Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


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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