Examination of Witnesses (Questions 6660
- 6679)
6660. In addition to the river route can we
now turn to see if there are any other feasible alternatives shown
on the line through central London?
(Mr Schabas) Sure. In 2004 I was again in a
position where I could take an interest in this and I was one
of the people who formed the group called Superlink with John
Prideaux, who had been Chairman of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
project, Chris Stokes, who is Deputy Director of Network South
East. He was the British Rail person in charge of Crossrail back
in the 1988 scheme. The three of us got together as well as some
other people and said, "We want to see Crossrail built. How
can we help?", whether it was to help them to help themselves,
but there must be an easier way through London, a better way through
London and something that has a better business case. And with
respect to central London we could see that there were clear advantages
to the river route in terms of reducing environmental impacts
and property impacts and petitioners, but that there was also
maybe another route that had not been looked at sensibly, because
again they had taken something that had been done in 1988 in six
weeks and just stuck with it. In particular, if you go to slide
17, from my experience of planning several railways this is a
list of some of the main things you take into account when you
are taking a route for a railway.[11]
It should be something you can build. Preferably you do not have
to go through deep pile foundations, but if you had to go through
one or two you would be willing to pay that price as the rest
of the route was very good. You wanted, in this case, the West
End, the City and Docklands to interchange with other underground
and national and international rail lines. Remember, the Channel
Tunnel was not open in 1988, and then it went to Waterloo for
a while but now it is going to King's Cross. You want to design
stations in locations where you do not make surface congestion,
not just cars and buses but also pedestrians, and minimise the
constructions impacts, and you have a lot of trade-offs to make
between these, and you have £150 million, among other things,
to do the kind of analysis to evaluate these alternatives, and
the word "evaluation" is important because it implies—I
did not study Latin but it implies some numbers, some modelling.
We have quite sophisticated computer modelling in this country
which allows us to analyse whether that route or this route is
going to generate more people and save more time. If you go to
the next slide, there is the river route and there is the safeguarded
route through the centre of that.[12]
The red line is another route that we came up with. We do not
have any engineering on this. Superlink does not have the budget
of the kind they have, but we said, "Now that the Post Office
tube is closed there is probably no reason you could not stay
on the north side of Oxford Street running roughly under Wimpole
Street. You could then have the station at Cavendish Square".
Cavendish Square has an underground car park and it is a terrible
underground car park because it was built when people had Austin
Morrises. The spaces are very small, but it is a great site to
build a station from. It is twice the size of Hanover Square.
There are no mature trees because they were all taken out when
they built the car park, and it has few historic buildings. It
is also on the north side of Oxford Street and that much closer
up the Euston Road so you can get trucks up on to the trunk road
system with less disruption and without them running past the
American Embassy. You can also, at Cavendish Square, probably
connect both to Bond Street and to Oxford Circus stations. As
you know, at Oxford Circus station the Bakerloo and Victoria line
platforms have their entrances mostly at the south end, not at
the north end, and that is why Crossrail could not connect into
the Victoria line in the current alignment, but if they had stayed
on the north side of Oxford Street they could. The second thing
we said was what we would really like to do is to connect with
the national rail network because this is massively important.
There is a billion pounds a year of passenger rail revenue that
comes into the King's Cross, Euston and St Pancras areas, and
I am sure many people use those trains regularly. Not only is
there a billion pounds' worth of revenue a year but if Crossrail
connected those terminals with Heathrow, with Stansted, with Canary
Wharf and with Reading, national rail would benefit, probably
with an increase of about £100 million a year in passenger
revenue. That is a very big amount of money in the railway industry.
6661. Of course, I had never thought of it before,
John Prideaux thought of this, and he used to run Intercity, he
was the one who brought it up to be without subsidy in 1990, you
may recall. If Crossrail is truly to cross the capital and connect
the UK—which I think Mr Gambrill uses in his slogan, and
it is a great slogan but it is not true in this current scheme—it
has to go via King's Cross, Euston and St Pancras. We do not know
the engineering from Cavendish Square up to King's Cross, you
can do anything for a price, it might require moving some deep
pile foundation. We do know there is a station location safeguarded
right in front of King's Cross for Crossrail Line 2, Chelsea-Hackney
it used to be called. There is a place for a station. We also
know one of the main reasons they want to build Chelsea-Hackney
in Crossrail Line 2 is because there is massive congestion, some
of the worst congestion on the tube, from King's Cross and Euston
down to the West End.
6662. If you swung Crossrail up there and back
down again you might not have this problem—you would not
have this problem. Given the difficulties in funding Crossrail
Line 1 it might be a good idea to solve some of the problems of
Crossrail Line 2 while you are at it. The line could then swing
back down and rejoin the safeguarded route through Liverpool Street.
It is a bit of detour but I am not sure it is no more of a detour
than they are doing to go to Whitechapel and back into Canary
Wharf. Why they are going to Whitechapel is a bit of a mystery
for some people. The business case for going to Shenfield has
evaporated. Chris Stokes, part of the Superlink team, was involved
in the original selection of Shenfield. We have taken apart Cross
London Rail Link's business case for it. We have done quantitative
analysis with numbers we got from Freedom of Information and the
business case does not stack up so they should just dropt the
Shenfield branch and then you do not need to go to Whitechapel.
The money you would save from that would—This might not
be any more expensive than the safeguarded route and would certainly
generate masses of extra revenue on the Intercity network.
6663. The Cross London Rail Link is a London-led
project and their models do not take account of the Intercity
revenues, I think that is correct. They take account of commuter
rail revenues but they take no account of generation on the national
rail system and to me that is a major flaw in the methodology.
As I said, as far as I know they have never bothered to model
pedestrian passenger circulation. The statement that the stations
in front of Charing Cross, Blackfriars and London Bridge are not
convenient without any analysis to back it up is a worthless statement
to me.
6664. Mr Pugh-Smith: Mr Schabas, if we
have on the screen to assist you, the three identified alternatives—the
northern route, the river route and safeguarded route—could
you explain to the Committee the way in which you understand these
alternatives being treated?[13]
(Mr Schabas) We presented, as
Superlink, our proposals to the Department for Transport in July
2004 with a lot of proposals from Superlink but also saying there
seemed to be three routes through the centre that needed to be
evaluated and that had not been done. Initially we had quite a
cordial, even friendly, reception from the Department for Transport
but clearly there was a political will to move forward regardless
of the process and about two weeks later the so-called Montague
Report was published.
6665. I should just back up. The thing about
the alternatives analysis is it is not rocket science. Mr Gambrill
was involved in the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project with me and
John Prideaux and we looked at hundreds of alternatives between
Folkestone and London, including many different alternative locations.
It took two years and it probably did cost £50 million but
we ended up with a scheme that although it did not sail through,
it got a pretty smooth ride through Parliament and it has now
been funded and built. I could not understand why they had skipped
this process and I could not understand when, indeed, the civil
servants, some of the ones involved in Crossrail were involved
in the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. It was a surprise to me when
they decided to release the Montague Report with a statement that
the Montague Report endorsed the scheme and they were now going
to put a Hybrid Bill in before the end of the current parliamentary
session.
6666. That seemed to be a very hasty way to
move, also because the Montague Report did not exactly give a
resounding endorsement of the project. If we go to the next slide
Montague, in his report, said: "... while there are no pivotal
problems, the aggregation of the concerns noted . . . creates
significant uncertainty.[14]
Some of these concerns reflect the still preliminary development
of the scheme, and could be expected to be resolved in time, but
others are and will remain more enduring objections . . . . Accordingly,
as matters stand, the Review cannot confirm the deliverability
of the CLRL Business Case." This was very surprising because
this was released at the same time that they announced, "That's
great, let's go on and build it", because clearly he is not
saying that you can do that, he is saying, "There's lots
to figure out still, guys".
6667. Superlink wrote to Mike Fuhr at the Department
for Transport who was the person in charge of the Channel Tunnel
Rail Link Bill as well, as Bernard knows him well, and we said
there were a lot of questions in the Montague Report, and I have
only touched on them here but there were many questions that his
report raised about the business case, about the feasibility,
the engineering, even down to how many trains an hour you could
run through the middle of it. We got no response. We sent the
letter 20 October and we got no response. We did get a response
from Adrian Montague very quickly. He had been appointed as Chairman
of CLRL by this point and he came back and said: "My mandate
is very much to press ahead with this scheme . . . I really have
no locus to consider alternatives."[15]
I think that is probably correct, that was probably what he was
told to do. It does not seem to me to be the correct instrument
for him in a statutory process affecting individuals and the future
of London.
6668. We then decided to publish the Superlink
proposals. We were accused of being too late, which was something
we did not want to respond to directly but clearly the proposals
had been fed to an uninterested Cross London Rail Link over the
previous years. We were not too late, they were just refusing
to listen. Finally we decided to publish them in public.
6669. In February the Government introduced
the Crossrail Bill and published the Environmental Statement and
Mr Derek Twigg stated, and it says in the Environmental Statement
in response to a question in Parliament that CLRL had evaluated
and rejected the Superlink proposals, and he used the word "evaluated".
He probably thought they had evaluated it but we had not seen
any evidence of anything that could be called evaluation.
6670. Cross London Rail Link followed up in
May with a report called the Super-Crossrail and Superlink update
report, which was their attempt to justify their thinking—a
bit late—that they put forward in the Environmental Statement.
The update report has nothing in it that could be described as
analysis, it is 25 pages of unsupported assertions. There are
no numbers in it, no comparison with the Crossrail scheme, they
just say, for instance, that it will have problems building it,
as if Crossrail has no problems. They note that it will be difficult
to have worksites on the river. There is no analysis in there
to say whether it is easier to have a worksite at Hanover Square
or Bethnal Green or Spitalfields than in the river, it is stating
basically they did not like it, they had their scheme, they did
not need another scheme and it would complicate life to look at
another scheme. We presented a detailed word by word rebuttal,
paragraph by paragraph, and you have that in your exhibits if
you are looking for something to read. It would have been good
to read it over the holidays. Basically paragraph by paragraph
rebuttal of unsupported statements by them, every one of them.
6671. Mr Pugh-Smith: Mr Schabas, what
are the main points that you would like the Committee Members
to dwell upon?
(Mr Schabas) We think they have been in a great
hurry and they need to slow down. This scheme has already cost
£150 million and they are no closer to funding it, nobody
has any idea how they are going to come up with £10 billion.
They are causing a disruption to people's lives, to their homes,
to businesses. They have blighted many people. They have not addressed
the issues we have raised. London has changed enormously since
1988 and the London East-West study is frankly a joke. They need
to go back and comply with the law and with good planning practice,
quite frankly. They need to go and study alternatives with taking
constructive advice and input from people like Superlink and the
Mayfair Residents. It is déja" vu, it is frankly
a tragedy because if they had done this from 2000 for the last
six years and been open-minded instead of saying, "We do
not have time to look at alternatives, we are going to start building
in two years", they might now have a scheme that was funded,
that was better value for money, that had public support, that
did indeed cross the capital and connect the UK and maybe did
not mess up Mayfair. It may well be the safeguarded route is the
best route through Central London, I do not know, but they do
not know either. This work will take a few months, it will require
a few million pounds, but it is money that needs to be spent.
A proper analysis consistent with law and good practice is required
before we spend this kind of money. We need to know for sure.
Thank you.[16]
6672. Mr Pugh-Smith: Thank you very much,
Mr Schabas.
6673. Chairman: Ms Lieven?
6674. Ms Lieven: Sir, as I indicated
last time we met, I have no questions for this witness. It is
our view that these matters go to the principle of the Bill and
we dealt in the information papers I referred to in opening and
I will refer to in closing as to why we have chosen this alignment.
I am not going to waste the Committee's time by an extended cross-examination
about the merits of our alignment.
Examined by the Committee
6675. Mr Binley: I understand, Chairman,
why counsel for the Promoters would say what they have just said,
however the taxpayer has to be fully aware that the decisions
arrived at are right and proper, that politics has to be seen
to be done as well as be done, quite frankly. This raises some
particular questions from me. The 18 billion, Mr Schabas, were
there any figures at all that you were given which suggested the
evaluation of your scheme should be twice as much as the evaluation
of the route being proposed?
(Mr Schabas) Not at the time. They refused
to give us any more numbers. He said three times and in the follow-up
letter he said maybe only two times. We did get a break down in
2005 under Freedom of Information as to how they got 18 billion.
The 18 billion we got last year. I think you have that in your
exhibits. It is exhibit 10.[17]
It is one page and a spreadsheet. I should explain the 18 billion
was for the entire Superlink scheme which includes branches at
Stansted, through Terminal 5 and so on. We have also said that
Superlink as a whole was 25per cent more than Crossrail, we never
said it was cheaper, but we always said that Paddington to Canary
Wharf should be similar in price, and this, which they gave to
us only in 2005 under Freedom of Information, confirmed that.
If you go down to EE Central Area, GB Rail Alignment—
6676. Mr Binley: I am getting a little
lost.
(Mr Schabas) It would be nice if the pages
were numbered.
6677. Mr Pugh-Smith: We are looking at
exhibit 10 in the big bundle.
6678. Mr Binley: Does it have a page
number?
6679. Mr Pugh-Smith: No. If you look
at exhibit ten.
11 Committee Ref: A80, Route Selection Criteria (WESTCC-32605-050). Back
12
Committee Ref: A80, Northern Alternative (WESTCC-32605-051). Back
13
Committee Ref: A80, Three identified alternative routes (WESTCC-32605-053). Back
14
Committee Ref: A80, Montague Conclusions, July 2004 (WESTCC-32605-055). Back
15
Committee Ref: A80, Correspondence from Chairman of CLRL to Chairman
of Superlink Ltd, 27 October 2004 (WESTCC-32605-056). Back
16
Committee Ref: A80, Mr Schabas' Conclusions (WESTCC-32605-057). Back
17
Committee Ref: A80, Corrspondence from Crossrail to GB Railways
Group plc, 30 September 2002 (WESTCC-32605-047). Back
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