Examination of Witnesses (Questions 8560
- 8579)
8560. If you look at Mr Anderson's table 1—and
you do have to do some mathematics—and you look at page
17 of the working paper—which seems to be the one page which
does not have a number on it—you have base case without
Crossrail, and then, if you go to the next page, page 18, you
have with Crossrail.
(Mr Berryman) Yes.
8561. If you take one from the other, you get
an indication of the difference that Crossrail made when it was
running to Ebbsfleet.
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is correct.
8562. Mr Cameron: With that as a principle,
rather than spending a lot of time taking the Committee through
this I have done a note to myself showing the differences, so
to speak, which I am going to ask to be put on the screen, so
that we can then look at that.[96]
8563. Sir Peter Soulsby: We will get
copies of that later. Perhaps you would read the figures out.
8564. Mr Cameron: The idea of this, sir,
is to try to save time. If you go to the figures from Belvedere,
which are taken as an example, and you look at the population
increase which is used by Mr Anderson in his table 1, it is nought,
but, if it had run to Ebbsfleet, you would get 11,711. That is
taking the tables on pages 17 and 18 of the working paper, for
45 minutes. You can see the difference.
(Mr Berryman) Yes.
8565. It is the same for employment increase.
So the difference is there. Mr Anderson had, for 45 minutes, population
62,982. The difference, if it went to Ebbsfleet: 207,661.
(Mr Berryman) I think that what is happening
here is that there are three situations being considered. I think
there is some confusion between what the impacts are. If there
is no south-east branch at all, that is the figures that were
used, and the base case without Crossrail. With Crossrail, in
this example you have given me from the working paper, assumes
that there is a through-service from Crossrail to these areas.
If you take Belvedere, as you rightly say, it goes up from 607,000
for population within 60 minutes to over two million because of
that connection, but the comparison there is being made between
no branch to the South East at all and the through-service. There
is a third case, which is the reality that we are providing, which
is a branch of the South East with a high quality interchange
at Abbey Wood. If you took the 2.66 million people from Belvedere
who would have employment within 60 minutes on the Crossrail scheme,
we would now be saying that that 2.66 million people would have
employment within 62 and a half minutes, because we are adding
a two and a half minute penalty by making them change at Abbey
Wood. So it is dangerous to compare no scheme, nothing at all
south of the river, with a scheme which has through-running and
you have to distinguish between that and a scheme which involves
a modest time penalty for changing trains.
8566. We do have the figures. That is the entire
point. Mr Anderson has given regeneration benefits arising from
the Crossrail scheme. We can compare those with the benefit that
would have been achieved if it had been run to Ebbsfleet. Those
figures allow us to do that, do they not?
(Mr Berryman) It is hard to say exactly what
he is comparing, to be absolutely honest. I think we would have
to get him to explain it to you.
8567. That may be the right answer. Shall I
just put the point to you and then you can comment. Mr Anderson
is trying to show absolute increases in population and employment
catchments which will arise if the line runs to Abbey Wood, and
that takes account of the interchange penalty. The original business
case showed the difference between with Crossrail and without
when it did run to Belvedere. You have to compare the figures
in my table, and you can see benefit accruing with the scheme
at the moment as against the benefit that would have accrued with
the original scheme.
(Mr Berryman) Yes. I think what you are suggesting
is mathematical impossibility. You are saying that a two and a
half minute difference in journey time makes a difference of hundreds
of thousands of people within a 60-minute radius. That, frankly,
is impossible, as I think common sense would tell us. I would
be slightly unsure as to what David is trying to say he is comparing
in this letter, but I feel confident that the majority of the
benefits which are outlined in this working paper from 2003 would
still accrue even with this modest interchange penalty.
8568. I will leave it there, Mr Berryman. I
am comparing the figures for the two alternative cases, and, of
course, it is not a two and a half minute penalty, is it? Even
if two and a half minutes is the actual time of the interchange,
as Mr Hardie said, for the purposes of the transport planning,
you impose a penalty of five minutes to allow for the fact that
you have to interchange.
(Mr Berryman) That is a tool which is used
by transport planners in assessing demand. But this is not that.
This is actually talking about journey times. It is not talking
within what you are talking about, which is called "generalised
journey time", where there are penalties added for going
upstairs and for adding interchanges and so on. This is talking
about real time as measured by a clock. They are two different
things.
8569. Based entirely on your evidence, Mr Anderson's
other point, the additional jobs, of course Mr Donovan has already
made a comment upon that, so I am not going to ask him about that.
Can I just ask you about the reason for the decision to stop the
line at Abbey Wood. It was based on the key factor being described
in the Information Paper as service unreliability.
(Mr Berryman) That is correct, yes.
8570. That problem is capable of being overcome
by the engineering measures which include four-tracking Dartford
to Slade Green, is that right?
(Mr Berryman) Yes. That is one of the issues.
It might be worth taking a moment just to explain other issues.
If we could look at Mr Hardie's slide 23, I think it would be
quite useful in that context.[97]
On this slide you can see the arrangement of the lines between
Dartford and London. There are three lines between Dartford and
London. The top one, which is the one that goes to Abbey Wood
also goes through Woolwich Arsenal. The middle one, which is marked
as Barnehurst Station, is the one that goes through Bexley Heath.
The southern one, to Crayford Station, goes through Bexley. The
service pattern in this area is quite complicated. Some of the
trains come along from the Barnehurst branch and go in a loop
around to Abbey Wood and back into London. They are called "rounders".
There are various other combinations of service. Mr Hardie put
up a slide this morning which demonstrated just how fiendishly
complicated the area particularly around Dartford Junction is.
In order to make our proposed four-tracking scheme work, it would
involve a complete recasting of the timetable for the whole of
North Kent. That is not something which would be undertaken lightly.
It is something which would probably require many months, or years
even, of negotiation with the relevant authorities. Anyone who
is familiar with railway timetables will know how complicated
they are. So it is not just a question of doing the physical work,
it is also necessary to sort out in the long term the service
patterns and how things would fit together. It is because those
tasks are complicated—and Crossrail is already a very, very
complicated project—that we felt it was better to make that
a discreet, separate task to be done later, when Crossrail is
up and running and has demonstrated its reliability.
8571. So problem identified, solution identified,
but it then comes down to a question of cost and timing.
(Mr Berryman) It comes down to cost, timing
and complexity. As I just said a moment ago, Crossrail is a very,
very complex project. At some point you have to draw a line and
say, "We are not going to do this for now. We might do it
later but we are not going to do it now." In this case, this
is an area that is susceptible to that treatment because the arrangements
at Abbey Wood are being designed so that it is easy to extend
down to Ebbsfleet or more likely to Gravesend if necessary. As
we said earlier on, the rolling stock design will be making passive
provision for third rail power source, so it is something that
can easily be done later and it is something that, if you do it
now, it will just divert attention from the main part of the project
and it will divert resources which are very scarce towards something
which does not have to be done at this stage.
8572. I have noted down that. Could I ask you
about timing. The Environmental Statement was produced in February
2005, is that right?
(Mr Berryman) It was published then, yes. Obviously
it is a big document and it took a long time to prepare.
8573. No doubt it took a very long time to prepare
and there was considerable preparation before publication in February
2005.
(Mr Berryman) Indeed.
8574. The Ebbsfleet extension we can tell from
Information Paper A5, paragraph 4.1, was dropped in November 2004,
is that right?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is about right.
8575. If you go to Mr Hardie's slide 13, we
have your own Information Paper A5, paragraph 4.1: "The decision
to terminate Crossrail trains on the south-east corridor at Abbey
Wood rather than Ebbsfleet taken in November 2004..." That
is what you said.[98]
(Mr Berryman) Yes. I thought it
was a bit later. I seem to remember my Christmas holidays being
messed up by it, but, if it is November, yes, it could have been.
I must have had a long Christmas holiday that year.
8576. It means, whenever your Christmas holidays
were, that a lot of work must have been done on assessing the
environmental effects of the line from Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet
before that decision was taken, because it was only taken a couple
of months—about three months, at the most—before the
Environmental Statement was published.
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that was the time when the
final decision was taken and you will appreciate that a decision
like this requires ministerial approval and so on, but the idea
had been kicked around for quite a long time before that, probably
a period of five or six months at least.
8577. What it means is that if you suddenly
have to prepare an Environmental Statement for the line from Abbey
Wood to Ebbsfleet you would not be starting from scratch, would
you?
(Mr Berryman) That is true, some background
information is certainly collected.
8578. You may not be able to tell us this but
if the background information was collected and indeed no doubt
assembled, having been collected, has your team given any thought
as to how long it would now take to prepare an Environmental Statement
based on that background information?
(Mr Berryman) Based on other examples where
we have significant background information, which are in train
at the moment, and the additional provisions which have just been
completed, from kicking these things off to having something ready
to print—that is not printing it but having it ready to
print—probably takes about six or seven months. Can I just
amplify that a little? The scheme that was dropped in November
2004 did not include the four-tracking of course, so all that
stuff would have to be done from scratch.
8579. I would like to ask you now, bearing in
mind the timing, if one looks at the options put forward by Bexley,
bearing in mind the six to seven months—and these are Mr
Hardie's slides 3, 4 and 5—Option A would require an Environmental
Statement now, Option B would not so there would be no time penalty
for Option B because that would have to be done at the time of
any resolution before both Houses.[99]
(Mr Berryman) Of course if that
was the recommendation the order would have to be prepared subsequently
to all these proceedings, I guess, so it would not have to be
done now, no.
96 Committee Ref: A93, Tables contained in David Anderson's
Letter to Stephen Burke (SCN20060516-006). Back
97
Committee Ref: A88, Schematic of Existing Track Layout in Slade
Green to Dartford Area (BEXYLB-32005A-023). Back
98
Committee Ref: A88, CLRL Reasons for Terminating at Abbey Wood
(2) Crossrail Information Paper A5 Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet (BEXYLB-32005A-013). Back
99
Committee Ref: A88, Options A and B for Select Committee (BEXYLB-32005A-003
and -004). Back
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