Examination of Witnesses (Questions 6645
- 6659)
6645. Chairman: Today the Committee will
continue hearing the Petitions relating to the Residents' Society
of Mayfair and then we will hear the case of Antique Hypermarket
Limited, Dystopia Limited and the Regent Street Association. First
of all, an apology: counsel will see that we are not currently
working on Commons time but we are having to work on Lords time,
which is considerably slower. Counsel, is there anything—before
we return to Mr Pugh-Smith—you want to tell us?
6646. Ms Lieven: Only to mention, sir,
that we have been informed that Dystopia have withdrawn their
Petition, so we shall not be hearing from them this afternoon.
6647. Chairman: Thank you. Mr Pugh-Smith,
do you want to call your second witness?
6648. Mr Pugh-Smith: Good afternoon,
sir. My next witness is Mr Michael Schabas.
Mr Michael Huntly Schabas, Sworn
Examined by Mr Pugh-Smith
6649. Mr Pugh-Smith: Can I also confirm
that you have the bundle of exhibits, which have been distributed
on the last occasion, to hand?[1]
There is a thick and a thin bundle. Most of the exhibits are in
slide form, which Mr Schabas will refer to. Mr Schabas, can I
ask you to introduce yourself to the Committee and briefly explain
your background and qualifications please?
(Mr Schabas) Thank you, yes. My
name is Michael Schabas. I have 25 years' experience working in
the railway business and in projects—planning, design and
operation. I have a Masters Degree in Transport Planning from
the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and I have
worked on rail projects in the United States, Canada, Australia
and Britain. I am a director of companies that carry passengers
and freight trains in Britain and in Sweden and Norway, and have
been in Australia as well. Some of my experience is particularly
relevant, I think. I planned and promoted the Jubilee Line Extension
on behalf of the Canary Wharf developers, I worked extensively
on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill and I was retained by the
Department for Transport in 1992 to review the Crossrail scheme,
which was actually then before the House as well. I have set out
in exhibit 1 a full CV with further details of my experience for
the Committee.[2]
6650. On what basis do you appear before the
Committee today?
(Mr Schabas) I am here in my own right; I am
not representing any of the companies that I am involved in but
on behalf of the residents of Mayfair and St James.
6651. Mr Schabas, what I would like you to do
now is if you could kindly outline briefly the issues that you
wish to talk to the Committee about.
(Mr Schabas) I think my evidence will show
that the Promoters and their agents, Cross London Rail Links Limited,
have not seriously considered alternatives to the safeguarded
route between Paddington and Liverpool Street.[3]
They have considered alternatives only superficially and only
in order to discard them. They have spent five years and more
than £150 million of taxpayers' money to promote the scheme
but they have always been in such a hurry to get shovels into
the ground that they have cut corners on the planning and alternatives
analysis process. My experience on other rail projects is that
if you rush the preliminaries you have to pay back for it later
with interest. If the railway is not designed carefully it may
not achieve the stated objectives, it will cost more than promised
and will not attract the expected passenger volumes. Sometimes
you have serious cost overruns; sometimes you have to make very
expensive changes to make it work operationally and I have actually
been involved in some situations where that has happened—several
unfortunately. Fortunately, there are checks and balances in the
system and obviously one of those checks and balances is that
designed schemes often do not get funded or built—even sometimes
after powers are obtained. On this point I have a bit of a sense
of déja" vu; the last time—I think it
may have been in this room—that I sat here as a witness
was in 1994, giving evidence on behalf of the King's Cross Residents'
Association, who are, I should say here in case there is any doubt,
an equally respectable group of people as the Mayfair residents,
and their neighbourhood was entirely blighted by the Kings Cross
project that British Rail was promoting to build an expensive
underground terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link at a cost
of about £1 billion. I suggested that instead you could come
round the back and use the St Pancras station, which was mostly
empty at the time. I have to say the Committee did not appear
to take much notice of what I said—it was a Lords Committee,
though, so that might explain some of it. British Rail, at the
top level, did not take any notice but the Department for Transport
took a great deal of interest and John Prideaux who was in charge
of the project took a great deal of interest, and I worked with
him inside, effectively, British Rail—Union Railways—I
should say with people like Bernard Gambrill, over there, looking
at alternatives and I think you know that it is St Pancras that
is now being built as the new terminus.
6652. Mr Schabas, what I would like you to do,
if you would, is explain briefly how, in your own words, the safeguarded
route came to be identified.
(Mr Schabas) Sure. I go back to 1988, actually
when I first came to this country—when I first came to live
permanently, the economy was booming and the Government established
a Central London rail study. They said "Find a route across
London for a railway". Halcrow was given the job and identified
in about six weeks the route that pretty much you have before
you now, from Paddington to Liverpool Street. They were very proud
of it because they said they had found a route from Paddington
to Liverpool Street that avoided deep pile foundations, and being
engineers that was a very important requirement for them. It is
a very important requirement, but it was a quick study—they
did it in six weeks and for a pretty small amount of money. They
showed that there was one feasible route. They did not say that
it was the best route or the only route, and I think they would
admit that, Halcrow would agree even that engineering and missing
deep pile foundations are not the only requirements that you should
take into account when planning a route across London, especially
one that is going to cost £10 billion and disrupt the City
for years. It is not an ideal route, I have to say, and my background
extends beyond deep pile foundations and tunnelling (although
I do know a bit about that). It has some serious shortcomings.
It has no interchange with the Victoria Line or the Piccadilly
Line which are the two busiest tube lines across Central London.
It has no connections to Oxford Circus station because of the
way Oxford Circus is configured. It swings south under Hyde Park
in order to provide for a connection on to the Marylebone Line,
but there is no plan now to do that connection ever. It runs along
past the American Embassy, which I guess in 1988 was not seen
as a security issue the way it maybe should be seen now. The main
reason for staying south of Oxford Street, I have been told by
the engineers, was they did not want to conflict with the Post
Office tube, which as you may know runs from Paddington to Liverpool
Street as well, along the north side of Oxford Street. The Post
Office railway is, unfortunately, closed and has been for a few
years now. So to go south of Oxford Street under Mayfair because
of a junction that you are not ever going to build and to miss
the Post Office tube, which is closed, it seems you have lost
two of the main reasons for doing it. Then not having a good interchange.
If one looks at the stations and walks around Central London,
if one walks around Tottenham Court Road or Oxford Circus or Bond
Street, it is hard to imagine also another 100,000 passengers
being put on to the pavement, but that is what Crossrail is supposed
to do: it is supposed to put another 100,000 people on to the
street. If it does not put another 100,000 people on to the street,
then it has not accomplished its objective. I think if you look
at the passenger numbers, in fact, it does not accomplish the
objective; they are not expecting to put 100,000 more people on
the streets, they are going to be the same people on different
trains—but that is another story. To put this line right
through the most crowded and congested places, which are already
so crowded, seems to me to be maybe not the right answer; that
other factors should be thought about.
6653. Mr Schabas, how do you come to look at
alternatives?
(Mr Schabas) As I said, I did the review in
1992 and that was just a review of the current scheme and we basically
gave it a pretty lukewarm recommendation. I think the Committee
then read our report as part of their deliberations and rejected
the Bill. They never looked in detail at the alignment. At the
time I had not thought much about the alignment either. Around
late 1999 the Strategic Rail Authority, as it then was, asked
train operators, including GB Railway, which I was part of, if
we had any ideas how to relieve congestion at Liverpool Street,
Paddington and Waterloo. I got out some maps and started scratching
my head and thinking about it and said: "Well, London has
changed a lot since 1988. It has now got Stansted in the East—a
big airport—Heathrow is getting bigger still, Crossrail
does not serve either of them really—it still does not—you
have got Canary Wharf which did not exist in 1988 (we were just
starting the first piles there) and now it is another city and
it is a third major centre. So I thought, "How can you build
a railway from Paddington via Canary Wharf and on to the east
with the least problems, frankly, getting the powers"—whether
it is using Transport and Works or Parliament because this and
the funding are the two major problems of getting any railway
across London built. The statutory approvals and the funding.
I looked at the map and I thought—it was not quite this
quick—"Actually, there is at least one other route
that has been safeguarded through Central London, from east to
west, which does not have a lot of deep pile foundations",
and that is the river. It was not safeguarded by the Department
for Transport, it was safeguarded by a higher authority, shall
we say.
6654. If we could have that up.[4]
(Mr Schabas) There we are. Maybe
I should walk through this and explain. It serves the West End
in a different way. It does not serve Bond Street and Tottenham
Court Road, it does not go to John Lewis; it is a bit closer to
the Army & Navy and, frankly, a bit closer to Westminster
where we are here. It would come down under the Royal Parks, so
no foundations, there are a few security tunnels to worry about—remember
I was involved in the Jubilee Line which goes under Green Park,
so I have got a bit of experience. Interchange with other tube
lines and within walking distance of the heart of the West End
but the station itself would be under the river. A second station
probably in front of the Tate Modern, Blackfriars Bridge, where
you can have an excellent interchange with Thameslink. One of
the problems with Crossrail, the safeguarded route, is the interchange
with `Thameslink is up at Farringdon. Anyone who has been on the
Thameslink Farringdon platforms in the rush hour knows they are
very narrow and constrained platforms. They cannot be widened
without demolishing some pretty expensive buildings and they are
not proposing to do that, so there is a real problem in the current
scheme of going through Farringdon. At Blackfriars Station you
can build a proper interchange. Another station at London Bridge—it
is actually in front of the Mayor's office, in front of City Hall—and
again interchanges with the tube lines. Yes, you can interchange
with the major Tube lines, and then through to Canary Wharf. The
whole alignment follows the river. You can do the construction—this
is how the Tubes were built at the turn of the last century—from
the river using barges and therefore reducing truck traffic through
Central London. Next slide, please.[5]
That is a cross-sectional drawing. We commissioned Mott MacDonald
who engineered about half the Tube network, I think, and are working
on Crossrail too, but they were not back in 1999, so they did
this for us, and they did the drawing. You can see the Tubes there;
they are deep under the river; they are in the London Clay, and
you would have escalators and stairs and lifts and so on up to
either side of the river and you can actually add pedestrian subways
through so you can get people up on to the embankments on either
side. They wrote us a letter which I think is in your evidence,
exhibit 3, which says they found no fatal flaws from an engineering
point of view on the proposal. We presented this all to the SRA
in January 2000.
6655. There is a summary slide to go in at this
stage.[6]
(Mr Schabas) We suggested it
to them. It avoids deep pile foundations. It serves the City,
the West End and Docklands. It provides better interchange with
the tubes and the other railways. Stations are in much less congested
areas; better places for these 100,000 more pedestrians to distribute,
and the construction impacts should be less severe. The second-last
point I will come back to and explain because it is a bit out
of sequence. The SRA took a year to respond to us. It was a rather
long wait for a meeting because we put quite a bit of work into
it, and it was at their request actually, and I had a meeting
first of all with Keith Berryman. Keith had already been appointed
to do the London East/West Study for the Strategic Rail Authority,
and he actually did a presentation in December 2000 about eleven
months after we put forward our proposal. He did a presentation
to London First, stating that they had already made the recommendations
to the Secretary of State and he made no mention of looking at
any alternative routes through Central London. I asked for a meeting.
I said "Keith, what happened to our proposal?" "Oh,
I guess it will be okay". So we had a meeting on 17 January
and he said that they were not looking at alternative routes because
that would add two years' delay and they were under strong political
pressure to get something under way, and there really was not
time to start looking at alternatives. Any change from the safeguarded
route would delay things for two years. They had already then
submitted the London East/West Study to the Government and confirmed
that to me, and that was eventually released. Before that came
out I wrote another letter back and said, "I think you are
making a mistake. You are rushing this process and you are going
to regret it later."
Richard Morris, who is now Operations Director
of Crossrail, wrote a letter saying he had taken over running
the project in the SRA and he wrote me this letter saying, "We
examined this last year". I do not believe they really did;
I think the word "examined" means they looked at it.
"We are not as sanguine as you regarding the engineering
difficulties, although these could no doubt be overcome. The main
difficulty is the amount of interchange required would be substantially
increased".[7]
Essentially he was saying if you put it under the river everybody
has to walk further because nobody works on top of it, and I think
that is true, but there is analysis there: how important is that?
Everyone knows Waterloo Station is on the wrong side of the river
but many people use it and we have lived with that over 150 years
and there have been proposals to take the railway across the river
and those have always been rejected for pretty good reasons. Mr
Morris was using a planning argument now, not an engineering one,
to say that they should take up the safeguarded route, and not
using a political argument. They then published the London East-West
Study Report which you can still find, I think, on the website
somewhere. It is an interesting document because it is used in
the Environmental Statement for Crossrail as the key foundation
for their route selection process. Chapter 6 of the Environmental
Statement refers to the London East-West Study as basically the
study with which they decided where to go with Crossrail. The
funny thing about it is the London East-West Study's Crossrail
is not very much like the one we have got now. They actually say
in London East-West that it should not go to Heathrow. They do
not go to Reading. They do not go to Abbey Wood. They have not
apparently heard of the East Thames corridor. They did not go
to Canary Wharf, so after this report was produced Canary Wharf
then put on a lobbying effort and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone,
I think pretty much said, "If you want me to back this it
must go to Canary Wharf and it must go to Heathrow. You are crazy
if you do not do that", and they changed it. I raised it
before that they had not tried to address those two major destinations
with the scheme but it kind of throws the London East-West Study
out the window as a report as the foundation for your house. I
heard nothing more from the Crossrail team until December 2001;
every 10 months we go through the cycle again, when I was contacted
by Julian Maw. I worked with Julian on the Jubilee Line extension
and he was now working for Cross-London Rail Link. He said, "We
would be interested in looking at your scheme". I think Julian
understood that in today's world you are supposed to look at alternatives,
or at least be seen to pretend to look at alternatives, and he
invited me in. We had a meeting with Keith Berryman that went
on for the better part of a morning about the route through central
London and the other ideas that we had presented as to what Crossrail
could do, and I am not here to talk about them. Obviously, I would
love to explain them but we are here to talk about the route through
central London and how or why it should affect Mayfair. They responded.
They were interested in studying this further in that they would
study the feasibility and the business case. They even paid GB
Railways and therefore me to work with them for about six months.
I would not say it was a very two-way relationship. I produced
a lot of papers saying, "If I was trying to build a railway
that could get through Parliament and get funded these are some
of the things I would do". They did produce alignment plans
and profile drawings. If you go to the next one, that is one of
the ones.[8]
It is a very faint drawing but you can see their title block in
the corner, "Crossrail Line 1". That is the Embankment
Gardens, that is Blackfriars Station, and that is showing the
line under the river done by their engineers.[9]
You can see that those stations fit quite nicely between the banks
of the river with entrances on either side which come up into
what is usually open space. Some of it is parkland, some of it
is for the front of the National Theatre; it is for their car
park, actually. It might work a lot better to put an entrance
there. It was feasible. The feedback from the engineers was that
this was feasible. There were not any serious problems they could
see, which is the same as Richard Morris had said in his letter,
especially if you build this line, and Mr Berryman even said to
me that it might be cheaper because as it happens along the river
route you intersect the two lines. You do not need quite as many
stations; you save one station and that is £300 million or
£400 million.
6656. Mr Pugh-Smith: So what happened
next?
(Mr Schabas) I went away on my summer holidays
thinking that they were going to be doing computer modelling of
the revenues and so on, because this is how you would know whether
being in the river rather than up on Bond Street was better or
worse for traffic generation and congestion, and I came back and
I had an invitation to meet with Norman Haste, who had just taken
over as the Chief Executive of Crossrail. I came into the meeting
with Mr Haste and they handed me a letter signed by Mr Berryman,
which I think you have as exhibit 7, which frankly came as a bit
of a shock because it was completely inconsistent with everything
that had been said in the previous six months. First of all they
said that the river route was not really feasible because there
would be serious environmental problems with cofferdams. Actually,
the cofferdam in front of Blackfriars Street was their idea. That
provided a work site and a nice straight section of the river
with a new embankment wall in front of the Tate Modern where the
engineers said, "This is great. We can take barges there
to take the dirt out and not cause a disruption in Spitalfields
or anything like that", but here was Mr Berryman turning
round and using it as an argument for not building the scheme.
He also said there would be problems with vent shafts in or adjacent
to the royal parks.[10]
I think that with the Crossrail scheme before you put vent shafts
in the royal parks; there is no route through central London that
does not have them. Those did not seem to me to be a reason to
reject this. They also said that they were not going to bother
modelling the schemes and in that meeting I think it was Mr Haste,
and I think Mr Berryman may have been out of the room, said to
me, "Look: I have been appointed to this job. They want me
to get it built. I have not got the time or money to look at alternatives".
Frankly, I was shocked to hear him saying this because he obviously
had money and he had plenty of time too, and I knew he had plenty
of time; this was four years ago. I followed that up with a brief
letter on 4 October, exhibit 8, seeking clarification on some
points. Mr Berryman responded with exhibit 9. He said, "I
do not wish this to be the start of a long correspondence on the
subject", which was basically slamming the door in our face
and not offering to provide any more information, because I asked
questions about the statements made in the letter: how had he
come to this conclusion, could he prove it? In 2005 under the
Superlink hat, which I now wear sometimes, we asked them under
the Freedom of Information Act for some of the evidence to support
the claims in his letter, including the cost estimate. They said
that the route would cost two to three times as much. The cost
estimate which you have in exhibit 10 shows quite clearly that
the river route from Paddington to Canary Wharf would be £3.6
billion, which I think is roughly the same, maybe slightly cheaper,
than the safeguarded route.
6657. Mr Binley: Could you heighten that
so that we can see it better?
(Mr Schabas) You have the letter in the exhibits
too, exhibit 7. Exhibit 7 is the first one from Mr Berryman when
he says it is too expensive, three times the price. It is funny
that in the next letter he wrote back and said it was twice the
price.
6658. Mr Pugh-Smith: Mr Schabas, can
I stop you there? It is in the larger bundle, sir. Mr Schabas,
can we come back to the position where you left off? You were
told under the Freedom of Information Act that the cost would
be about £3.6 billion.
(Mr Schabas) Yes.
6659. You were telling the Committee that it
would be no more expensive and possibly cheaper than the safeguarded
route.
(Mr Schabas) Yes, that is right, and we also
made suggestions as to how they could serve Heathrow, how they
could serve Terminal 5, which they are not doing, and how they
could serve Stansted, but nothing came of it. I was in a difficult
position. I was a director of GB Railways; we were a franchise-holder
from the Strategic Rail Authority, which was a part owner of the
Cross London Rail Link scheme at the time and so I could not rock
the boat too much and quite frankly I had to back off. I said,
"It is not my problem but I think you should be listening
because I am trying to help".
1 Committee Ref: A80, Mr Michael Schabas Exhibits. Back
2
Committee Ref: A80, Mr Michael Schabas Exhibit 1 (WESTCC-32605-038). Back
3
Committee Ref: A80, Safeguarded (1988) Scheme (WESTCC-32605-039). Back
4
Committee Ref: A80, Alternative River Route (WESTCC-32605-041). Back
5
Committee Ref: A80, Mott MacDonald commissioned cross-section-Stations
under the river (WESTCC-32605-042). Back
6
Committee Ref: A80, Summary of River Route presentation to Strategic
Rail Authority (WESTCC-32605-043). Back
7
Committee Ref: A80, Strategic Rail Authority response to the
River Route Scheme (WESTCC-32605-044). Back
8
Committee Ref: A80, River Route-Charing Cross (WESTCC-32605-045). Back
9
Committee Ref: A80, River Route-Blackfriars (WESTCC-32605-046). Back
10
Committee Ref: A80, Corrspondence from Crossrail to GB Railways
Group plc, 30 September 2002 (WESTCC-32605-047). Back
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