Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 6740 - 6759)

  6740. Ms Lieven: Thank you, sir. I can deal with that in my closing.

  6741. Chairman: Mr Pugh-Smith, do you want to re-examine?

  6742. Mr Pugh-Smith: No, thank you, sir.

  6743. Chairman: Mr Winbourne, thank you very much. Before you leave, I want to thank you because we have had previous evidence and I think that gives a balanced view when we come to the time to have a look at your Petition.
  (Mr Winbourne) I should say, sir, that I have done a précis of my answers to C2, if the Committee is minded to have it. Counsel has got it but I do not want to take up any more time today.

  6744. Chairman: That would be helpful. Thank you very much.

  The witness withdrew

  6745. Mr Pugh-Smith: That is my evidence.

  6746. Ms Lieven: I will directly call Mr Berryman.

  Mr Keith Berryman, recalled

  Examined by Ms Lieven

  6747. Chairman: Before you start, Ms Lieven, we have managed to negotiate an extension to the Committee today to five o'clock, if necessary. The stenographers are here and willing to work on yet again, but that is not to say we cannot finish before five o'clock.

  6748. Ms Lieven: We will do our best. Mr Berryman, the Committee has just heard the evidence of Mr Schabas. Can you explain to the Committee, first of all, what consideration of alternative routes there was in the development of this scheme as a generality, and then turn to the two specific alternatives which Mr Schabas gave evidence on: that is the river route and the northern alignment?
  (Mr Berryman) During the development of the scheme after Cross London Rail Links Limited was set up the first thing we did was to re-examine the work that had been done previously in the 1980s on possible alignments and which we also briefly covered during the new East-West London Study. We identified a number of factors which I think merited an explanation. First of all, the fact that an alignment had been safeguarded since the 1980s meant that no new buildings had been constructed on that alignment during that period. Moreover, some of the sites which had been reserved as stations had been identified as sites of surface interest, so no development at all had taken place on those sites during that period. The conclusion of the LEWS study was that there should be a period of project definition—that is actually deciding in detailed terms what the route should be across London. The conclusion was that a line similar to Crossrail should be built but it did not go into very specific details. Having said that, the Crossrail alignment was used for comparison purposes from the beginning. The two alignments which we looked at it in detail in the early 2000s are shown on this plan.[21] Line C is the river route, which Mr Schabas has explained and I will come back to in a minute; Line B was an alignment proposed by the residents association of Mayfair but is actually somewhat different from the alignment which Mr Schabas put up, although some of the points are common to both. Clearly, when we were given these potential alignments to look at it was not in a much more developed form than you see in front of you—in other words, a very long way away from being something which could be appraised properly. So the first thing we had to do was to design these alignments in detail, and we did that using consultant engineers—Mott MacDonald—which Mr Schabas is familiar with as well. We had two firms involved, Mott MacDonald and another firm called Parsons which is a very respected engineering consultancy. We spent about four or five months looking at each of these routes and spent on consultants over a quarter of a million on each route, and my own staff time (I do not mean me personally, I mean people who work for me) probably another quarter of a million on each route. So there have been substantial pieces of work done to evaluate if they could be built. The river route is clear of buildings, obviously. It is not clear of bridges—there are a number of obstructions in the way which are rather more intrusive than you might expect—and there are also a number of existing underground tunnels which cross the river, so we have to look below in order to find a suitable alignment. The difficulties with the river route, from a construction perspective, really depend on the stations and the intervention shafts which are required. As you have heard in evidence already, we need to provide interventions shafts for the fire brigade at one kilometre intervals and if you are under the river it is quite difficult to provide an easy, accessible direct entrance into the tunnels. It is possible but it is not easy and it closes the centres of the shafts that you have to put in because you have to allow the distance for the firemen to get from the surface to the tunnel before they can start going along the tunnel. It means you have to put the shafts a bit closer together. Having said that, the cost of the river route would probably not be very much different from the cost of the route that we have chosen. In fact, it might be cheaper because there are fewer stations. But if you carry that argument to its logical extreme, the cheapest line of all would have no stations. The stations are essential for people to get on and off the trains. The problem with the river route in terms of passenger numbers is that the corridor on which you will be relying for your walk-on passengers, which is perhaps half a kilometre wide, or half a kilometre on each side of the station, half of that space is taken up by the river because there are obviously no buildings, and the buildings to the north of the river back on to the river rather than facing it. So there are issues there around how people will be distributed from the stations. The other site that was suggested was in Park Lane for a possible station with access to the West End. Park Lane is very non-central to the West End and all the space on one side of the station would be park, Hyde Park, and so there would be no walk-on catchment from that side of that station. The walk-on catchment from all stations on this proposed route would be very significantly reduced from that which has been adopted. On the northern alignment, as I say, the alignment we examined was slightly different from the one Mr Schabas put up on the board. We examined walk-through to Baker Street rather than coming down further south towards Bond Street. We found that that alignment first of all was no simpler to construct. In fact, I think there were environmental problems, but performed very much less well in terms of passenger numbers simply because the areas that people are really wanting to get to are in that Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street area. There are many destinations for leisure as well as for employment in that area which people need to get to. We came to the conclusion that the route selected in the early nineties was still probably the most appropriate route of the ones that we had examined. We had a look around for variations on these routes. You very quickly get into problems with tall buildings which have deep foundations, particularly in the City area. The way that we have got over that to get to the City is from Liverpool Street to Farringdon we propose to go underneath the existing railway line and the corridor is already occupied by Thameslink and the Metropolitan line. What the northern route does is follow that alignment round all the way up to King's Cross. It is difficult to find another route which would be able to do that so easily. It is not impossible, but it takes people away from the areas where the biggest walk-on catchments exist and it is really walk-on catchment we are looking at for the stations there. The alignment proposed, alignment B on there, brought further south to Cavendish Square, which Mr Schabas proposed, was a late entry, you might say. We had in this case, I have to say, a fairly brief examination of it and decided that we could not really see what the advantages were in terms of getting people to their places of work and entertainment and therefore we did not take it any further.


  6749. Chairman: What you are saying is that there has been examination of a number of different options?
  (Mr Berryman) Oh yes.

  6750. Which is contrary to what we heard a little earlier.
  (Mr Berryman) Yes. I can tell you that there has been a lot of examination of options.

  6751. What about the particular route? There is some cross-matching of what is here and what was in the new proposal. Clearly, you have had a look at those also, but it was largely on the evidence which we have previously taken that you stick with the route which was agreed? Is that a fair summary?
  (Mr Berryman) That is a reasonably fair summary, yes. There are always local variations that are possible but you need also to bear in mind that some of the sites on the route have been reserved for occupation for Crossrail for a number of years. The landowners are well aware of those sites. It would be quite difficult to come at a late stage and say, "We were going to take that building out but we are going to take this building out instead", particularly if the developer had based his plans on what we had originally proposed, and, of course, what we had originally proposed was covered by the safeguarding direction.

  6752. Ms Lieven: Going back to the generality of the appraisal, Mr Berryman, were the alternatives appraised in a manner consistent with the appraisal of the Crossrail preferred route?
  (Mr Berryman) Yes, they were. They used the approach to appraisal, the name of which escapes me but which has been used for all alternatives considered in the scheme. I have to say that we are only talking about the central section. Many different alternatives were considered for the outer sections of the railway but it is considerably different from that which was brought forward in 1992.

  6753. Can we just stay with the two central section alternatives for the moment and I will come to one question about the other alternatives? So far as the river route is concerned, were there any particular engineering problems with constructing stations in the river?
  (Mr Berryman) Yes. There are two or three particular issues that it is worth bearing in mind. It is true that if you go deep below the river the clay or ground is just as competent as it is on either side of the river, but there are obviously special problems in making shafts and things like that in a river which do not occur when you are on dry land, and in particular constructing stations, the entrances to the stations and the ventilation structures would require significant cofferdams to be in the river. Cofferdams in the river are not impossible if you remember the Millennium Bridge which was constructed recently. The foundations of that were in cofferdams, but the size of cofferdams that we would need for the kinds of structures we are talking about here would be very substantial. We took it as far as having discussions with the appropriate authority, which I think is the Environment Agency, although one of my staff had them and he unfortunately is not here today. The Environment Agency were not terribly supportive of this proposal, in particular the possibility of building cofferdams under the river. In fact, when I say they were not particularly supportive, they were quite strongly opposed to it.

  6754. So far as the transport case for the river option is concerned, what would the river option do first of all in terms of reducing overcrowding on the Central line, and secondly in terms of the Northern line?
  (Mr Berryman) First of all, it does not reduce congestion on the Central line for obvious reasons. It is going to a different place. The other thing it did was increase the amount of traffic on the north-south links. People's ultimate destinations are generally further north than the river and to get from the river line to their ultimate destination they would have to use a north-south Underground link.

  6755. Turning then to the northern alignment, in terms of the transport benefits, what was the balance of advantage between that and the preferred route in terms of passengers and overcrowding relief?
  (Mr Berryman) Here again, of course, it does not go to the areas where the biggest demand lies. It goes around the Intercity stations, that is true, but there already is an existing line from the Euston/King's Cross area to the Barbican, the Metropolitan line, which is a relatively uncrowded section of the Underground. For anyone who uses it, I am using the word "relatively". It is nowhere near the same level of congestion as one gets on the Central line between, say, Stratford and Liverpool Street.

  6756. One of the complaints that the Residents' Association have made about our route is the lack of interchange with the Victoria line. What does the northern alignment do to passenger flows on the Victoria line between King's Cross and Oxford Circus?
  (Mr Berryman) On this alignment that we examined at the time when we were doing this comparison it would make it very much worse and the Victoria line is already extremely crowded. I have the unfortunate pleasure of using it every day. It is not a pleasant experience. The suggestion Mr Schabas made later of an alignment that came further south towards Bond Street, towards Cavendish Square, may to some extent ameliorate that and that would be a slight improvement on option B that we looked at but not in terms of tipping the balance.

  6757. Staying on overcrowding relief, a particular point was made by Mr Schabas in relation to the letter that you wrote to him on 30 September 2002. The letter is exhibit 7 of his exhibits, and a particular point was raised about what you meant in paragraph three. Perhaps you would explain that.
  (Mr Berryman) When we were looking at what Crossrail should do we were looking at the relief of overcrowding. Most rail services into and through London are, of course, overcrowded, so it is a question of degree. The central line, particularly between Stratford and Liverpool Street, is one of the most overcrowded sections of the rail network if one considers the Underground and the surface rail as a whole network rather than considering them individually.

  6758. Finally, Mr Berryman, exhibit 10 in that bundle sets out some comparative costs. This is for a much wider scheme that was described as SuperCrossrail. The central section is the same as we are proposing but it has a lot more arms to the octopus, if I can put it like that. Could you just explain briefly what the problem is as you see it with having a scheme that serves this number of outer locations?
  (Mr Berryman) There are two significant problems. The first is the cost. I think it would be fair comment to say that a scheme like this with longer tentacles may bring in more revenue but not enough to compensate for the very much increased costs. The problem with this project is really the affordability. It is a very expensive project, however you look at it, and making it more expensive would make it less likely to be built. The second point is really an operational problem which is the fact that you have lots of trains in the central area going to a diverse range of other destinations. If you have, say, four or five destination points at remote ends of the line, that means that only every fourth or fifth train can go to that remote end. In turn that means that passengers for that fourth or fifth train are standing on the platform waiting for their next train and platforms in deep Underground stations would become overcrowded and that is a dangerous situation. I can cite you a very good example at Victoria Station, which I am sure members of the Committee will be familiar with. The District line goes to four destinations, some trains for the Circle line, some trains go to Wimbledon, some go to Richmond and some go to Ealing Broadway, and you get very heavy crowding on the platforms there simply because people are waiting for the train which goes to their destination. Many destinations from deep level Underground stations are not a good idea. There is another issue in that the trains coming from those distant destinations, in order to get the high throughput of trains that we need through central London to make this scheme viable, have to present very accurately at the tunnel mouth. We only have a 30 or 40 second window within which the train needs to present and that is quite difficult even when we have got an almost self-contained system, but when you have trains coming from Cambridge and Ipswich and places like that, to get them to present on time to allow those high levels of throughput through the central area is something that has not been achieved anywhere yet, as far as we have been able to establish, in the world, and we have done a fairly comprehensive search to see if anybody can do that.

  6759. Ms Lieven: Finally, sir, to explain our position, a good deal was said by Mr Schabas about Reading, although it is difficult to see quite what that has to do with the Residents' Association of Mayfair. Obviously, there will be Petitioners later in the process when we will be coming to deal specifically with Reading, and I would suggest that it is both fair and sensible to reserve the response on the Reading issues until the people specifically interested in Reading are here.


21   Central London Route Options, Crossrail Environmental Statement, Chapter 6, p 117. (SCN-20060418-001). Back


 
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