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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