the excellent service that RailAir link provides, but you will know that the priority bus measures kick in beyond the airport turnoff from the M4, so that if you are going to catch the RailAir link bus you will sit in the same traffic jam as you would if you were sitting in your own car. That is hardly an incentive for people to use the bus to get into Heathrow airport. John Prescott's bus lane starts beyond the airport, into the Chiswick flyover, and therefore provides us with no advantage at all.

14129. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr Elvin.

14130. MR ELVIN: I will not tell you about the couple of weeks Mr Taylor and I spent in Reading promoting a new junction on the M4.

14131. MARTIN SALTER: You need to raise your game then.

14132. MR ELVIN: We need to speak to the borough council about that one.

14133. I am going to call Mr Berryman because I think it might be helpful for the Committee to hear a bit about Heathrow. I am going to do that with this caveat: the instruction which the Committee has had from the House does not extend to covering an extension from Heathrow to Reading. The instruction which the Commons has given to the Committee relates to Maidenhead to Reading not Heathrow. The issue of Heathrow to Reading therefore falls outside the scope of the instruction. Nonetheless, so that at least you get the picture from outside, I am going to call Mr Berryman to give you some further information on Heathrow.

 

MR KEITH BERRYMAN, Recalled

Examined by MR ELVIN

14134. MR ELVIN: Mr Berryman, of course is sworn and is well known to the Committee. Mr Berryman, can I start by asking you what sort of thing you perceive as the benefits of Crossrail, as proposed, to take it to Heathrow. What is it going to do and why is it beneficial?

(Mr Berryman) The benefits of Crossrail going to Heathrow are to provide a through link from the airport into the city centre and to other parts in East London. As the Petitioner said in his evidence, we are proposing to subsume the existing Heathrow Connect service. Because we have to provide an additional flyover at Heathrow in order to allow that service to still run, because the layout presently is unsuitable for trains going from relief lines into the airport, we are going to upgrade that to four trains a day. This is by agreement with BAA who are obviously very anxious about how people get to and from their airport. We do know, however, that the number of passengers who will use Crossrail to get from the airport to destinations beyond the West End (in other words, to the City and to Canary Wharf) is very small. It is a very noisy group of people. It is a group of people who have constantly campaigned for Crossrail to go to Heathrow. But when you do the traffic analysis the numbers are very low and would not justify a service to Heathrow were it not for the fact that we have to build this flyover in any event to allow Crossrail services to run.

14135. Can I ask you about the number of Connect services there are at the minute.

(Mr Berryman) There are two Connect services an hour and there will be four Connect services an hour when we start.

14136. So there will be an increase in service in any event?

(Mr Berryman) There will be an increase in service in any event, and the other thing is that we will solve the problem which BAA have of how to serve Terminal 4 after Terminal 5 opens because the intention is that the Heathrow Express service will go to Terminal 5 and we will link to Terminal 4. It may be conceivable in the future that we will provide a service to Terminal 5, but that is not the intention at the present time. We know that the overwhelming majority of people who arrive and who use train services from airports, and I know this from my experience, are actually arriving passengers, so it is people who are distant originators who will use public transport. They will tend, most of them, to be going to central London of course. It is very difficult to attract people from the hinterland of an airport to make their way to the airport by public transport and the reason is that they tend to be rather diffuse, they are spread over a wide area. Mr Salter's evidence mentioned that there are 158,000 people who currently use the RailAir service from Reading Station and that, I reckon, comes to about 530 a day. That would be about ten per train on the Crossrail network. Even if we accept that those numbers would double or quadruple, the numbers would still not be enough to justify the construction of a dedicated loop for this route.

14137. Can I also ask you, Mr Berryman, whether there are any technical issues with a western connection?

(Mr Berryman) There are indeed. It is quite a complex area. You will be aware of the existence of the M25 and M4 junction immediately to the west of Heathrow Airport, and the Airtrack line is designed to swing to the south to avoid that and avoid those roads and join up with South West Trains' lines. To swing to the north, there are many more obstructions and it is much more difficult. I would repeat my mantra, that nothing is impossible in terms of engineering, but it would cost a lot of money to do that.

14138. MR ELVIN: Thank you very much, Mr Berryman.

 

Cross-examined by MARTIN SALTER

14139. MARTIN SALTER: I think, Mr Berryman, you seem to have shot your own fox here. You are basically saying you have a very small group of noisy passengers who would travel onwards through London, who have obviously lobbied heavily for this, to the City and the rest of it, so why are you prioritising when we already have a very good Heathrow Express service which you may, by your own admission, run in competition with because you are talking about a time in the future running to Terminal 5? Why are you prioritising the eastern link into Heathrow, which we already have, when in fact the gaping gap in the system is the western link into Heathrow? Do you not think it is a rather bold statement to actually say that the numbers are not sufficient purely citing the RailAir service? I know perfectly well that the RailAir link is inappropriate for business traffic. Do you know better than the business community of Reading? Do you know better than the chief executives of Microsoft or Yale? Do you know better than the chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce when the business community of Reading is crying out for a rail link to the west into Heathrow Airport? We cannot base a case or we cannot knock down a case purely on one method of transport. We would have to look, as Kelvin implied in his questions, at the number of passenger journeys that are coming into Reading and then transferring on to the Heathrow Express to come back out again, we have to look at the number of car parks and we have to look at the capacity for the private hire trade that are providing currently access to Heathrow before we start making very bold statements like that.

(Mr Berryman) The fact of the matter is that in any company the number of people who do international travel tends to be confined to the senior executives and very high-level people in the company, but their numbers tend to be very small. I have not done any work at all on Reading in this matter, but we have certainly done a lot of work in the City and what we found out is that if I go to a meeting of bankers, they will say to me that the most important thing is a link from the City to Heathrow. When you actually dig into it, how many of them would use it? It is penny packets, it is very, very small numbers. Now, I accept that it is very inconvenient for people to have to use private hire cars in these instances, but the fact of the matter is that to justify a railway which has very expensive capital works, you need to have a lot of passengers. I used the RailAir figure merely as an illustration, but we are not talking about huge numbers. Even if there was a tenfold increase, it still would not be a significant amount of people in terms of a railway operation.

14140. Can I just come back on that and ask you to explain why you have bothered to put in your response to my Petition that "a western Heathrow rail link may ultimately be beneficial" when you have actually just said that the numbers do not justify it, but also at the same time you have done no work on the Reading figures whatsoever?

(Mr Berryman) Well, we have done a lot of work on the typical business usage, not specifically related to Reading, I will admit. What happens in the future, what our children or their successors do, I do not know, but the patterns of travel may change, the availability of rail travel may change and there may be all kinds of things which will happen, and that may change the equation over a long period of time, but looking at now, we just do not see a justification for this.

14141. MARTIN SALTER: I do not see any point, Chair, in continuing this exchange; I have made my point.

 

Examined by THE COMMITTEE

14142. MR BINLEY: I would like to explore this cost element of the work. It did worry me last week that I thought the costs presented were really rather crude and we have had an answer today that the difference could be in the region of 12 and 25 per cent on the 360. I would like to explore the signalling bit of the work because, as I understand it, that cost was included in the 360.

(Mr Berryman) No, sir. The cost of immunisation is included. That is the cost of the additional works that are needed when you electrify a railway. A diesel-operated railway or even a steam-operated railway, for that matter, does not need the same level of insulation between the power source and the electrical current which are used in the signalling, so there are very substantial costs when you electrify a railway involving the immunisation of the signalling for track services.

14143. Well, there is some further cost saving there on the 360?

(Mr Berryman) No, sir, I am saying that -----

14144. So there is no cost saving at all?

(Mr Berryman) The 360 million includes the cost of immunisation of the signalling. It does not include the cost of the signalling.

14145. I see. Just to clear my own mind again, that 360 does not include the amount that Network Rail would contribute to the refurbishment of Reading Station?

(Mr Berryman) It includes the works which would be needed to accommodate Crossrail, that is to say, the additional platforms to allow the Crossrail trains to turn round. What it does not include is the major works which are required to sort out the notorious Reading bottleneck which you have heard a certain amount about.

14146. MR BINLEY: I recognise that this is outside our remit, but we are going to debate this matter again in the House of Commons and I really do think that I would like to see a proper cost analysis only on an A4 sheet of paper, but I am a businessman and I love to see P and L.

14147. MR ELVIN: Sir, I was just going to stand up and offer that. We will put you together a proper breakdown so that you can see, and use it for the purposes of internal discussion and other purposes, exactly how this is put together. If we also explain on that sheet what matters are not included as well, that might be helpful.

14148. MR BINLEY: Yes, thank you.

14149. SIR PETER SOULSBY: Mr Berryman, Mr Elvin has just promised us some more information there, and you have talked about the net additional cost of going to Reading, but can I return you to the big question in front of us about the benefits of going to Reading. There is obviously an incredible gulf between the Promoter's view of the potential benefits and the Petitioners' views, which we have heard again today and on previous occasions. Frankly, what is it they do not understand?

(Mr Berryman) I do not know, I really do not know. We have already heard from this Petitioner's evidence that he himself does not use the slow-line or the relief-line services to get into town and he uses the Intercity expresses, and I think he would probably be a fairly typical user of the line from Reading. The services on the relief lines from Reading are relatively slow and relatively unattractive and what Crossrail would be doing would be replicating those trains with electric trains rather than diesel and there would possibly be some very minor improvements, so I am extremely unclear as to what the people of Reading think they would be getting out of Crossrail if Crossrail went there. It looks nice on the map. You join the lines on the map and it looks like it makes a pattern, but I cannot actually see how much use it would be.

14150. We have been hearing a consistent message from all the Members of Parliament and all the local authorities in the area and that consistent message is that if Crossrail were to be extended to Reading, it would bring very considerable benefits. We are hearing something very different now. Can you explain this gulf of understanding?

(Mr Berryman) Well, I just do not know what the benefits are. I can see that there would be some benefits to the residents of Twyford, but as far as Reading itself is concerned, I am absolutely at a loss to see what the benefits are.

14151. KELVIN HOPKINS: We have touched on this in previous sessions, but bringing a service to Reading which was fast or semi-fast, like the RER in Paris where in the central part it stops at every station and in the outer part it stops only at the main stations, would Crossrail not provide a good commuter service between Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading and points in London as well? If it was clearly stopping at every station between Reading and London, it would be a slow service and it would be of very little interest to commuters, but if it was a fast or semi-fast service outside of London and a stopping service inside of London, would that not be more attractive?

(Mr Berryman) It would if you could do it, but the problem is that trains cannot overtake on what is effectively a two-track railway. You need to recognise the fact that the main lines are fully occupied by the long-distance train services going through Reading and on to south Wales and south-west England, so we have only got the relief lines available to us. Basically, if trains cannot overtake, the timetable and the number of stops fixes the speed of the fastest train, so if you imagine a stopping train sets off and it is followed after some distance by a semi-fast train, the semi-fast train will run down a stopping train fairly quickly, so the timetable planning has to take into account the way in which those trains are tracked, and it is those trains which fix the speed, if you like, the overall speed, and it is the frequency of the stopping patterns which affects the number of trains that can be provided. Now, in different circumstances, for example, you and I both know the Midland mainline and that the commuter services, what used to be called the Thameslink services, actually have the availability of all four lines during the peak because the main lines are much less intensively used than the main lines are on the Great Western. You have got to imagine how Thameslink would operate if there was a constant stream of Midland mainline trains coming down those main lines and how difficult it would be to provide the existing links on fast and semi-fast services.

14152. SIR PETER SOULSBY: I wonder, Mr Berryman, if you can then explain why those same arguments do not apply to going as far as Maidenhead? Why go to Maidenhead? Why not just stop at Ealing Broadway?

(Mr Berryman) This is explained in the information papers, but there are really basically four destinations, possible termination points we looked at. There is Ealing Broadway, Slough, Maidenhead and Reading. If you go to one of the other ones, like Ealing Broadway or Slough, you still have got to service all the stations beyond the point at which the Crossrail services stop, so you have to provide more or less of a commuter service, another commuter service. Now, the problem then becomes finding capacity for those commuter trains which go beyond the limits of electrification and the electric trains which are bringing them up out of the tunnels. It is a question of finding the balance. If we were only to go as far as Ealing Broadway, we would have to extend the Crossrail lines, the dedicated lines, all the way to Ealing Broadway, and there are some extremely severe, technical problems in doing that. In order to make it work nicely, you would need to have cross-platform interchange at Ealing Broadway and Ealing Broadway is a very difficult site and not somewhere which is amenable to that sort of construction. The same applies if you go to Slough. You would still have to put additional traffic capacity in somewhere in inner London to allow for those trains which are coming from beyond Slough as well as for the electric trains which Crossrail will be putting on. When we get to Maidenhead, we identified that as the first place where we would not need to provide additional track work coming further into London and the first place where the Crossrail trains would start to pick up substantial numbers of passengers because, as I have said, going to Reading does not give us any more passengers.

14153. MRS JAMES: I just want to go back a step because we have talked about Crossrail being one of the largest projects and I made the point yesterday when Mr Weston gave evidence about the fast and slow lines, which you called the 'relief' and the 'main'. To us, they are just the fast and the slow because it is quite simple, you are either going slow or you are going fast, there is no two ways about it.

(Mr Berryman) That is absolutely right. That is a much better distinction.

14154. Past experience has shown that the capacity on those lines, given any blockage, given any problems at all, it is the services from the West that suffer. At the drop of a hat, those are the services which will be displaced, and I will give you an example of that. When there was the Paddington rail disaster, and we understand why, the services to south Wales and the West were reduced by 10 per cent going into Paddington and there was absolute chaos. It seems strange to me, and I am afraid I am being a little bit partisan here, but it seems strange to me that on the back of the largest project we are going to see, and I have worked in the rail industry, we cannot address some of the wider issues, and Reading is an issue. For us who travel through Reading on a daily or a weekly basis, we know there are problems there and we also know how busy that railway station is, so it just does not make sense to me when you talk about it that there is not the interest or there is not the demand because I see that demand on a daily basis, so I am a little bit taken aback by that.

(Mr Berryman) There is a very strong demand for commuting from Reading, but that commuting takes place on the high-speed trains. There is not much demand for the kind of trains which will be on offer from Crossrail which would be the existing slow-line trains replicated by us. The point about Reading needing redevelopment, I could not agree more, that Crossrail, even if we went to Reading, would not be able to sort out all of the problems of Reading and it is much more to do with what happens at the various junctions in Reading. I know there are some schemes, some of them very elaborate, which have been proposed to solve that problem, but certainly it would be well beyond the remit of what Crossrail is there to do. All we would be doing if we went to Reading is providing some platforms for our trains to turn round, and also the trains coming from the Oxford direction, they would also have to turn round because they could not get through to London. On the question of allocation of paths(?), this will be in the hands of Network Rail. They will be responsible for regulating the service and making the decision as to which trains get priority, exactly as they are now. You will appreciate of course that when it is operating as a two-track railway, some thinning out of the service has to take place, but that would only happen in the case of emergency or when part of the line is out of action. That is exactly as it is now. There is nothing that we could do about that as part of this scheme. It is something that requires much more strategic intervention.

14155. But I think personally the point needs to be registered.

(Mr Berryman) I think the point is well made and we are aware of this issue, but it is well beyond the remit of what Crossrail could do.

14156. SIR PETER SOULSBY: Mr Berryman, I am sure you will remind me that it is somewhere in one of these many information packs behind me, but can you just humour me by reminding the Committee about the benefits of Crossrail to the stations between Maidenhead and Ealing Broadway? What is intended will be the increase in frequency and journey times for commuters at those intermediate stations?

(Mr Berryman) I do not have the figures ready at my fingertips, but basically what we are looking to have is a four-trains-an-hour service between Maidenhead and London going into the Crossrail tunnels. From West Drayton inwards, there would be an additional two trains an hour and from Hayes and Harlington inwards, there would be an additional four trains an hour, so when you get to Hayes and Harlington, there would be a total of ten trains an hour going into the Crossrail tunnels. Also there will be two semi-fast services which start at Reading, call at Twyford, Maidenhead, Slough, Hayes and Harlington, Ealing Broadway and then into Paddington high level, so they will get quite an increase in service certainly from Hayes and Harlington and Southall, I think more or less the same service as they get now from Ealing Broadway, but with much bigger trains. Quite a lot of the trains on the relief lines, the slow lines of the Great Western are very small, two-, three- and four-coach trains, the trains using the relief lines. All our trains would be ten-coach trains, so the overcrowding problems which currently exist on those inner suburban services would be eliminated.

14157. MARTIN SALTER: Chairman, Mr Berryman said that I do not opt to use the slow lines, and he is absolutely right, but I do use the slow lines, not by choice, because the amount of time the existing HST service has to go on the slow line and on the relief line, it beggars belief that Crossrail is not going to disrupt that. Mr Berryman actually said in response to a question, I think from Sir Peter, that there will be some thinning out of service. I do not know what he means by some thinning out of service in the context of a system at stress point at the moment. In answer to Sir Peter's question about why do the people in Reading, why do the businesses in Reading, why do the MPs and why do the councils of Reading actually want Crossrail to come to Reading, Mr Berryman said rather glibly, "I don't know". Well, what has changed, Chairman, since 1992 when Reading was already in Crossrail's own case? Has Reading got smaller? Have we got fewer businesses? Have we got fewer people? Have we got fewer people travelling? I am sorry, but that is really not sufficient.

14158. The last point I want to make is in respect of Brian's probing on this cost issue which really is not resolved yet. I cannot see how Mr Berryman can state what is in or what is out of the Reading Station refurbishment plan just announced by Network Rail this week as part of their priorities when in fact it has not even been assessed by the DfT as part of the Government's (?) process.

14159. CHAIRMAN: Mr Elvin, before Mr Berryman steps down, do you want to ask him any other questions and are there any questions that you want to put to him in relation to one or two points that Mr Wilson raised or will you be dealing with that in the summing-up?

14160. MR ELVIN: I was going to deal with those in the summing-up because they largely link into other matters. Perhaps I can just ask some questions of Mr Berryman.

 

Re-examined by MR ELVIN

14161. MR ELVIN: Mr Berryman, the issue of benefits, costs, what services should be provided, the nature of the services, whether it should be a metro service, whether it should be something else, were these considered before the scheme was put forward and, if so, in what form?

(Mr Berryman) Yes, they were. They were the subject of a study carried out by the Strategic Rail Authority in 2000 for the London East-West Study which was submitted to the then, and still, Deputy Prime Minister at about Christmas 2000. One of the issues which was addressed in that study was the choice which should be made between a metro service, a sort of regional metro service and a regional express service. With the regional express service, the idea was that it would go further afield and have longer-distance trains which are faster, and the regional metro service would be more or less the scheme we have got now. The logic that went into making the selection was to do with reliability and operability and the possibility of importing poor performance by having numerous inter-working with other kinds of service. Therefore, what we have gone for is a service which is as far as possible self-contained. It cannot be 100 per cent self-contained because there is freight on the lines, as we have heard, but as far as possible the service is self-contained for the purpose of ensuring that we can achieve a 21/2-minute headway service in the central tunnels and thereby get the maximum benefit out of the huge investment which will be made in that infrastructure. If we were to have a service which was longer distance, sort of mixed up fast and slow services, we would have to have a different kind of timetable with longer periods between trains to allow for disruption to services, very much as is operating currently on the Thameslink service, for example.

14162. What we know from the conclusions of the Timetable Working Group in its latest report, and the Committee heard this yesterday, is that as far as the Great Western service is concerned, there, broadly speaking, the Crossrail timetable will integrate with existing services.

(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is correct. Can I just make the point ----

14163. Mr Salter is shaking his head, Mr Berryman. Can you just explain why he is wrong please.

(Mr Berryman) Why we will not integrate with existing services?

14164. Why we will.

(Mr Berryman) Well, we have done a considerable amount of timetabling work to establish that we can do this. I think it is worth making the point that we are now in 2006 and services will not start until 2016, so it would be wrong to say that the detailed design has been done. We are at a level of confidence which I would state is complete confidence that we can achieve the service that we are talking about without disrupting the existing services on the Great Western, either freight or passenger. Can I make a point which is related to that, which is about the thinning out of services? When I am talking about thinning out services I am talking about when some incident happens where some trains have to be cancelled or some trains have to be turned back short, which is exactly what happens now and exactly what happens everywhere on the network in the UK and everywhere on networks throughout the world. It is a fundamental part of railway operation.

14165. MRS JAMES: Particularly in the West (?).

(Mr Berryman) That is another issue. It is fundamental factor in railway operation that when things go wrong you have to adjust the service to accommodate what has gone wrong.

14166. MR ELVIN: Can I ask this: in terms of the work that has been carried out, does Crossrail actually increase capacity on the Great Western in some respects?

(Mr Berryman) In many respects, as I think was mentioned yesterday, there are increases in capacity. I think, perhaps, the most noticeable issue is that immediately adjacent to Ealing Broadway, where we have provided a graded separate interchange to get into the freight yard at Acton yard, any regular user of the Great Western will know that trains are often held at Ealing Broadway to wait for freight trains to come out and go into that yard, and that problem will be solved by the Crossrail works. There are a number of other areas where we are altering or upgrading or lengthening loops, which will make the operation of freight trains much more straightforward

14167. In terms of the impact of creating platform capacity at Paddington, can you consider that?

(Mr Berryman) Yes. I think this point was made similarly yesterday. By taking away the suburban trains from Paddington platform capacity will be released. That would, if that was the only constraint, allow an expansion of services on the Great Western line. As was explained yesterday, there are other capacity constraints, noticeably at Reading, which would prevent that. However, platform capacity at Paddington is one of the limiting factors of capacity for the Great Western, but at least that part of the problem would be solved by Crossrail. It still leaves other problems to be solved but at least it is a step in the right direction.

14168. MR ELVIN: Mr Berryman, thank you. Are there any other questions?

14169. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed.

 

The witness withdrew

14170. MR ELVIN: Sir, can I just start by reminding the Committee of something which a number of Petitioners seem to be unaware of (Mr Salter as much as anyone), which is that Crossrail cannot be the panacea to all the rail problems in the South East. You have heard Petitioners now from a wide number of locations, both east and west of London, and the core case for Crossrail is one which is set out in chapter 4 of the Environmental Statement, and I explained it in opening. It is centred on specific transport problems and specific regeneration issues within the Greater London area. It does seek to achieve integration elsewhere but it simply cannot, to be contained within feasible and affordable limits, solve existing problems all over the network.

14171. The issues that arise with regard to Reading arise in any event, as Mrs James has indicated, and having been stuck on trains at Ealing myself, and in similar locations, I well understand the concerns, but those are existing problems. The work that has been done to-date demonstrates two things: firstly, Crossrail will not worsen services on the Great Western; secondly, it will have a beneficial effect in some respects by freeing up capacity, as Mr Berryman has just explained, and providing a degree of benefit to those executives who do not jump in their limousines, taxis and the like by providing a fast service from Heathrow through to the City and canary Wharf. There are benefits, therefore, to Heathrow, but as Mr Berryman says, one should not overstate them.

14172. However, as I say, it is absolutely essential that if this project is to be built it has to be within affordable and practical limits and we have already said on a number of occasions that simply because this project has a particular price ticket attached to it does not mean you can simply keep adding to it by saying: "£300 million is only a small percentage of £10 billion", or something like that. I am sure the Committee are well aware of the difficulties of finding that sort of money and the need to keep the scheme practical so it will actually be delivered.

14173. We have set out in detail our case on the selection of route and our selection of termini; they are in Information Papers A1 and A6. These issues started with the LEWS study some six years ago. They went further, of course, and the Crossrail business case, when it was published, was looked at publicly by the Montague Committee in 2004; it was a public report and the Committee, I think, has copies of it or has access to it. These issues have been looked at over a considerable period of time before the case for Crossrail was adopted by government and received the approval of the House in second reading.

14174. So far, therefore, as Reading is concerned, we have put forward specific reasons why we do not consider Reading is appropriate; why we do not consider the level of benefit that those who argue for Reading say will take place to be on the scale which supporters say they will. We also say that in terms of Heathrow, the Heathrow service is improved but it has to be put in context, and there remains the BAA plans for AirTrack should that be considered necessary to achieve a western connection in due course, but one should not underestimate the difficulties.

14175. So far as support for the scheme is concerned - and this was a point raised by Mr Wilson first of all - and the democratic deficit, I am afraid my point is a simple one: it has the support of the House of Commons in second reading. It has the support of the House for the existing termini in the West. As I have already said, the House has indicated in its instruction that it is willing to consider within limits, which I have already addressed the Committee on, Maidenhead to Reading but within certain specific limits. The democratic deficit, it seems to me, is very far from being present.

14176. In terms of the issues of cost, I have already agreed on behalf of the Promoters to provide the Committee with a more detailed breakdown, so it has something rather more clear that it can get its teeth into. That will be done. I do not think there is anything else I wish to address you on.

14177. CHAIRMAN: There was one point which Mr Wilson also raised about particular modelling which had been done.

14178. MR ELVIN: Yes. The modelling which has been done with regard to timetabling you have heard discussed at great length yesterday and it was cross-examined on at some length by Mr George for the freight industry, and what is quite clear is that whatever the issue remaining as to where and how much more work needs to be done, which was the main thrust of Mr George's case yesterday for the freight industry, the modelling enjoys the support across a wide number of stakeholders. You have the list of those who took part in the Timetable Working Group, which includes freight and passenger industry representatives.

14179. The modelling is the standard modelling that Network Rail uses and is used to plan transport on rail throughout the country. If we say the modelling does not work then we might as well forget trying to do any form of planning for our railways, because that is the way it is done in this country; it is what Network Rail does, it is what the operators participate in on a daily basis, and you heard from Mr Watson who has experience in the modelling of railway timetables for many years. This is an established means of trying to integrate new services and growth in existing services into the network. I am sure Mr Hopkins is very familiar with those matters. Therefore, the modelling is standard modelling. It may have some matters which remain to be dealt with, designed and worked up but it has reached a position where the group has agreed, and you heard from others and Mr Watson yesterday, that it presents a picture which shows on the Great Western at least that the base timetable for Crossrail will work without detriment to the Great Western services.

14180. Sir, I cannot say much more than that. The modelling is what it is; it is the standard system. If we give up on Crossrail then we give up on trying to plan our rail transport

14181. CHAIRMAN: I think you have well covered the queries there. We will have a look at some of the questions that Mr Wilson posed, which were quite a number ----

14182. MR ELVIN: I think I have covered them fairly broadly, either through Mr Berryman or through what I have just said. If there is anything you require me to address, no doubt you will let me know.

14183. CHAIRMAN: Martin, do you want to say anything in summing-up?

14184. MARTIN SALTER: No, I am very happy with what has been put across.

14185. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. That ends that particular Petition. We now move on to the next Petition, which is Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group, represented by Claire Prosser.

 

The Petition of Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group

 

MS CLAIRE PROSSER appeared on behalf of the Petitioner

14186. CHAIRMAN: Mr Taylor?

14187. MR TAYLOR: I believe there are three issues that the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group is going to raise: extension of the scheme to Reading; Crossrail services to Heathrow and the impact on the Great Western main line.

14188. CHAIRMAN: Do you know what time you are going to need?

14189. MS PROSSER: Only about ten minutes. I will not be commenting on Heathrow; it has all been discussed previously.

14190. The Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group speaks on behalf of nearly 3,000 businesses in the Thames Valley, which encapsulates 178,000 employees equating to 25 per cent of the working population. The Chamber represents a 31 per cent market share of the large corporate, private sector companies and business people in the Thames Valley. The region covers, as you know, Aylesbury Vale, Bracknell Forest, Oxfordshire, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Wycombe & South Bucks and Wokingham. We have also in May opened an accredited Chamber of Commerce in Swindon which will cover businesses in that region and in wider Wiltshire.

14191. The Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce would like to reiterate and to preserve its position for the record this morning. We do acknowledge that a variety of experts have already given evidence on this and that much debate has already been given. During our consultation we received support for our position from the following organisations: Reading Borough Council, Reading MPs (who are here today), Reading City Centre Management (which covers business and public sector organisations), the South East England Regional Assembly, ACTVaR (who I understand gave evidence last week, which Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce endorses), the CBI and FirstGroup, the train operator.

14192. The Thames Valley Transport Group, which is co-ordinated by the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce, has also been consulted with for our position. The group meets five times a year and discusses important current consultations, including all modes of travel, especially rail.

14193. In a recent survey of members we identified that poor transport infrastructure costs each business an average of £27,000 a year, and 56 per cent of businesses have reported it as a major influencing factor when deciding where to locate. As well as impacting on business operating costs, 46 per cent of our members are convinced that a lack of inward investment in our region is caused by an inadequate regional transport system. We do consider that Crossrail is crucial to maintain and support this region's growing, dynamic and thriving economy. Fast train links are critical for our members and the business community.

14194. On the first point - scheme Development: Reading as the westerly hub - as we have heard this morning Reading is cited as a strategic hub in the most local, regional, national and multi-modal strategies including: Thames Valley Multi Modal Study, South East Regional Transport Strategy, South East Development Agency, Local Transport Strategy and the Strategic Rail Authority. Reading is the second largest rail interchange outside of London and is a strategic hub both regionally and nationally and should be the natural western terminus for Crossrail. The proposal fails to link with national rail services from a recognised hub.

14195. At this stage I would like to refer to the position of Theresa May MP, who last week said, and I quote: "I do not see why it would not consider Reading as a more suitable alternative. Maidenhead is a default choice. It will only disrupt Maidenhead".

14196. The rail network is an important component of the overall transport system and is used by 66 per cent of our members for business related activities. This Committee, therefore, is an essential opportunity to reiterate the case for Crossrail to choose Reading as its western terminus. The current proposal to terminate the service at Maidenhead is illogical and potentially damaging to the quality of stopping services between Reading and Paddington. Accordingly, the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group believes that if a Crossrail service is to extend beyond Slough it should terminate at Reading as a logical hub and carry appropriate limited stop services. Not to include Reading would be an opportunity lost and could fulfil several long-term strategic objectives and facilitate a national need. The costs of electrification of the line to Reading from Maidenhead (which is 13 miles) would add, as we have heard today, £300 million to a £10 billion project. Crossrail estimates a 2:1 return on investment.

14197. On specific cases, BT Group is investing in the region substantially, and our submission is backed by BMW, Boyes Turner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rockwell Collins and Yell, and you have heard a lot of specific cases this morning.

14198. Some statistics. Approximately 5,000 people travel from Reading to London Paddington daily, Monday to Friday. Reading has approximately 30 million visitors a year.

 

14199. We acknowledge the Promoter's response in point 1, and I would question the comment: "offer the best prospect of providing transport for London's increasing population and relieving overcrowding." Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce's emphasis and number one priority must be on supporting the needs of Reading and indeed the Thames Valley. We do acknowledge the Promoter's response point 2: "In January 2006 revised instructions to the House of Commons Select Committee considering the Bill were passed allowing them to consider proposals for extensions of Crossrail to Reading and Ebbsfleet."

14200. On the particular point of the redevelopment of Reading Station, a clear strategic approach should be a phrased project centred on delivering the core needs of this strategic hub, which are: six tracking into London to deal with the capacity issue; much needed upgrading of the signalling; development of the stations platforms and the surrounding areas. Reading station has been identified and given conditional approval (we have heard from Martin today) for essential capacity improvements because it is a key bottleneck on the national rail network. Such an upgrade would bring with it benefits on an international, national, regional and local scale.

14201. We acknowledge in the Promoter's response point 3 that: "to accommodate Crossrail trains to Reading station without a major redevelopment would involve Network Rail and all the other train operators whose trains run to or through Reading station. Therefore such a project would need to be led by Network Rail, the infrastructure owner, not by an individual operator, such as Crossrail." Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce would call for joined-up thinking between Network Rail, Crossrail and indeed other partners to ensure improvements to Reading station, as previously stated, and any Crossrail development at Reading station are carried out as one.

14202. Indeed, in a press statement issued by the Chamber of Commerce in November 2005 we urged the Government to deliver £68 million of the investment needed for the core development scheme of Reading station, and added support to October's correspondence sent to the Department for Transport from Tim Smith of Reading City Centre Management. Our Group Chief Executive stated: "Reading Station is already running at capacity. The tracks in the station can only carry 23 trains per hour, whereas the tracks to the east and west of the station can carry 60 trains an hour. It is clear that the capacity of the station needs to be increased in order to utilise the full potential of the transportation links in Reading. Reading is an important economic hub within the Thames Valley, with many national and international links. It is home to numerous international headquarters and has been growing in both size and revenue. The connection at Reading is a vital gateway for the region with connections into London, the City's airports and other towns and cities countrywide."

14203. The press statement highlighted the urgency for this investment as Network Rail's resignalling work, essential for track safety at Reading, is programmed for 2012. "If the core scheme is not adopted by then, this work will go ahead on a like-for-like basis and thus the opportunity to resolve the bottleneck will be lost as, once replaced, the signalling equipment has a 30-year lifespan." It would therefore seem sensible to co-ordinate any upgrading activity in time and in line with Crossrail development with Reading as the westerly hub.

14204. Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce would call on Crossrail to not use the upgrading of Reading station, or lack of it, as a convenient excuse to hide behind or a stick to beat Reading with. In the Information Paper A1, "Development of Crossrail Route" point 5.12, Crossrail states: "Analysis showed that these costs would not be justified by the benefits, as passenger demand on Crossrail services would be low due to the existence of alternative fast rail services to Paddington and Reading".

14205. Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce would question any terminology connecting "low usage" and "Reading station". We are aware of this argument and remain concerned that this information be used against Reading becoming the westerly hub. Surely, once a Crossrail service was available, customers from Reading would have the choice over existing services into London and those of Crossrail. Surely, such analysis has been put together on a hypothetical situation.

14206. Impact on railway services. Post any Crossrail service Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce would want the line protected and fast services retained. The current proposal would adversely affect Reading HST services into London by slowing train speeds The Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce does not want Crossrail to be merely a Metro stopping service, especially a London Metro service. We feel a balance has not been drawn.

14207. On timetabling issues, Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group successfully lobbied to help FirstGroup retain its fast services from Slough, Maidenhead, Twyford, Newbury, Didcot Parkway and the branch lines of Marlow and Henley-on-Thames. In March the Chamber submitted its response to FirstGroup and the Department for Transport challenging the significant timetable changes proposed for December 2006, which could have seen many major rail connections in the region adversely affected

14208. For Slough to London the threat of this service being pushed above the important 20 minute threshold has been removed. As of the proposed December 2006 timetable, there will be a half-hourly fast service, not just in the peak times but throughout the day. The risk of services always making an additional stop at Ealing Broadway has gone, and Slough fast services will be even better than before. The peak-hour fast services have also been retained for Maidenhead, Marlow, Twyford and Henley-on-Thames, which is crucial for commuters who live and work in these areas.

14209. We fought very hard for this favourable timetabling decision, which we would not want to see compromised or made worse by any Crossrail service. Thank you.

14210. MR TAYLOR: The Committee has heard last week about Reading and this morning about Reading. The case for the Promoter, put very crudely, is that to extend to Reading poses large additional costs with no overall benefit because Crossrail passenger services simply would not be used because people have the alternative of using the fast trains from Reading into Paddington.

14211. Turning to the matters relating to the impact on the Great Western main line generally, the Committee has already had evidence from the Chair of the Timetable Working Group, and the conclusion of that Group in relation to passenger services was that the Crossrail base timetable does not appear to have any material negative impact on other passenger services, primarily because neither to the east or west of London would Crossrail services use main lines on which other passenger services predominantly run. Crossrail uses the relief lines. That is all I want to say on the Petition.

14212. CHAIRMAN: Do you wish to conclude, or is that it?

14213. MR TAYLOR: That was it.

14214. CHAIRMAN: Ms Prosser, would you like to summarise?

14215. MS PROSSER: I think I was just going to reiterate that although we do choose Reading as the western hub - just to reiterate the point - we would want current services protected, as per what I said. I understand the point made but it is crucial that the proposed 2006 timetable is retained.

14216. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed. That now concludes the Petition.

14217. MR ELVIN: Sir, just before you rise, I promised you yesterday the ministerial letter on Bill powers dated 29 June. I will have that circulated. It will be P109. It is in the same terms as the letter already in the bundle but I thought you ought to have that from the Minister as well.

14218. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We will now suspend till 2.30 when we will hear the Petition of Frank Browne.

 

After a short adjournment

 

The Petition of Frank Browne.

 

MR STEPHEN REED appeared as Agent.

14219. MR TAYLOR: I will introduce the next Petition, if I may. Mr Browne, as I understand, is the leader of Wokingham Council and is here in his personal capacity. The issues that are to be raised are potentially two-fold. The first relates to the impact of Crossrail upon services from Twyford and upon the Henley branch and the second relates to whether or not the Crossrail should be extended to Reading.

14220. I hand you over to Mr Reed.

14221. MR REED: I am Stephen Reed. I am representing Councillor Browne as his Parliamentary Agent today. Your Petitioner is the leader of Wokingham District Council and is a district councillor for Remenham and Wargrave.

14222. The Bill will adversely affect train journeys to London from Twyford and Wargrave Stations, the area for which Wokingham District Council is the local authority. The Petitioner and his interests and the interests of his constituents and the interests of other residents of Wokingham District are all injuriously affected by the Bill to which the Petitioner objects. As a resident of the area served by Twyford and Wargrave Stations, the personal interests of your Petitioner are injuriously affected by the Bill. However, perhaps because Wokingham and District Council is not within the area covered by the proposed works, it is not fully informed about the impact of the Crossrail project and the transport within its boundaries. The Council did not become aware of the scale of reduction of the through services to London sufficiently early to hold a council meeting to enable it to petition against the Bill, which I understood would have been the more appropriate route. The Petitioner would respectfully request that he also be heard in his capacity as leader of the Council in order to put to the Committee his wider concerns of his council and of residents within his boundaries.

14223. Councillor Browne has asked me to confirm to the Committee the comments made by Councillor David Sutton, in his role as chair of ACTVaR, in his evidence last week. The Wokingham District Council is part of and fully supports the ACTVaR position that was outlined to the Committee about the 18 authorities within the ACTVaR group.

14224. We have only one witness to call, Mr Lindon, who has been asked by Councillor Browne to look at the impact of Crossrail and the potential service changes that may affect the train services at Twyford. We hope this will help to reinforce the general information and overview provided by previous Petitioners. I would expect our submission, by way of short bullet point presentations, to last no more than about 30 minutes. Can I ask Mr Lindon now to go through his presentation with you.

14225. CHAIRMAN: The Petitioner is listed as Frank Browne, but is it on behalf of Mr Frank Browne or does he do it in name as leader or on behalf of the Council?

14226. MR REED: He is asking to be heard personally and in name as leader.

14227. CHAIRMAN: It is also the view of the district council?

14228. MR REED: It is, sir.

14229. CHAIRMAN: Has a resolution been passed by the authority in relation to their support for a petition? In other words, are they joined by a resolution?

14230. MR REED: I understand they are, sir. I can check that for you, if you would like. The resolution was not made at the time the Petitions had to be made. It was made subsequently.

14231. CHAIRMAN: We take it that they have a view but the Petition is from Mr Frank Browne individually.

14232. MR REED: Yes.

 

MR PETER LINDON, Sworn

Examined by MR REED

14233. (Mr Lindon) I would like to start off with the presentation on the screen at the moment. I intend not to cover the Reading issue in any great length because that was covered at fair length this morning, but there are one or two points I would like to elaborate later on. I would like to concentrate on train service issues and the degradation taking place through those services at Twyford at the moment.

14234. Can we move on to slide 2, please. There you will see the current level of service applicable at Twyford. There are to be some adjustments made in December this year with the new timetable. At the end of the presentation, these are set out in the appendices at the end of the presentation.

14235. May we move forward to slide 3. According to the Promoter's response, these are the levels of service that Crossrail propose to operate: a limited-stop service (of which we have heard before); the 30 minute interval service to Slough; possibly some trains operating on the main lines and serving Twyford continuing to operate (services that are currently run on the fast line between Twyford, Maidenhead and London Paddington); and also the Henley branch will probably have no through services.

14236. Going on to slide 4, we note the response from the Promoter, but there are a number of questions unanswered and notable questions begged in terms of the future of that particular route and what might come out of it

14237. On slide 5, the Great Western Main Line Route Utilisation Strategy, which the SRA published in June 2005, proposes that "in the peaks only the125 mph stock should be deployed on the Main Lines east of Reading." This has been actively considered by the SRA, sufficient that it was in their Route Utilisation Strategy. I am aware that there is a Network Rail Route Utilisation Strategy coming out for the route and I will be interested to see the content of that when it has been established in 2009.

14238. Going on to slide 6, if the RUS is adopted as published, neither the existing Heathrow Express services nor the peak hour fast services from Twyford nor any of the commuter services from west of Reading, currently operated by diesel units, will be allowed to use the fast lines. It is not clear what the process is for "establishing" - as the word used by Network Rail - the RUS, but it seems to me that there is a discrepancy between the proposals of Crossrail - basically to use a substantial amount or virtually take over the relief lines or slow lines - and the Route Utilisation Strategy. We would be very interested to learn the actual proposals here from presumably DfT Rail, Network Rail and anybody else.

14239. Going on to slide 7, in the Crossrail Action Option paper, which the DfT produced in March 2006, they do specifically mention this 30-minute interval, semi-fast service and also the stopping service terminating at Slough. It was confirmed this morning that there are ten trains per hour proposed to run west of Paddington to Maidenhead, West Drayton or Heathrow Airport. There may be 14 emerging from the Crossrail Tunnel that will terminate at the Westbourne Park facility. It is understood that these trains will operate on a clock-face basis. I assume this is the principle of the exercise. The concern that we have is the pathing of the residual (as it is known in Crossrail circles) limited-stop diesel service on the relief lines between the all-stations Crossrail trains. Mr Berryman made the very apt point this morning that if one has mixed traffic on a line of railway route, line capacity is therefore reduced. That means that if you are operating trains that have a similar stopping pattern, you can put more trains on that piece of route because they are all moving at the same speed. The introduction of a fast service on to a line otherwise used by an all-stations service reduces the line capacity. The Promoter stated the intended journey time of these residual diesels between Paddington and Maidenhead would be 32 minutes. This compares with 41 minutes with Crossrail trains over the same journey. The current required headway (the distance between trains that currently operates on Great Western Main Line out of Paddington) is three minutes. Thus, for the residual diesel service to perform that journey between Paddington and Maidenhead in 32 minutes, without being delayed by Crossrail trains, very careful timetabling would have to be necessary. It would seem that the whole of the end of the Crossrail timetable may well have to be constructed around fitting these residual diesel trains in between the Crossrail services.

14240. I hope I am not losing anybody on this and it is making some sense.

14241. There is a serious issue about timetabling. We would like some comfort that these services can continue to operate, even when additional capacity is needed on Crossrail services, because they are the only services that are going to serve Paddington directly from Twyford - which is another issue I shall come on to in a moment.

14242. If we move on to slide 8, this is the best case. This is the most optimistic prediction for a service that Twyford may have, which is possibly one fast service per hour during the peak periods, two of the limited-stop diesel services all day, and two all-station services per hour to Slough.

14243. Going on to slide 9, this could be the worst case. The limited-stop diesels, as I have already explained, do not fit. They are not fitting in with the Crossrail journey at all. There is every possibility that any extra requirement for services on Crossrail to run west of Westbourne Park (in other words, further down the route towards Maidenhead) is going to reduce capacity. This could result in their withdrawal or possible slowing down. The two Reading-Slough services do not really seem to serve a purpose. They are operating all-stations between Reading and Slough but when they get to Slough they terminate. The only onward service available from Slough to London Paddington is actually a service that has come through from Maidenhead. I consider that these services could possibly also ultimately be under threat. If the Route Utilisation Strategy is adopted, as proposed, by the SRA, the fast services from the Twyford and the Henley branch may also be under threat because they will not be allowed to use the fast lines. Of course, another issue is the closure of the Henley branch itself.

14244. I will skip slide 10 and go on to 11. Having made that point, I would like to cover very briefly the Reading issue. There are two issues that are new from this morning. Firstly, it has always been proposed that eventually the Great Western Main Line will be electrified. The fact that the current operator is currently refurbishing 1970s rolling stock would indicate that, at a certain time in the future, there will be a substantial requirement for investment in extra rolling stock, and it would seem that that is the time at which the Great Western electrification could well be considered. If electrification were to be already in place into Reading this would be a step in the right direction. There was talk about passive provision for Crossrail this morning, not only under the Reading development but there is also a re-signalling scheme which could incorporate the immunisation of Crossrail and actually make passenger provision for Crossrail requirements there So there are, I think, additional elements to the Reading argument, if you like.

14245. I shall skip slides 12 and 13 because these cover what we have already talked about this morning. I would like to move quickly to 14, if I may. This gives you a feeling for the degradation of service that Crossrail is about to suffer. We have 15 trains an hour arriving at London Paddington in the morning peak period between 0700 and 0959 at present. That drops to 14 in December. By the way, those figures exclude, I hasten to add, any of the very slow services that are subsequently overtaken en route, so they are not the total; they are the ones that people would actually catch. In the last two columns you have the best case and worst case Crossrail scenarios that I have already elucidated. So you can see there is a very real threat to Twyford and its future, in terms of rail services. We take issue with the Promoter's Response Document in which it is stated (and here I quote): "The present service level reflects the fact that most trains are stabled overnight at Reading and, to some extent, the existing provision of service more reflects the operational pattern than the actual demand on offer". Our reasons for disputing that are twofold: firstly, it is really only the first trains in the morning that come out of stabling at Reading. Once the service is up and running these are trains that are coming from other sources or, even, turning round at Reading and going back. Certainly this does not apply to later trains, nor does it apply to the off-peak service. Secondly, a number of trains in the morning do miss the Twyford stop. Now, if there was so little demand for Twyford would these trains be stopping? No, we do not think so, because it costs money to stop trains - wear and tear on brakes, doors and fuel, naturally. If there really was less demand than is "on offer" it is difficult to understand why, then, Twyford should enjoy such an apparently excessive service at present.

14246. I think, in summary, many stations can plead a special case. We feel that Twyford really is a special case. We are the only station between the proposed terminus at Maidenhead and Reading served by Intercity services. Therefore we get neither the benefits from Crossrail, nor do we get the benefits of the Intercity service from Reading. There is also the Henley branch to consider. If services on the Henley branch were to be dropped altogether, as is mooted, then we feel that the through benefits to that branch of having commuter services to London would seriously jeopardise the economics of the service and, if the economics of the service are jeopardised, that would put in jeopardy the whole future of the branch.

14247. I think it may not be in the gift of the Crossrail project team to resolve some of these issues, Mr Chairman, but what your Petitioner would like to see is a mechanism put in place to ensure that Twyford does not suffer should Crossrail proceed as proposed on account of its location. Thank you for your attention.

14248. MR REED: That closes our evidence.

 

Cross-examined by MR TAYLOR

 

14249. MR TAYLOR: I have one or two questions, if I may. I will try and be as brief as possible. Mr Lindon, you did not really introduce yourself to the Committee. Can you explain who you are? Are you a consultant?

(Mr Lindon) I am a consultant working for Mouchel Parkman, I have a Masters Degree in Transport and Logistics Management and I am a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Transport, and a Member of the Institute of Railway Operators.

14250. Do you have experience of railway timetabling?

(Mr Lindon) I have experience of railway operating, so timetabling is a bit of a black art but, yes, I do understand timetabling.

14251. Have you ever used the Railsyst model?

(Mr Lindon) No.

14252. MR TAYLOR: There has been some concern from the Promoter's side relating to the extent to which Mr Browne's Petition can be used to represent Wokingham Council's. The indication is there has been a resolution from the council saying Mr Browne can represent the council before the Committee. The Promoter's agents have been asking for some time for a copy of that resolution. Do you think you will be able to provide that to the Promoter and to the Committee?

14253. MR REED: Yes.

14254. MR TAYLOR: I have got one or two points arising from your presentation. The first of those arises on your slide 5. I am terribly sorry, I did not write down on my copy the document number.

14255. CHAIRMAN: A162.

14256. MR TAYLOR: On slide 5 you quote part of a sentence from the Great Western Main Line Route Utilisation Strategy for June 2005. "In the peaks, only 125mph stock should be deployed on the Main Lines east of Reading".

(Mr Lindon) Yes.

14257. Is it your understanding that that part of that sentence applies to all services on the Great Western main line east of Reading or, in fact, only those that pass through Reading itself?

(Mr Lindon) That is something on which we are looking for clarification, to be honest. It is an area of the route utilisation strategy which seems to run contrary to some of the things emerging from Crossrail in terms of service specified for post Crossrail. That is our concern. We would like clarification ourselves.

14258. If it is to be interpreted as applying to all services it would mean all trains running on the Henley branch and the Marlow branch would have to be 125 stock, and also the Heathrow Express would have to be 125 stock as well.

(Mr Lindon) Yes.

14259. Can 125 stock be used in the underground section of the Heathrow Express railway?

(Mr Lindon) Not, as I gather, at the moment. The service stock does not exist. The point is that I am not saying that we should have 125 stock working on these branch lines. What I am seeking is clarity.

14260. To interpret part of that sentence as meaning that only 125 stock should be used on the main line east of Reading as applying to all services would appear to give rise to anomalous results, would it not?

(Mr Lindon) It would indeed.

14261. Such that we would suggest, perhaps, that that interpretation would be incorrect.

(Mr Lindon) This is what we want the clarification on. This is a fairly recent document and we are looking to make sure that the service to Twyford does not suffer as a result of having the diesel services removed that currently operate on the fast line, and possibly a degraded service operating over the relief line as a result of Crossrail services.

14262. Let us turn to railway timetabling. You are aware, I take it, that a Crossrail Timetable Working Group was set up and issued a report dated 22 June 2006? You are aware of the conclusions of that report?

(Mr Lindon) We received it yesterday. I have not had time to digest it all.

14263. You are aware that a working timetable has been drawn up?

(Mr Lindon) Yes.

14264. Which includes Crossrail services, as I understand it, and the existing passenger services. You are aware the conclusions of the Timetable Working Group were that that timetable does not appear to have any material negative impact on other passenger services.

(Mr Lindon) If that is the case then we shall be very happy with that.

14265. Evidence was presented to the Committee last week in relation to the Petition from the Royal Borough of Windsor of Maidenhead regarding the utilisation of the Henley branch, and you refer to concerns that the Henley branch (it is your slide 7) could become unviable. On slide 9, your worst case, you put "Henley branch closed". Perhaps if we could bring up the Windsor and Maidenhead Petition screen. It is 14604D, page 29, the Henley branch timetable summary. We can see here train services from Henley, on the current timetable. There are two London services shown, and the Crossrail working timetable, which is the one which is examined by the Timetable Working Group, in table 2, retains a through London service which enables you to get from Henley to Paddington in 45 minutes.

(Mr Lindon) Yes.

14266. That is a timetable that can be used relating to the access options, and your suggestion that somehow the Henley branch is going to be unviable and closed is not right, because that is not the basis of the timetable that is being sought in the access option from Network Rail.

(Mr Lindon) That is not wholly true. My point was that the combination of the access option with a route utilisation strategy which may actually involve the removal of local services from the main line, albeit at certain times of the day, could be contributory factors to the withdrawal of these services. If what you are saying is that - and we are talking now some considerable years in advance and some considerable number of timetable changes in advance - by the time Crossrail comes along we will have a service on the Henley branch to Twyford which is not worsened by anything that Crossrail may do, or anything the utilisation strategy may do, that is fine. It is these assurances we need to be put in place. We are not very happy with the level of degradation the service is suffering.

14267. Assuming that Crossrail is going to happen, is there any guarantee that the current level of service to Twyford and the Henley branch will continue into the future?

(Mr Lindon) Absolutely not. That is a matter for the Department for Transport.

14268. It would not be right, would it, to ask this Committee to guarantee a particular level of service on the Henley branch from Twyford into the future in relation to the Crossrail scheme?

(Mr Lindon) I am just looking on the screen at the service, which actually talks about a level of service from the Henley branch. So, presumably, this will operate on the fast lines as well.

14269. What you are looking at on the screen is the working timetable which is the basis of the access options being sought by Network Rail.

(Mr Lindon) Yes.

14270. You have set out in your evidence a best case for Twyford and a worst case for Twyford. Are those based on any timetabling that you have undertaken?

(Mr Lindon) Absolutely not. The best case is based on the known factor - what we have been told by the Promoter that we are going to have this service as the best case, which is one fast service, two limited stopping services and two all-station services. I would add that this falls some considerable way short of what is enjoyed at the moment.

14271. The last point I have got is from your slide 10 of A162, where you set out your counter proposals. The first bullet point on that slide is that you want to retain two/three trains running between Paddington and Henley in both peak periods.

(Mr Lindon) Yes, ideally.

14272. As you have seen, the working timetable retains one train. Are you asking the Committee to ensure that in perpetuity two to three trains run between Paddington and Henley whether there is Crossrail or not?

(Mr Lindon) I am asking the Committee to provide a mechanism for consultation with the council on this particular issue. I have already explained my reasons behind Twyford and the Henley branch's very special case, and I am concerned that the interests of this one station will actually be overlooked because of its position and because of the fact it falls between two stools in respect of train services.

14273. The level of service on the Henley branch and to Twyford is currently regulated by the ORR and Network Rail. Why is it that the existing regulatory regime is insufficient to provide the consultation mechanism that you seek?

(Mr Lindon) Because we now have a parliamentary Bill going through this Committee and access options which would be reinforced by the passage of this parliamentary Bill. It is our desire to ensure that our interests are safeguarded at this juncture and through this Committee.

14274. MR TAYLOR: Thank you.

14275. CHAIRMAN: Mr Reed?

14276. MR REED: I do not have anything, thank you, sir.

 

The witness withdrew

14277. CHAIRMAN: Mr Taylor, would you like to sum up?

14278. MR TAYLOR: Thank you, sir. I am going to reserve our position in relation to whether or not Mr Browne actually represents the Council until we have seen the particular form of wording of the resolution.

14279. CHAIRMAN: Perhaps I can just help with that and say that until we receive knowledge of the resolution being passed by the Council, we will take it that it is Mr Browne's Petition.

14280. MR TAYLOR: So far as the issues which have been raised are concerned, there is no guarantee of current services even without Crossrail. That is a matter for the ORR.

14281. So far as the level of service provided to Twyford is concerned, Mr Berryman gave evidence as to what that service would be on Day 46 at paragraph 12860 and following. The Henley branch, as we have seen, has an established working timetable which has been considered by the Timetable Working Group and at present that has two through-trains, but even with Crossrail one through-train is proposed. The material provided regarding the best case and the worst case presented by the Petitioner is not based on any timetabling modelling, so, in my view, should be given little weight as a result. You have the conclusions of the Crossrail Timetable Working Group in relation to the effect on passenger services before you in P106. The suggestion appeared to be that two to three trains to Paddington was something that was to be sought from the Committee in relation to the Henley branch. Apparently that is not the case and what is wanted is consultation. In my submission on behalf of the Promoter, the processes that govern the extent to which services are provided to Twyford and on the Henley branch are already sufficiently regulated by the existing rail regulation systems and the consultation mechanisms are provided within that.

14282. The other issue which was raised, but I did not ask a question about it, was the extension to Reading. You have heard a lot about that already and I will not repeat the points we have already made in that regard. Thank you very much.

14283. CHAIRMAN: Mr Reed?

14284. MR REED: I think we have put our evidence to you. I will try and get confirmation to yourselves and Crossrail about the resolution from Woking District Council. We do feel that Councillor Browne's position is that we feel that Twyford will suffer under the Crossrail proposals and that there is suitable uncertainty about access rights into London Paddington, of which you have heard evidence. One way in which this resolves itself is by looking at the extension to Reading of Crossrail, again about which you have heard evidence today. I think that we would like to close at that point.

14285. CHAIRMAN: Can I just outline this a little bit. It is quite important that we make this stipulation about whose Petition it is. It is a valid Petition because Mr Browne has submitted it, there is no difficulty about that, but on the papers which have been delivered, it is specified as that of Woking District Council and he is cited as the Leader of Woking District Council. We just need to elaborate which is the case or whether it is joint and, if it is joint, whether it has been done previously and legally. Otherwise, we will get mixed up between who actually the Petition is from. If you can get that verification, we would be grateful, but it is a valid Petition, nevertheless, from Mr Browne.

14286. We conclude that Petition and we now move on to the next Petition which is Thames Gateway London Partnership and the representative is Mr Stephen Joseph.

 

The Petition of the Thames Gateway London Partnership.

 

MR STEPHEN JOSEPH appeared as Agent.

14287. MR TAYLOR: Sir, the Thames Gateway London Partnership is, as I understand it, a body which has a number of local authorities in the east and the south-east of London as members. It was established in 1995 to promote regeneration. There are a large number of points raised in the Petition and I am going to leave it to Mr Joseph to elaborate his case for you.

14288. MR JOSEPH: Thank you. On the introduction slide, if one looks very carefully, one can see the regeneration agenda moving ahead apace and even accelerating. This is the 1999 aerial photo which is actually used at the beginning of Eastenders when they have the drum beat and introduce it.

14289. CHAIRMAN: Can we have this listed as A163.

14290. MR JOSEPH: You can see that it excludes Excel and Excel actually tried to pay Eastenders to put it on and were given a rather high price tag and that is why Eastenders to this day does not have Excel on it, but, even from this distance, one can see the regeneration moving ahead.

14291. I am going to talk a little bit about future-proofing. We are an organisation and, as mentioned, we have 11 London local authorities plus Dartford, we have the Learning and Skills Councils represented on our Board at very senior level as well as the two health authorities that are in our area and all five of the universities from the east sub-region are represented on our Board of a pool of membership, so there are only two active Board members who usually rotate at any one time, so it is not just a local authority organisation and obviously it is very interested in the skills agenda, as well as the health agenda, the higher education and the education agenda. It is an holistic regeneration organisation with a long history of successes in terms of lobbying for transport infrastructure that is necessary as well as other regeneration needs.

14292. If we can flip to slide 3, I will just say who I am, so you know precisely who I represent and how I fit in with that organisation. I am the Deputy Chief Executive of the Thames Gateway London Partnership and have been for over four years. I lead within the Partnership on specifically issues of transport and planning and, therefore, the regeneration aspects. I have presented all the Board reports and attended what we call 'task group' meetings, so one of the ways that we work through our member boroughs is to have task groups by theme. We have four different task groups for transport and we have a planning task group, and these are reasonably senior officers that meet regularly over the joint policies they are promoting before they go up to our members and our members are either leaders or the lead member for regeneration for each of those members. We are one of the most active, I would say, partnership organisations in terms of getting on with different levels of councils and different officers of councils where often different bits of a council talk to each other for the first time through a TGLP-organised meeting because they are often quite large institutions in themselves.

14293. My response is in three parts and I do not want to over-emphasise one. We are simply a membership organisation and we have a Board meeting every two months and that signs off all the issues where Crossrail has come back with a response that looks roughly reasonable, but nevertheless we have a formal consultation process to sign off on them. I am going to focus instead on the items where we are content, which is my next slide, and also the items where we are not content.

14294. It is important to state that we are, in principle, supporters, and this was in our Petition at paragraphs 7 and 13. We support the route alignment and we support the service levels as proposed. We have no quibble with that and we think it would be an excellent addition, an essential addition. We have accepted, and there have been a lot of negotiations with Crossrail on, the local labour clauses and we understand that there are assurances that they will match DLR and East London Line extension standards. There is an envelope that one can push in terms of how far we can go with local labour because of European regulations, and they have promised us that it will be absolutely best practice and our members appear to be satisfied with that, so we do not have a quibble with that anymore.

14295. There are a number of station issues which are specific. Our boroughs have been in written communication as well ourselves on them, and largely the ones that fall in the London Borough of Newham appear to have been resolved and we can put them to bed.

14296. The key unresolved items, about which you have heard directly from some of our members, I will touch on in this presentation. They are: a new station at Woolwich, which is our paragraph 29; the Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet extension, which is in our Petition at paragraphs 11, 38 and 39; the Abbey Wood Station itself, particularly if there is no extension at Ebbsfleet, and there are a number of problems of attracting traffic and simply there are some local problems around that station; the entrances to Whitechapel Station, which you have heard about from Tower Hamlets, and I understand quite a bit of progress has been made, but it is not quite resolved; and also, and this is one of the key things that I will be speaking to, the overall regeneration benefits and the need to future-proof the proposal in the ways where discretion is still at play.

14297. This slide is a map of the ward-based multiple deprivation index which is a composite of unemployment and other factors. As you can see, where Crossrail goes through, once it gets to the east of the City, it goes smack in the middle of what is clearly London's biggest area of deprivation, but also some of these wards score very, very high in terms of the national indices, and one of them is within the top ten in terms of deprivation, so it is coming through areas which are desperately in need of regeneration and have a very strong regeneration focus. In fact, if you look at the routing, it just about could not be better in terms of being centred in the middle of an area of multiple deprivation and assisting that area. You simply could not pick a better route. That was deliberate. We lobbied hard on the routing in the beginning and tried to help draw it along those regeneration lines.

14298. The next slide shows the public transport accessibility map. For those of you not familiar with it, red is good, blue is bad; we did not choose the colour scheme! There are some interesting things that one can see on this. It is a very common map to use, but if you look at the areas that Crossrail will penetrate and help with, a lot of them are deep blue or very close to it. Clearly it is helping to lift the areas which have bad accessibility into areas of good accessibility. This PTAL score does show good bus services, so if one goes to Woolwich Station, it is red. Now, that is not because of the fantastic rail services certainly, but it is because the bus services are connecting to that rail station and connecting to each other in a very effective way. That makes it absolutely ideal for the Crossrail station because you already have the existing routes to connect to and to pull people away from that Crossrail station into that wider community. Also the extension to Ebbsfleet one can see, and it passes through areas which do not have particularly good accessibility and directly Crossrail will improve that level of accessibility, but also obviously once you get the connecting bus services at the centre, it spreads the benefit out. One can see that a lot of that deep blue, as you have seen in previous evidence, will come up very considerably.

14299. Also on the north side, the Custom House Station is essential because, when linked with the DLR connection, penetrating into Barking Reach and Dagenham Dock Station, a lot of that blue turns to a much friendlier colour in terms of brightness, yellow or even red, so there is quite a large change in that public transport accessibility map with Crossrail in terms of regeneration for east London.

14300. The next slide shows that one part which is often overlooked is that not all parts of the Gateway are profitable to develop. We have many sites for various reasons which have negative equity. For somebody who is not familiar with the Gateway, that may sound a surprise, but this photo is of a large site a stone's throw from Canary Wharf, as one can see, which was sold for £1. Our members did give quite a strong response to the planning gain supplement proposal. Their concern was that actually it is quite complicated in the Gateway and you have got a lot of sites which, for various reasons, are quite idiosyncratic, they do not necessarily have positive values and sometimes development is not taking place because of a lack of value, so Crossrail coming in and generally lifting the land values in the area creates opportunities for bringing in private sector development, otherwise you would have to have gap funding from the public sector.

14301. The next slide, again on this point, shows something which is actually quite surprising and, as you get so into it, you forget. This is the most private sector-led regeneration agenda of this scale of any I have ever seen of any place in the world. It is truly led by the private sector in that you have nearly all the physical growth and essential utilities investment coming from the private sector. Even the social infrastructure is often funded by the private sector, sensitive to changes in the interest rates, and the affordable housing construction is provided and then handed over to the social landlords, but it is provided when and where the private sector want to build. If you do not have a build programme for the private sector, there is very, very little happening in the affordable housing sector. Also those homes are handed over to the social landlords within the Mayor's and our members' affordable housing policies which are negotiated with 106 agreements. They are handed over generally at quite a significant cross-subsidy, significantly below market value and sometimes even below the construction cost. That, when you add it up, and there is not a study which has actually given a figure to this, is a very substantial sum. Therefore, the private sector confidence in the growth agenda is actually a key part of delivering a whole bunch of regeneration objectives which, on the one hand, do not seem to have anything to do with the private sector doing well, but actually you do not get your social housing programme and you do not get a lot of things if you do not have that private sector confidence.

14302. The next slide - one thing that we have found with our members is that, even within the existing planning system, they are extremely adept at capturing any land value uplift and getting that back into the community, funding local infrastructure, funding local transport improvements, funding rail improvements and of course, as I have mentioned, funding the whole social housing programme as it is now. We do not think that any major development has windfall profit left. Most of them are open book, most of them go through three (?) and, therefore, the system, as it is now, in the London Gateway, and I am not speaking for the rest of the country, but the system as it works in the London Gateway is that if additional value is added through some government investment, like Crossrail, there is a mechanism to capture that value in the new development so long as you make that announcement in a credible way early enough in the planning process where our members can actually negotiate that extra value that will be in 106 and capture these benefits for the public purse.

14303. Therefore, it is a fundamental part of not just enabling regeneration, but it is also a fundamental part of funding the community cohesion and the regeneration agenda and funding the sorts of things that make this regeneration agenda work and, to do that, you have to create certainty at the earliest possible date, and the longer there is uncertainty, the more these permissions have to go through this negotiation process and the more that is lost to the public purse in terms of capturing what is actually operating now. Therefore, the key ingredients are obviously well-sited and accessible Crossrail stations, including Woolwich, and an early announcement of the investment and the early announcement of a construction start.

14304. The next slide - there are some other interesting things that happen when you do have the equity in these land developments. What is happening in the Gateway is enormously positive in planning terms in terms of social mix. Most of these new developments are pepper-potted, that is, the social housing is actually mixed in within the same floor, never mind the same building, with flats which are selling at very high prices indeed. With that pepper-potting also comes communal space, which is jointly managed by all income groups, and it is creating high-quality public realm for residents of mixed social tenure. The photograph on the right shows part of that very high-quality public space created in the Millennium Village which is actually jointly owned by a mixed-tenure group. These opportunities for social cohesion that come with a private sector-led development where a portion of the development is turned over to social landlords and then mixed in with that development is creating a degree of social integration which I think is unprecedented in any country in the world. It is partly the side-effect of it being private sector-led, but if you are going to have a private-sector lead, you have to keep making market confidence work, but there are some very positive side-effects of that.

14305. The next slide - I like to call Canary Wharf 'still a teenager'. It is a pretty big teenager, but nevertheless in terms of the amount of jobs that Canary Wharf and its surrounding area can provide, it is not even half way. The capacity of the Isle of Dogs Station in terms of jobs, which is Canary Wharf, the wharf and the surrounding area within a short walk of that station, is between 180,000 to 200,000 jobs. Currently, as we speak, it is around 75,000. With the DLR extension or the DLR upgrade to three cars and the Jubilee Line upgrades by 2009, the capacity for jobs there will be something in the order of 110,000 to 120,000. With Crossrail, it goes up to 180,000 to 200,000, so the difference in capacity of that area to take jobs is in the order of 80,000. We have long experience that it is clearly a regeneration node which is highly successful. It is growing at a cracking pace and there is no reason whatsoever to suppose it will not reach, if it is allowed to through the transport capacity being provided, its eventual full capacity which is something in the order of 180,000 to 200,000. Therefore, the evidence which was prepared by Crossrail attributing 40,000 jobs to an Isle of Dogs Station is very conservative and we think it is certainly double that and it may even be slightly more than double that, but it is certainly not down at 40,000.

14306. Canary Wharf is a very interesting node. Planners always try to create these polycentric nodes, which is what they call them, and they are difficult to create. In fact Canary Wharf is really the only nearly polycentric node that we have had in London for a very considerable period of time, but getting those basically city-centre office jobs just a little way out of the City centre and embedding them into a regeneration community has its advantages. If one goes on the weekend to Canary Wharf and one goes on the weekend to the City of London, there is an enormous difference. The shops close on the weekend in the City of London, whereas the equivalent shops underneath these big office blocks in Canary Wharf are open. They are open long hours, they are open on Sundays and the local community goes to Canary Wharf to shop and to show it off to their visitors from overseas as an example of something that they are proud of. That would not have happened if that polycentric node had not been established at Canary Wharf. It is part of the community and if one looks at who visits it on a Sunday, you will see a very high proportion of ethnic minority groups in Tower Hamlets visiting it on the weekend because that is where they feel they have a sense of place. Crossrail can only add to that and increase its viability.

14307. Also, as Crossrail matures and as the transport links from Crossrail to the east mature, the percentage of workers at Canary Wharf and the surrounds that come from the east sub-region increases. When they started, often it was only 10 per cent and it has risen to over 40 per cent and it continues to rise year on year, but that will stop. The process of east Londoners having access to those jobs will stop if you do not provide additional transport capacity, especially for the workers who come from our three member boroughs to the south of the river.

 

14308. The next slide. You are well familiar, of course, with the growth regions and there is much talk about the Thames Gateway, which I represent, but also the growing importance of -and, certainly, we hope to see some more serious work on this in the next spending round - the London-Stansted Cambridge corridor, because at the lower end the integration with the Thames Gateway corridor has not been fully matured. Crossrail is an excellent start. Crossrail hits the three key nodes at the very fulcrum of those two growth corridors, Stratford Station, the Isle of Dogs and, of course, Liverpool Street Station for a pivot point between those two growth regions. Therefore, once you have that pivot point, you can increase the services on the London-Stansted to Cambridge corridor on top of that pivot and then communicate properly to the Thames Gateway and into the sea. Without Crossrail, any kind of cost-effective strategy to make that northern corridor work properly would be prohibitively expensive, so I say to you you invest in one growth corridor, you great another one for free - clearly it is not quite free, things never are - but it certainly helps very much in the long-term of government plans and making that northern corridor work properly. Clearly, you will be involved in looking at the airports and integrating Stansted and Cambridge properly into the London growth region.

14309. MR JOSEPH: I have got a bullet point up there which talks about the number of jobs and homes attributable to Crossrail. This is extremely tricky to calculate. One would expect one to hire a consultant and give you a number, and I could present that number to you and it would be credible and cross-examined, but at the scale we are talking about, the sub-regional scale, it is just simply very tricky to do. It is a little easier on the site-by-site basis; when you talked about the east sub-region, it is difficult. I have mentioned that there are certainly 80,000 jobs at the Isle of Dogs Station alone. There are jobs all along the Crossrail corridor throughout east London, so when I say more than 60,000 jobs, that is an extremely conservative estimate. I have taken the 60,000 jobs, because that is Crossrail's own figure which came out of the 8 January report which they commissioned and, as I have mentioned before, I think that is quite conservative. Even more difficult in calculating the regeneration benefits in terms of jobs for Crossrail is, of course, calculating how many homes it needs extra. What I can say in terms of giving you the correct order of magnitude of what the difference might be, Crossrail or no Crossrail, to the Government's agenda for providing more homes in London and in the Thames Gateway to service this huge growth in business and financial services is many of those jobs in business and financial services will not go to other UK regions. They will lost in the UK if we do not accommodate in London, so you do not only have to accommodate job nodes, but you have to accommodate regional places for people to live reasonably close to public transport, so that they can be serviced.

14310. When the Government came up with its July 2003 Making It Happen series, it talked about 60,000 new homes in the Thames Gateway without Crossrail being assured; our members wrote and protested that target. They did not want to agree to deliver 60,000 homes without Crossrail, but they were willing to sign up with the GLA to 90,000 homes in the same period with Crossrail. In the mix, at the very minimum, the political consensus is there for a very robust growth agenda for homes if you have Crossrail. That political consensus is off the table if you do not have Crossrail. I do not know what the floor is because we have not looked at it or explored it, but it is very large difference measured in tens of thousands of homes between the with Crossrail and the without Crossrail scenario.

14311. CHAIRMAN: I think this is marvellous, the case for Crossrail, but what we need to do is to get to what we want and it would be helpful. Could I warn you that there is a division, so we are going to give you 15 minutes to reflect on that whilst we go away and do our duty.

 

The Committee suspended from 3.30pm to 3.40 pm for a division in the House

 

14312. CHAIRMAN: Mr Joseph?

14313. MR JOSEPH: Thank you, Chairman. If we could go back to that last slide. My final point on this slide is these regeneration benefits of jobs and homes are large numbers. The jobs are probably more than 100,000 directly attributed to Crossrail, many in the east of the city. On homes, it is a figure measured in the tens of thousands. In traditional regeneration methodology one assigns some sort of figure to those regeneration benefits. In the UK 40,000 per job and these are very good jobs and, indeed, may give a figure of 30 or 40,000 per home and a key piece of infrastructure could be said to offer that benefit. If one multiplies, and I remind you we are talking in billions of pounds, the benefit which is not only cost-benefit ratios neither of Crossrail nor of member boroughs when we talked about the cost-benefit of the station or the extension to Ebbsfleet. These are additional benefits which are down strictly to the regeneration benefits of the scheme.

14314. Next slide. I put up the slide for no other reason but to show physically - and I think one of the lines has shifted northside because of the changing from the .pdf - basically with CTRL and Crossrail you have two spines running down the middle of your growth agenda and it obviously provides an excellent integration for that reason. It also distributes the growth throughout the Gateway rather than concentrating it in the inner east, which is what would tend to happen, and also sustainable reverse commutes with the success of Ebbsfleet one can hope that some of our members will be able to commute outwards on empty seats, taking up jobs which take enormous pressure off the system and help the financial viability for the operators.

14315. The next slide. This is an interesting slide. There has been modelling done in the Gateway area of what happens with Crossrail and all the growth we are getting. You can see they are taking this to 2026 and they have looked at the modal split. If one looks at the first line which is the 48 per cent by public transport in 2001, rising to 52 per cent with all the investment which includes the Crossrail assumption of 2016 and rising slightly further to 2026 and that is basically all cap. That is providing extra transport schemes, hoping people will use them, obviously many people will, but there is no stick, there is no change in the basic pricing mechanism or in the incentive or disincentive to drive. However, what we are very concerned about in the process of updating our transport strategy for the east London sub-region is that in order to keep the traffic congestion at its current level, you would have to go to 60 per cent on public transport by 2026, so even with a cap on the extra kit, it is not enough to create what we might call "sustainable development". One of the benefits of Crossrail is not only helping to go up to 53 per cent, but there is spare capacity on Crossrail once one gets east of the city if one is minded to change the fiscal incentives to drive, you have got to have some capacity for the transport system for people to be driven to, otherwise it is simply chaos. With Crossrail you do get some options of looking at that 60 per cent and seeing how perhaps one can get it down, without Crossrail you simply cannot do that.

14316. Next slide. Crossrail is vital to the strategy. The jobs are unavoidable because of the nature of the types of jobs coming to London, they are being created at significant distances from homes and, therefore, you have to have efficient medium-distance way of moving people to those jobs. It is essential to provide the capacity for the sustainable public transport share, as I mentioned the demand management measures which clearly we are going to have to consider, would be impossible to do in east London without Crossrail. Therefore, when one looks at the Crossrail benefit-cost ratio, it excludes all of this. Basically, it excludes any consideration using any fiscal means to encourage people to take public transport as a matter of policy using some form of fiscal instrument or other instruments. I think that is quite an unlikely assumption by 2026. There probably will be some additional disincentive to drive by then for the very reason I showed on a previous slide and, therefore, the number of people using Crossrail in the east will rise with these projections you have done and the cost ratio will be better than what has been presented to you for that reason.

14317. Next slide. We do have some outstanding member concerns. I do not want to go into any detail on these because they will be presented to you individually. Clearly, Tower Hamlets have some extant concerns about the Whitechapel Station. It is a credit to Crossrail that many of these are, at least, partly resolved. They clearly want the existing entrance kept open and obviously they want it DDA-complaint and still want to do it even if it cannot be. They want the Fulbourne Street entrance opened as early as possible and that is especially critical if the Whitechapel entrance is not DDA-compliant. The McDonald's site, which I understand you know, there is a McDonald's site and they want that included in the Bill. They think that is necessary to ensure place-making, we obviously concur with that. We do have a picture of the McDonald's site that shows it is a very narrow street to access a station behind quite a narrow entrance. We do not think that has the right place-making. Cambridge Heath entrance, at least, is a passive provision, and also we are reserving our position because clearly there are some more details to come on the Isle of Dogs Station.

14318. CHAIRMAN: There is a McDonald's site there. I find it amazing that this matter should be brought to the Committee. The local authority, Tower Hamlets, has the power to CPO or at least to go to the resident owners and occupiers and ask them if they would do what your organisation is all about, which is partnership. As I understand it, the local authority has never approached the owner or the current lessee. Do you not think that might be a better way? This Bill is a good Bill because Parliament has said it is a good Bill and it is going to cost billions of pounds. Every time we buy something, it puts the price up. I am not sure how many McDonald's we are going to be able to buy or indeed whether we should do.

14319. MR JOSEPH: May I go quickly to the next slide, and one of the key concerns we share with Tower Hamlets. I believe Crossrail gave evidence on the width of Fulbourne Street, which they gave, I believe, as 15 metres. Clearly one can see that the width of the carriageway is no more than eight metres, plus the pavements of 1.5 metres, so it is about 11 metres building to building, which is a narrow entrance, perhaps, but I do see your point.

14320. CHAIRMAN: Could I say that we have visited the site.

14321. MR JOSEPH: That is fine.

14322. Let us move on to the next slide then and the outstanding concerns from Greenwich. As you know, a station at Woolwich. That is shared by all of TGLP. I believe Crossrail has not contested a B:C ratio of at least 3:1, and it also helps improve the overall Crossrail benefit:cost ratio, helping the whole scheme. There may be some possible financial contribution from 106 and also it helps some of the concerns that both Bexley and Greenwich have mentioned directly to you on the Abbey Wood Station and traffic generations by spreading the load.

14323. The next slide. The very odd thing about the station at Woolwich is that it would be the only major town centre on the route without a Crossrail station. It already has excellent bus connections which Crossrail would benefit from. It directly helps 4,350 homes and 2,000 jobs, and, also, there is a large hinterland which is penetrable by a long walk or a bus ride which would be enormously improved, and the market there, to help regenerate some of those hinterland housing estates.

14324. The next slide. Bexley and clearly Dartford. All the Thames Gateway members clearly want the scheme extended to Ebbsfleet. The evidence given by Bexley - and I believe this is not contested by Crossrail - is that there is a B:C ratio which is over 2:1. We have gone through how this could be included in some way and given some sense of certainty, either directly by recommitting on the Bill or by some combination of the Transport and Works Order and some form of parliamentary endorsement. I can go into the details of that, which was given to you by Bexley, but that is also the TGLP position.

14325. The next slide. There are some remaining Bexley concerns. Obviously the Abbey Wood traffic and parking, the highway works that would be required, loss of parking, et cetera. I believe they have agreed with Crossrail that there will be a new transport assessment which we will all have the benefit of a little bit later.

14326. The next slide. Generally our members are all concerned about the local labour clause which early on we were not satisfied with. We were encouraged by recent discussions with Crossrail that they would come up to best practice and use the DLR and East London Line as models, pushing the envelope as much as one can, given the constraints of the European Community legislation. We do not want the scheme phased. We are very concerned that, with phasing, you do not ever get around to the second phase. As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, the certainty that the private sector needs is seriously disrupted by phasing. They do not take phasing seriously. They take what is there for a clear commitment to be built, and investors simply discount what is in plans. They believe what has power and money. Many international investors do not even believe that: they only believe the construction start, so phasing would seriously disrupt the regeneration benefits and concerns.

14327. Obviously there are concerns which come up sometimes in individual concerns on stations but a general concern which I would say all our members share is that all the stations need to be built to quite high standards and be future proofed. We expect the passenger volumes to be higher than Crossrail were able to predict using the modelling that they have had access to. We have no quibble with that modelling, it was the best that was available at the time, but the numbers are increasing. There is a considerable shift toward the East since these figures were given to Crossrail of what the demand would be in the future and what that growth would be. With that shifting regeneration agenda towards the East, those stations are going to be more highly used than the original model would predict, and, therefore, when one has a decision at the margins, one needs to err on the side of caution.

14328. The next slide, as a demonstration of this effect of the growth agenda in East London accelerating from when Crossrail had their original figures on which they based their modelling. This shows Crossrail's own figures they used, which were given to them by TFL. It looks at a population growth of 231,000 for our member boroughs. If the London average for household size is about 2.35 - and conveniently you can divide that in - that means the growth in the number of homes is about 100,000 over a 15-year period. You can see also employment growth, including the City of London, quite robust but not as robust as some of the more recent figures coming out, especially when one considers the Isle of Dogs.

14329. Turning to the next slide, this slide shows, if you look at the second column, which is the current target, which is the existing London Plan target, for our members it is 7,600 homes per year. If one looks at the Crossrail figures from the previous slide and one has 100,000 homes over 15 years, that is about 7,000 per year, so it is roughly the same as the old London Plan. Obviously it had to be compatible with that - that is no surprise - but what has happened is that there has been a recent doubling of the housing target. This has been largely agreed with our member boroughs as an appropriate target. Not only is this doubling of the annual output target from the previous London Plan on which the Crossrail figures were based, but the Mayor wishes this to be a minimum figure, a floor target which should be exceeded. This is not an aspirational target that we might reach; this will be something that our boroughs are going to be under pressure to deliver or they will get hit with planning delivery grant or some other disincentive.

14330. These new figures are very real. If one looks at the right-hand column, the percentage change, this is the percentage change from the figures which Crossrail is required to use to the figures now emerging in the London Plan process, which I must say are not approved. The revisions to the London Plan have just gone through an examination in public which has concluded but the inspector has not made a report. So these are figures which are emerging and are not confirmed. Nevertheless, one would imagine they will be conformed in this order of magnitude. We are not going to be back down to the 7,5600 figure per annum that you have in the old London Plan.

14331. You can see the boroughs that have the biggest boost, strongest increase in annual output, are precisely those boroughs bang on Crossrail stations. If you look at Newham, 294 per cent uplift in the number of homes expected to be delivered per year - bang on a Crossrail station. In the London Borough of Greenwich as well and Barking and Dagenham, as I mentioned, with the DLR extension linking it to Custom House, you also have a potential for quite a large uplift. These are off the table if one does not have Crossrail; they all assume Crossrail. All the London Plan process, it has to be looked at again without Crossrail. Let us go to the next slide. This is an interesting summary slide. It is straight over the GLA report which was published only in April called the "EIP Process" and it actually splits the uplift in growth by the existing London sub-regions which is ever so slightly different from TGLP membership, and you can see the east sub-region which includes three boroughs south of the river - the old regeneration agenda, basically - and the uplift is 98 per cent change against the figures which Crossrail used in their calculations of ridership towards the east.

14332. You can see these figures are generally helpful to Crossrail's case: they slightly increase in the central, quite a large increase in west, which also has many Crossrail stations, so the overall effect should increase Crossrail's ridership throughout London, but particularly in the east. Next slide. This is appendix A, straight out of the London Plan Further Alterations, published in May of this year. This has not yet reached the point of formal consultation but this is the Assembly version, and you can see a very interesting thing in this table: what is happening and what is expected to be happening post 2016. Crossrail's figures, obviously, went to 2016. We, in the London Plan process, are starting to look at what happens after 2016. Does the growth stop, because all this infill seems to be going to run out of sites and then quickly runs down, or does this growth agenda, with year-on-year delivery of a lot of homes and a lot of jobs, continue past 2016? This very considerably changes the ridership on Crossrail if the growth agenda continues, but indeed you can see in this graph "London Plan Further Alterations", which is currently before the London Assembly early consultation document, is looking for a continuation and even a slight picking up of the growth agenda. Therefore, our concern is that the Crossrail proposals into the future were you to have a decision to make about access arrangements, etc, you need to err on the side of caution and make them a more generous provision rather than go to a minimum standard because this growth agenda is accelerating in the east and the eastern stations are going to probably have higher ridership than is currently laid before you in the objections. Next slide.

14333. These two last slides are my conclusion. We are very adept, our members, at capturing the land value uplift due to Crossrail investment but we can only do it if Crossrail investment is secure before these planning permissions are in the process, and the later it is secured the more investment is lost to the public purse. Also, the community cohesion agenda. East London expects a government with its large growth agenda, which is not always convenient - it means longer waiting lists for doctors surgeries, etc and our members make complaints. However, the counter-balancing argument is that one actually gets - because you are in a growth region - some extra things. Crossrail is the first amongst those extra things that east Londoners expect out of the growth agenda. It also, as I mentioned, in a variety of complex ways, helps the community cohesion agenda and buy-in from the local community to the overall growth agenda. It is essential, as an enabling investment, for two national growth corridors, and also the Government is pumping quite a bit of money, GAP funding, into the Olympics. Again, should you put public money into an area as an uplift that has a surrounding ripple effect on land values, you need to capture that value in the public purse. If you announce Crossrail very late once the Olympics effect is over then, therefore, our ability to capture for the public purse some of the ripple effects of those spending announcements and that upgraded public railway is less. Next slide.

14334. The growth agenda is accelerating, one needs to future-proof the proposal. It is an excellent location. It is spinal support for linear growth corridors, smack in the middle of areas in need of regeneration and, also - and this is where you do have some discretion - in a regeneration area one needs to help place-making. In central London perhaps it is less of a need because people who go to Oxford Street, no matter what the design of the station, already have a sense of place. When you are in a brand new regeneration area sometimes the station itself is helpful in creating a sense of place-making and sometimes that means slightly different criteria in terms of entrance design, and also the quality of the fit out, perhaps a little bit of room for art in key locations, that ties in the community and gives it a sense of place-making. So that is a plea for a little bit of flexibility and leadership in those areas. That is all I have to say.

14335. MR TAYLOR: Sir, with the greatest respect to the Thames Gateway London Partnership and Mr Joseph, I am not going to ask him any questions. I do not think my limited ability in the cross-examination department is going to result in any further information to the Committee on the particular issues that he raised.

14336. If I can just move instead straight to submissions, the Thames Gateway London Partnership, and Mr Joseph, have made absolutely clear the real importance of Crossrail to the regeneration of the Thames Gateway area. If I can read my handwriting, which is always difficult, the phrase he used was that it is "vitally important". However, certain matters are pursued, in particular, the new Woolwich station extension to Ebbsfleet and items such as the McDonald's site, resulting in what might be termed as a "super size" Crossrail scheme.

14337. It is dangerous, in the submission of the Promoter, to impose large additional costs on a project which is already expensive, because if those costs are imposed it may be that the scheme as a whole would not happen. If that were the case then the vitally important regeneration of the Thames Gateway would not occur in the same way because it would not have the benefits described by Mr Joseph in his evidence - to use his phrase "off the table".

14338. Moving ahead to the other two matters raised, the Abbey Wood station issues and Whitechapel, the transportation issues relating to Abbey Wood have already been presented to the Committee and have been resolved so far as the Committee is concerned through the provision of undertakings. You will remember I did not get to cross-examine in the way I prepared.

14339. In relation to Whitechapel, all of those matters have already been addressed. I am not going to repeat submissions that have already been made in that regard. Sir, unless there is anything else I can help with, those are my submissions.

14340. CHAIRMAN: Can you put up the last slide? One query, Mr Joseph. On the first item "Growth agenda is accelerating", you talk about the proposal for adopting high standards of station access and interconnectivity to cope. Part of the thing which the Promoters have done is to show a whole series of designs we are going to do about new station layouts and, in particular, they have dealt with the Whitechapel station issue. I find that unusual, because I think a little bit earlier in the presentation you were asking to keep the Whitechapel entrance. We have been to the Whitechapel station and, to put it mildly, the accessibility of the general public is horrendous - one of the worst I have been to, particularly for elderly people and disabled people. How can you match both aspects: one to keep it and (b) to adopt this new, high-profile, future-proof ----

 

14341. MR JOSEPH: Clearly, Tower Hamlets' position is there will eventually be three entrances at Whitechapel. Therefore, anybody with a mobility difficulty will be as well served as at any other Crossrail station, but people who are fully able will have that additional option. So it is not intended to take anything away. We do believe that the Cambridge Heath station, because of the regeneration benefits (Sainsbury's and Safeway it seems reasonable to believe) is very likely to be redeveloped and therefore the station, even if it is passive provision, will eventually be provided. So if they believe what their position is, that would be conditional and something taken away from people with mobility ----

14342. CHAIRMAN: I am taking a slightly different view because of what I have seen. I think the reason why the layout has been proposed in the way it has is because future investment, which is likely to occur to the main hospital which is directly opposite, is going to be moved considerably (?). It seems to me the future planning element and where the station and the entrances are is more to do with that rather than what councils sometimes require in terms of their own economic futures. Is that a fair point?

14343. MR JOSEPH: I think it is a fair point. We are advised by Tower Hamlets that they believe that the existing station at Whitechapel, just in this particular position, especially facing the hospital entrance, is iconic and it is a well-known community focal point, and they would, obviously, like it to be kept open for that purpose. The Fulbourne Street entrance does not front on the street itself, therefore it does not have that same iconic structure. These are arguments which you have obviously been through with Tower Hamlets and we are giving a general endorsement to our members' position, that it should have a place-making function. How, specifically, one does that is clearly a matter for negotiation.

14344. CHAIRMAN: But you do agree that there should be a major station there, particularly when you are looking at progress ----

14345. MR JOSEPH: It is absolutely essential that a major station and good interchanges are there at Whitechapel, without a doubt, and that has always been our position. Some of the details on that station design need to be talked about in terms of place-making.

14346. CHAIRMAN: Mr Joseph, would you like to summarise and say anything else to us?

14347. MR JOSEPH: As I mentioned, we are supporters and we are very pleased that it has got to this stage. We are concerned that the funding has not been announced but we are optimistic that at some point relatively soon a funding package will be put together, and we would like this to be delivered as soon as possible. I have heard many different days penned in as a delivery date, and it worries me that it slips and slides back and forth and all over the place. Certainly one of the things that can be firmed up is, at least, what is the delivery date that we are all aiming to in order to help us plan and help the private sector also make its own investment decisions.

14348. CHAIRMAN: Can I mention one thing you said in your evidence? You talked about not wanting to stop and start; you want the whole thing to be done from start to finish. It sometimes takes a President Mitterrand to make a decision like that and I have to tell you that this Committee does not have those powers, but certainly we have noted your submissions. Thank you very much.

14349. The Committee is now over for today. We will next meet in public at 2.30 tomorrow in this room.