Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1220
- 1239)
1220. Sir Peter Soulsby: My reason for
asking is that you made comparisons between the numbers using
Moorgate and Liverpool Street and I was trying to get some flavour
of what proportion of those numbers you are suggesting to us there
might be between those two stations if they had absolutely no
alternative, but to use the Liverpool Street interchange. Whilst
you have taken us back to the Promoter's original figures, the
2001 figures, I have not quite got a flavour of what you think.
(Mr Spencer) Well, to be honest, I have to
say that I have only addressed the one interchange point which
is national rail to Crossrail. I have not explored any of the
other aspects with regard to Liverpool Street station, but I am
quite happy, because I have looked at the forecasts, to adopt
the forecasts which have been presented by Cross London Rail Links
in that respect.
1221. Kelvin Hopkins: Obviously passenger
forecasts are crucial and you are suggesting that the estimates,
the Promoter's estimates, of passengers who use Crossrail are
rather understated and could be significantly higher?
(Mr Spencer) Yes.
1222. Yes, and I understand the importance of
comfort, speed and so on, so has some estimate been made of how
many people might target Crossrail to avoid, say, the Central
line which runs parallel for some of its length for that reason?
Might there be some kind of significant shift from other routes
to Crossrail and has that been taken into account? Is that a case
for a further exit for Crossrail and, on the other hand, might
it not reduce Central line passengers at the Liverpool Street
end? There are all these factors which might have a significant
bearing on your case.
(Mr Spencer) The Cross London Rail Links' assessment
has taken account of substantial changes in routes in journeys
after 2016, certainly substantial transfers off the Central line
into Crossrail, substantial transfers from national rail into
Crossrail, substantial transfers off, I think, virtually all,
or not necessarily substantial, but transfers off all the railway
lines in London, apart from those which patently go in opposite
directions, like the Northern line which will not get great relief
from Crossrail, but the interchange opportunities may themselves
create different journeys for people using them in London. A lot
of people make very complicated journeys because they choose a
route where they know the interchange is good and avoid other
ones. There will be an enormous number of changes as a result
of this project; it is an enormous project.
1223. Sir Peter Soulsby: We did see one
way of looking at the changes in the predictions for the Central
line when we saw the head routes yesterday and, acknowledging
what has been said about the limitations of that way of illustrating
it, it nonetheless was quite dramatic.
(Mr Spencer) Yes, and I am going to show you
some dramatic head routes myself now.
1224. Please do.
(Mr Spencer) If we could turn to exhibit 34
and, in my text, I am back to my introduction, it is something
where I put in a different position as far as the evidence is
concerned.
1225. Mr Laurence: Where are you in your
text?
(Mr Spencer) Paragraph 1.25. This is another
key plank of the case that we put together when we discussed with
Cross London Rail Links before we submitted our Petition because
clearly we needed to know that the proposition we were putting
forward, which is an Eldon Street exit external to Liverpool Street
station, was likely to generate a significant resolution to the
problems that we perceive at ticket hall B with regard to Crossrail.
That is the only reference in my evidence to pedroutes and it
related to a preliminary test that was undertaken by me to assess
the relative situations with or without a dedicated eastern ticket
hall connected directly to street level. This test presented in
exhibit 34 shows the relative performance of the proposed Cross
London Rail Links' ticket solution (ticket hall B) and the British
Land Company alternative of a street-level access at Eldon Street.
This analysis shows quite conclusively that the Eldon Street scheme
would overcome most, if not all, of the pedestrian capacity problems
that we have identified with respect to the ticket hall B `piggy-back'
alternative.
1226. There you are reading from paragraph 1.25
of your proof?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, that is correct. Essentially
what I did, and I am not claiming any enormous science to this—
1227. Would it be useful to have exhibit 34
on the screen?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, it would be useful. I will
be taking you through lots of pages, so it will probably close
down if we put too much up. The purpose was to do a like-for-like
assessment of Cross London Rail Links' proposal as against the
British Land Ove Arup's proposal on the basis of an additional
15,000 people seeking to leave Crossrail to reach street in the
am peak hour. I still hold on to that as being a realistic view
of what the future demand will be. There could be 20,000 people
as opposed to 5,000 people and that sounds like an extraordinary
range to contemplate, but we have already got significant convergence
in terms of aspects of my case and we still have a long way to
go to test other parts of the case. Now, what I present to you
here are three snapshots for each scenario.
1228. Which page does the Committee need?
(Mr Spencer) We are on the second page.[16]
1229. It is the second one after the cover sheet—is
that right?
(Mr Spencer) Correct, which shows in the bottom
right-hand corner that this is a pedroute analysis of Liverpool
Street station with the Cross London Rail Links' demand forecast
which is 5,300 trips exiting via Liverpool Street. I am not going
to go into an in-depth analysis of aspects of how the station
is performing; this is very much a test of broad conclusions about
what could Eldon Street actually deliver as a project. What we
then do, therefore, if we turn over the page, on the left-hand
side you see the two later time periods as far as the Eldon Street
project is concerned and on the right-hand side you see the situation
as predicted with an extra 15,000 people going through Liverpool
Street station.[17]
Now, what I am seeking to do here is, one, trying to understand
what is the tipping point for Liverpool Street station, in other
words, when does it fail. The second thing I am trying to do with
this test is to find out whether the direct street-level access
at Eldon Street, the Ove Arup scheme, actually helps to solve
that problem. Now, what the bottom right-hand graphic shows, the
8.45 to 9.00 am time period, is extremely severe congestion, by
definition, solid. I will use NVA's definition—they call
it `overloaded', overloaded being worse than continuous congestion.
What you are actually faced with is a whole pile of people at
best shuffling and in all probability stationary within the ticket
hall for sustained periods of time. Now, that basically puts the
escalators into a total crisis situation because we cannot have
a situation where you have an operating escalator if you cannot
be certain you are going to be able to get off at the top. Otherwise,
you are just loading people into a space by the mechanism of the
escalator. What I also show here is that the congestion at the
approach from Crossrail into ticket hall B is so bad that it is
backed up through a corridor of over 100 metres and it is actually
blocking into the next set of escalators to the extent that their
operation would be completely compromised. Now, this is not to
say that this is my view of how the Crossrail station would be
in the future scenario because we are still converging on what
we believe the demand forecast is, but the point of this exercise
is to show, for that level of demand, if you turn to the next
page, what would be the benefit of the Eldon Street option.[18]
Now, what the Eldon Street option entails is that as well as all
the benefits of reductions of flows of all the other lines because
there are less people going on the Central line and on the sub-surface
line, what we need to do here is, broadly speaking, take 75 per
cent of the people that were going to go into ticket hall B direct
to street at Eldon Street and it completely and utterly solves
all the problems compared to the equivalent scenario which is
that level of demand going through ticket hall B.
1230. In case any member of the Committee is
as slow on the uptake as I am on these matters, Mr Spencer, there
are four pedroute analyses on the page we are looking at, three
of which are relevant, are they not, to what you call the `Eldon
Street option'?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, which Mr Chapman will present
to you tomorrow.
1231. That is to say, bottom left, top right
and bottom right.
(Mr Spencer) Yes, and it is shown here simply
as a funnel going out in the top-middle of the page to Eldon Street.
1232. Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I just clarify,
Mr Spencer, that the pedroutes we are looking at, the early ones
without the option on it, are illustrated with the station operating
centre still in place?
(Mr Spencer) That is correct.
1233. Obviously that is very crucially located
in the areas of greatest congestion?
(Mr Spencer) Yes.
1234. Have these been run without the operating
centre in place?
(Mr Spencer) I am not entirely sure. You would
have to ask Crossrail that, to be honest. They have tested a number
of scenarios where they have removed the SOR.
1235. I know that there are issues about whether
or not there is a firm commitment to move the operating centre,
but I just think we perhaps ought to know that the ones we have
in front of us here show the operating centre still in place.
(Mr Spencer) That is correct, yes. I cannot
draw any more conclusions than that. It is still in situ. I hope
that this conveys the message of relativity between the two scenarios
and I do not seek to reach any further conclusions from this pedroute
analysis, whereas I would for the control pedroute analysis which
has been done in the last week or so because it can be subjected
to much more thorough analysis because it is not being used as
a mechanism to make a choice between two alternatives, but it
is actually being used as an important assessment of the level
of service for what the ticket hall will be like in future years.
1236. Mr Laurence: Mr Spencer, if you
would turn over though, I see you deal with another matter in
the bottom right-hand corner of the next sheet, Eldon Street option
2016 plus 35 per cent.[19]
(Mr Spencer) That is right. I
have not sought to do a 35 per cent test with the plus 15,000
which I am showing through to the ticket hall. There is no point
in doing the 35 per cent test; it has already failed. What I have
done here, to be consistent, is I have done a 35 per cent test
on the Eldon Street scheme which still indicates that there is
a lot of work to be done in actually perfecting that as well as
better understanding the demand forecasts to understand if there
are issues at stake because clearly the 35 per cent test is showing
some congestion issues at Liverpool Street station. The reason
it is showing that is because this is a massive increase over
and above what we have in the existing situation which we already
know to be close to congestion, so clearly Crossrail is not a
panacea. It does not solve all the problems as far as Liverpool
Street station is concerned and there still needs to be work done
to the LUL station and there would potentially still be works
needed to be done to the mainline Network Rail station, but this
is, if you like, the early stage of work in progress of trying
to find something which can cater for very, very high levels of
demand, broadly speaking, five or six times what the Promoter
is assessing in terms of the demand forecast which is not my case
for 2016, but may well be the proposition that would exist in
2026/2030, that kind of time period.
1237. If you turn back two pages to the page
whose heading on the right-hand side is `Base Model plus 15,000
Crossrail to Liverpool Street', does that heading then inform
the treatment of the Eldon Street option over the page as well
as the Eldon Street option a page further on where you get the
heading, "Eldon Street Option 2016 plus 35 per cent"?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, they are all on the basis
of plus 15,000.
1238. Of plus 15,000?
(Mr Spencer) Correct. The titles should be
much clearer.
1239. Sir, I am putting that on one side now.
16 Committee Ref: A16, Base Model 2016 (0830-0845)
(SCN-20060125-023). Back
17
Committee Ref: A16, Base Model + 15000 Crossrail to Liverpool
Street (SCN-20060125-024). Back
18
Committee Ref: A16, Eldon Street option (SCN-20060125-025). Back
19
Committee Ref: A16, Eldon Street option 2016, + 35% (SCN-20060125-026). Back
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