Examination of Witnesses (Questions 740
- 759)
740. Let us leave that (I just wanted to put
it on the table) and move on to whether we need to go down that
route at all. In terms of checking out whether or not a new station
will work at higher demand flows, the way of doing that is routinely
done by something called pedroute modelling. Is it not?
(Mr Weiss) Yes.
741. You rely on the need for what you call
future-proofing at plus 35%.
(Mr Weiss) I do not think just us; I think
it is regarded as good practice within most transportation planning
projects.
742. I do not think you produced this document
in your evidence but it was referred to in Mr Laurence's opening.
That plus 35% comes out of a document called the LUL Station
Demand Modelling, which I hope Mr Bennett is going to flash
up.[13]
It is not in your evidence but you obviously know about it because
Mr Laurence quoted extensively from it in opening. I think our
copy originally, at some point, came from Mr Laurence. Can I ask
you to look at 2.1.4, which is where the 35% comes from? We can
see: "Future year (scheme design) refers to the demand level
for a future year on which scheme architectural design is to be
based. The demand level that should be tested is: Railplan network
scenario. ... And a margin of 35% for long term growth".
Do you see that? That document does not tell you how to test for
35% growth. It does not say to do it by static gateline calculations
or pedroute; it leaves it up to the designer as to how they test.
You agree, do you not, that pedroute modelling (and I am afraid
the Committee is about to become familiar with pedroute modelling)
is a standard way that LUL tests whether a station works or does
not work at 35%.
(Mr Weiss) I cannot speak for
LUL. pedroute is one of an armoury of tools that designers would
use. There are a variety of tests about the numbers of escalators
that seem to be appropriate, the number of gates that seem to
be appropriate, whether people can get off the platforms, and
so forth. pedroute is one of an armoury; it is not the only way.
743. Let us look at pedroute and how it works.[14]
I am very sorry to the Committee, but I am going to have to give
a short pedroute teaching here. What one does, Mr Weiss, and tell
me if I have got this wrong, is you divide the station—and
we have here the Liverpool Street end of the station—into
blocks. You then run various numbers of people, having made various
assumptions in the model, through those blocks and you can see
here, on the left-hand side in the key, that the blocks at this
stage are defined by their uses within the station. If we just
run through this. You can see, right at the top, is where the
Central line would be, then the thin blue lines are the escalators
coming up from the Central line. Then we come up to point M on
your exhibit A. We have got the Crossrail passage going off to
the left. Yes?
(Mr Weiss) I am with you.
744. On the right we go into the main section
of ticket hall B and then, below that, we go into the ticket hall
A, the arcade ticket hall, and you can see the Met and Circle
line platforms running at the bottom of the page. Then, going
up again, we have got the gateline and then we get into what is
called the unpaid side of ticket hall B. Then we go up into the
station concourse.
(Mr Weiss) That is a fair description.
745. You are going to see a number of different
pedroutes models, but that is the core one for ticket hall B.
What then happens is that you run the numbers of people through
the various parts of the station, and if we go to the next pedroute
drawing, which is the key assumptions, what happens next, Mr Weiss,
is that when you run those predicted numbers through the blocks
come up in different colours. So it is, basically, the hotter
the colour the worse the situation. If it is blue you have got
absolutely no congestion whatsoever, and you work your way up
to purple (or, in some plans, it comes out as red) which is overloaded.
That is what is going on there. Before we turn up the first set
of the pedroute models, I am doing this exercise in order to check
what happens in the future-proofing—the plus 35%. Can we
just see the context of that before we see what happens to the
models? When one considers plus 35%, you have to realise that
that plus 35% is on growth to 2016. So you have got the 2016 growth,
which in various different scenarios varies between 15, 20 and
25%—
(Mr Weiss) We accept that.
746. And then you have plus 35% on top. So when
you look at plus 35%, what you are really looking at is something
in the region of 50 or 60% on today's usage?
(Mr Weiss) It is growth on 2016. I cannot give
exact figures.
747. Let us assume a figure of a total growth
from today of plus 50%. I just want to think about what we are
going to see. You are talking about increasing the usage of Liverpool
Street by 50% of what is happening today.
(Mr Weiss) I will run with the 50%. I cannot
comment at the moment.
748. It is important to remember that there
may be some parts of the LUL network that simply could not operate
at 50%. For instance, I do not know whether you are familiar with
the Central line at peak hours?
(Mr Weiss) I am.
749. I think we can all agree that it is simply
inconceivable that you can get 50% more people onto the Central
line at peak hour.
(Mr Weiss) It is, but commenting on that, this
is going back to the pipeline. It is not inconceivable—Crossrail
parallels the Central line quite significantly through central
London—that vast increases of flows that would like to have
gone on the Central line now jump on to Crossrail.
750. A perfectly fair point, Mr Weiss. Can I
put a better one to you? The Northern line. The Northern line,
I think, is the only Underground line that Crossrail does nothing
to relieve congestion on. Is that right?
(Mr Weiss) It does slightly, but I take the
point; it is north-south as against east-west.
751. Again, it is absolutely inconceivable that
you could get 50% more people on the Northern line.
(Mr Weiss) It would not be comfortable, putting
it mildly, but I am not too sure that it is inconceivable.
752. Sir Peter Soulsby: I think the Committee
gets the point. Let us see the pictures.
753. Ms Lieven: Can I just introduce
them before I look at the first? What I am going to show you,
sir, and explain to Mr Weiss, is two sets of pictures. The first
set is the pedroute modelling based on our figures, which are
produced in the passenger movements in 2001, and then moving on.
So that is what we are going to see first. We will then look at
pedroute modelling using something closer to your figures.
754. Mr Laurence: Before this begins,
can I just be clear that I am not quite clear whether we have
seen everything that is about to be shown, sir. We, obviously,
would like an opportunity to consider it other than just by reference
to a fleeting image on the screen.
755. Sir Peter Soulsby: I understand
that.
756. Ms Lieven: Let us put up the first
set, which are the ones you have seen.[15]
These are based on figures that we got in your passenger movements
document. What we start with, Mr Weiss, is called 2016 A and B.
So that is being used as a base, but it is without Crossrail but
it is adding 35% demand. What we see on that—can we just
orientate ourselves—is only the Liverpool Street end of
the station (we have left Moorgate off for simplicity), and running
north to south we see the Central line platforms, then we see
the Central line escalators are the three green lines and then
they run up to point M—because, of course, Crossrail is
not on here at the moment—and then they run into ticket
hall B. To put it crudely here, what one can see is that one of
the Central line platforms is highly congested—yellow—the
arcade ticket hall, ticket hall A, is highly congested and there
is a certain amount of congestion within ticket hall B. Yes.
(Mr Weiss) That is fair.
757. Flick over, if you would, to see what happens
if you add Crossrail to that.[16]
This is a moment when it is really easier to have the paper copies.
Just to talk it through on the same points we were on before,
we can see that the Central line platform congestion has got better—unsurprisingly,
because Crossrail is relieving the Central line—the ticket
hall B is pretty similar (the blocks have shifted around a tiny
bit) but it is very much of the same order of magnitude. The arcade
ticket hall has got a good deal better and what has got a lot
better is the Met and Circle line platforms, which I did not highlight
before but where quite a lot of yellow has turned to blue. Do
you see that?
(Mr Weiss) I do.
758. So can we agree, first of all in terms
of the conclusion that there is not much difference between the
two, that is very much the point that we started off with on the
figures, that is what follows from the tables in the pedestrian
movement plan; yes?
(Mr Weiss) Yes. What I see here is that looking
at the yellow, which is from ticket hall A to the back of where
the gateline would be, we have the last but one poor operating
criteria at the station and, as you say, there has been an improvement,
which is not unexpected because the new facility of Crossrail
has caused the relief of the Central line which has created particularly,
as you have said, westbound platforms which have gone from yellow
predominantly to blue, or yellow to some of it green.
759. There are two points I want to draw out
of this, Mr Weiss. Firstly, in terms of with and without Crossrail,
it does not make a huge amount of difference in ticket hall B,
does it, it is a very similar picture? One does not want to take
any of this as gospel because there is a bit of shifting around
but it is a very similar arrangement?
(Mr Weiss) For this method of analysis there
is not a particular difference, no.
13 Crossrail Ref: P12, Part One, Introduction, Station
Rebuilding, Journey Time, Stations, Marketing & Planning,
Station Demand Modelling, Guideline Document, London Underground
Limited. Back
14
Crossrail Ref: P2, Ticket Hall B layout (Crossrail) (LONDLB-2604-025). Back
15
Crossrail Ref: P2, 2016 AM Peak without Crossrail (+35% Demand)
(LONDLB-2604-083). Back
16
Crossrail Ref: P2, 2016 AM Peak with Crossrail (+35% Demand)
(LONDLB-2604-085). Back
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