Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1240
- 1259)
1240. Kelvin Hopkins: Just before you
do that, these forecasts, we are only interested in the 35 per
cent Eldon Street option for 2016, the bottom right-hand corner?
1241. Mr Laurence: Yes.
1242. Kelvin Hopkins: Even that shows
a fair degree of congestion on the escalators leading up to Eldon
Street, but can I confirm that that is based upon a particular
assumption about the split between Moorgate and Liverpool Street,
the people exiting from Crossrail?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, it is assuming that everything
additional is coming out via Liverpool Street. Clearly what you
would have, Crossrail's initial proposition was predominantly
Moorgate and by the time I had built this sensitivity test, assuming
that the Moorgate demands remained the same if extra flows were
related to employment, we would be 75/80 per cent Liverpool Street
on the basis of this test. Now, clearly that is not going to happen.
A proportion of these people in all probability would actually
be more people using Crossrail, but to a degree using Moorgate
as the alternative, but what you actually have with this is that
all of the imbalance between Moorgate and Liverpool Street is
eliminated by the Eldon Street exit. Instead of there being an
extra two minutes to get to ticket hall B, from ticket hall B
you have still got to get to street which can take another minute
or so, so at least three and a half minutes. This actually makes
the two broadly equivalent which clearly makes the Liverpool Street
entrance more attractive than going to ticket hall B and then
having to make your way out of the mainline station, so there
is an enormous benefit associated with it.
1243. Mr Laurence: So just following
on from Mr Hopkins' question, Mr Spencer, it is important that
the Committee do not read more into this analysis of the Eldon
Street option 2016 plus 35 per cent than is warranted, and I think
you have confirmed first of all that that is based on the assumption
of 15,000 exiting—
(Mr Spencer) Plus 15,000.
1244.—Crossrail passengers and then adding
35 per cent to that on top.
(Mr Spencer) And to everything else, yes.
1245. You stress that that is not the actual
evidence that you are giving, but it is just that you are testing
it against that future possible scenario?
(Mr Spencer) Well, the evidence I am giving
is not to say that the scenario we are presenting here is the
solution. There is clearly more work to be done in terms of understanding
the demand and the split back to Moorgate as well as more work
to be done to understand how you would future-proof Liverpool
Street station in its entirety for a 35 per cent increase in demand
over and above the existing situation. The solution to that is
not just Crossrail, but that there still will be a need to do
works at Liverpool Street station to increase the capacity for
people to move from the main ticket hall up to street.
1246. Is there any reason why, with a fair wind
and maximum collaboration on all sides, that work could not be
done within a few weeks from now, if the Committee were otherwise
persuaded of your case?
(Mr Spencer) Well, clearly we have a substantial
amount of information at our disposal which would allow us to
continue to work with Cross London Rail Links in terms of a further
refinement of RAILPLAN, but also in terms of assessing station
proposals.
1247. What is the answer in terms of how long
you reckon it needs to take because it could be relevant to what
the Chairman indicated yesterday? In closing yesterday, he indicated
a number of concerns to the Committee, one of which was the reasonableness
of possible alternatives and we need to be ready to deal with
that in our closing submissions to the Committee on this occasion,
so I just want to get a feel for what you think is involved in
coming up with the kinds of numbers that would enable two realistic
options to be properly compared with each other, if necessary,
with the Committee's assistance if the parties cannot agree.
(Mr Spencer) It certainly is not a few weeks.
It is a longer time period than that because not only is there
a need to do more demand forecasting work, but there is also a
need to do further appraisal work and to do design. We have a
fairly well worked-out design for the Eldon Street option and
clearly a lot of my evidence today turns on what is a realistic
scheme for an upgrade of the eastern ticket hall, and I have said
on several occasions today that I just do not know what that is.
Clearly there are considerable resources that can be deployed
to examine these issues. It is not unreasonable to have converged
a design costing appraisal/demand forecast exercise in a matter
of a couple of months, something like that.
1248. Is there any reason, Mr Spencer, why the
attempt to achieve convergence on the numbers could not to some
considerable extent be carried out concurrently with further work
on looking in more detail at the two options which have been mentioned
in these proceedings so far?
(Mr Spencer) No, of course they will happen
in parallel.
1249. Good, that is important. I have taken
more time on that than I was going to, so where are we please?
(Mr Spencer) I think it is time to wrap up.
It is now really the conclusions in paragraph 8.9 to the end of
the proof.
1250. Perhaps you would go through that for
us.
(Mr Spencer) Sure. It is only
seven paragraphs, starting at paragraph 8.9 through to 8.18. It
is clear from my analysis of the operation of Liverpool Street
station with Crossrail that it would fail comprehensively to support
the overall objectives of the scheme or to improve accessibility
to the main areas of the City of London and adjacent City-fringe-area
employment growth. The key issue to address at this stage is what
is the appropriate level of future-proofing that should be provided
for the new eastern ticket hall at Liverpool Street station. My
initial conclusion is that the LUL station demand forecasting
design year test at 35 per cent is not sufficient in this situation.
It is not appropriate to design the Crossrail eastern ticket hall
down to a level of demand that fails to provide operational flexibility
to meet fluctuations in flow and provide a level of passenger
amenity consistent with Crossrail's objectives. When Liverpool
Street station was comprehensively improved in the late 1980s,
the implicit future-proofing was equivalent to at least 100 per
cent of the year of opening demand and this capacity has been
fully consumed in less than 20 years. Given the clear indication
of extensive employment growth in the near horizon prior to 2016,
it would seem appropriate to plan for a similar level of future
growth in the context of the Crossrail connection to Liverpool
Street station once again. I am not suggesting that we should
assume that the other things happening at Liverpool Street station
should be above the 35 per cent level, but really, given the significance
of Crossrail and the opportunities that it will create, I do not
believe that that is necessarily sufficient in this case. The
Cross London Rail Links' `in-train' demand forecasts for 2016
utilise less than 50 per cent on average of the actual train capacity.
It is thus reasonable to expect that there will be considerable
growth in Crossrail patronage in subsequent years. I have an analogy
here, that you have the Underground system that is in effect full
and if you take some of the demand out of that Underground system
and put it into Crossrail, the cup is still close to being full.
You then have growth year on year on year, you fill up the Underground
part of the cup and you have nowhere to go but the saucer and
the saucer has plenty more capacity. It means that year on year
the propensity to use Crossrail as a travel alternative will get
bigger because it becomes increasingly more attractive because
the capacity which has been freed up in London Underground will
have been consumed and it can only be used once because there
is not the equivalent spare capacity on other routes into the
City of London. Consequently, the station planning should allow
for well above average growth in future demand for Crossrail,
well above the 35 per cent required by LUL. One of the many curiosities,
this is to me, being a professional in this respect and I do not
imagine anyone else would find it such, of the Cross London Rail
Links appraisal is that there has been no assessment of a future
year beyond 2016, for example, the 15th year, which would be 2031.
The point of this assessment would be that, given that Crossrail
will have much more spare capacity in 2016 than any other travel
alternative, it would be expected that year on year after that
time a larger proportion of the new journeys generated by further
employment growth in the local area would be attracted to use
the system. This important point is inevitably missed because
there is not any assessment beyond the year of opening, as far
as I am aware. British Land has investigated an alternative means
of access to Crossrail and other witnesses will describe these
in detail, namely Mr Chapman who will follow me tomorrow. A purpose-built
and dedicated ticket hall on Eldon Street would meet all of British
Land's objectives. We have tested this scheme, as I have showed
you with pedroute, and I am satisfied that a ticket hall in this
location would provide adequate capacity. Equally importantly,
it provides an opportunity to create a `front door' to Crossrail,
which is something which is clearly not provided by accessing
Crossrail by ticket hall B because it would remain an LUL ticket
hall. There is a significant potential to improve the existing
ticket hall B to provide more passenger space, a bigger gate-line
and escalators direct to street level. I am not in a position,
until further design work is completed, to confirm or otherwise
if such a solution would be sufficient to meet British Land's
objectives, but it should be considered alongside Eldon Street
as an option. In summary, my position is that an eastern ticket
hall is required to serve Crossrail that provides sufficiently
greater capacity and amenity than is currently being promoted.
The current proposals are totally inadequate to meet the aspirations
of travellers and developers expecting Crossrail to support improvements
in accessibility in the Liverpool Street area. What the City of
London and British Land Company request respectfully is that the
Promoter should be directed to stop designing demand out of the
Crossrail connection to Liverpool Street station and start designing
in the necessary future year capacity. The Promoter should start
delivering the agglomeration benefits that it outlines rather
than the opposite—deliver the promise. The sooner that Cross
London Rail Links start to do this, the better for everyone.
1251. Thank you, Mr Spencer.
Cross-examined by Mr
Elvin
1252. Mr Elvin: Mr Spencer, can we just
clarify a couple of points first. The point of concern, so far
as British Land is concerned as with the City of London, is ticket
hall B—is that correct?
(Mr Spencer) The principal point
of concern is ticket hall B, but it is not the only concern.
1253. And the main, but not the only, concern
is the gate-line at ticket hall B and its capacity?
(Mr Spencer) Not at all. It is a general concern
over every aspect of the layout of the future scheme.
1254. So your concern, British Land's concern,
spreads far wider than that of Mr Weiss's whose concern was with
the gate-line?
(Mr Spencer) Mr Weiss did not look beyond Crossrail's
demand forecasts in his evidence, whereas I have looked beyond
Crossrail's demand forecasts.
1255. Well, we will look at the key aspects
of that in order to assist the Committee to understand our relative
position so that they can examine them later. Can I also establish
what I think is common ground, that you are not suggesting, if
the Committee considers that further work is required, that the
ticket hall in Eldon Street is the only solution?
(Mr Spencer) No, I am saying that
there should be further work on the massively expanded ticket
hall B. I do not actually rule out the possibility that there
is another scheme out there somewhere, but we have explored it
with Ove Arup and British Land and the Eldon Street option appeared
to us to be a do-able scheme at a relatively early stage and,
as such, we then focused on the detail of that scheme to convince
ourselves that it was a viable option. That is not to say that
other minds would not find other locations which could provide
a new eastern ticket hall outside the vicinity of Liverpool Street
station.
1256. So the answer to my question is yes?
(Mr Spencer) There could be other
options, yes.
1257. And you are not saying that, just because
the construction of Crossrail would necessarily preclude the Eldon
Street scheme, there would not be other schemes available to deal
with problems if they were to arise because, for example, demand
forecasts became clearer during the progress of scheme design
after Royal Assent, for example?
(Mr Spencer) I am not sure if I have actually
caught the first part of your question. It is accepted, I believe,
that the construction of the connection to ticket hall B precludes
the Eldon Street scheme.
1258. But the mere fact that that is a point
does not mean that there are not other options that could not
be utilised to obtain capacity if it were discovered that there
were a need to do so when detailed design on the scheme was continued
following Royal Assent?
(Mr Spencer) As far as I would be concerned,
the Bill should pass when everyone is comfortable with the fact
that the Bill deals with the problems. I do not think something
should be left to another day. I am not ruling out the possibility
that there are other solutions which could be bolted on, if you
like, to a ticket hall B solution or that there are entirely different
solutions, but clearly they cannot be delivered by way of the
powers within this Bill.
1259. Would you accept that what the Committee
may wish to satisfy itself of, and of course the Committee will
decide itself what it wants to be satisfied of, is that there
are solutions should these problems arise within the Bill powers?
(Mr Spencer) No, because that in itself is
excluding Eldon Street because Eldon Street is not within the
Bill powers, but Eldon Street needs additional provisions.
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