Examination of Witnesses (Questions 9800
- 9819)
9800. One of the constant criticisms which has
been made this morning is that enough time and effort has not
been spent looking in detail at this particular area. Just putting
aside what proportion of the total project this area comprises,
can you give the Committee some idea of how much time and effort
has gone into this?
(Mr Berryman) Well, for the short section between
Liverpool Street and Whitechapel about 25 per cent of the total
resource spent on alignment design has been spent on that short
section. It is over 20,000 man hours for Mott MacDonald, our principal
consulting engineers, at least an equivalent amount for our other
consultants who do subsidiary work to that and probably half as
much again for our own staff, so it has been a very considerable
number of nine years which has been spent on looking at the alignments
in this particular area.
9801. Leading on from that, it was constantly
being suggested by the Spitalfields Society that you had retrofitted
the assessments to preconceptions. Would you like to comment on
that in the context of the design process and the assessment process
that was carried out, Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) One of the features of the design
of anything, and I am sure Mr Wheeler would know about this probably
better than I, is that you have a first stab at design and you
assess it against the criteria that you set yourself to see if
you need the criteria. In other words, you do an appraisal of
what you have come up with as the first design and if you can
improve on that, you keep improving on it. If you get to a point
where you are appraising something and it is meeting all the requirements
you have set and there does not appear to be a better way, that
is the end of the design process and from then on it is just a
task of working it up into detail and construction drawings. I
should add that the environmental impact assessment can only really
be finalised when you have got a design to assess, so the formal
document that has been produced and you have seen cannot really
be done until the design is, to all intents and purposes, complete,
but the work that goes on behind that formal document is being
done all the time and is an integral and inherent part of the
design process.
9802. The Environmental Statement or at least
the first and main Environmental Statement was published with
the Bill in February of last year, February 2005. Was any technical
work done to support the decisions that were being made and to
consider the impacts of the proposals before the Environmental
Statement was produced?
(Mr Berryman) Yes. In fact all of the work
which was described and summarised in the Environmental Statement,
it goes without saying, was done before the Environmental Statement
was produced. You cannot produce the Environmental Statement unless
you have got something to appraise. The process of fixing the
design and doing the environment appraisal is a continuous one
and it is an iterative loop which goes on right until the design
is finalised and the Environmental Statement can be produced.
9803. The next question which runs on from that
is in terms of the retrofit argument that consultation was effectively
a worthless exercise because all outcomes were predetermined.
Did consultation lead to any changes in any part of the scheme,
Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, it led to quite a number
of changes in different parts of the scheme. I suppose the biggest
single one was in the change to the location of the portal which
is now in Pudding Mill Lane. That was moved about one kilometre
further east as a result of the consultation process. Other areas
were to do with shafts in the Woolwich area and issues about station
design in quite a number of locations which led to changes to
the design because people were able to point out options which
we had either not considered or factors which we had not fully
appreciated were important when we had done our initial design,
so in those cases we have always changed the design.
9804. Can I also ask you this: is the scheme
currently before the Committee identical to the base case which
Crossrail published when it published its business case two years
ago?
(Mr Berryman) No, it is not. As a result of
various things which have happened since that business case was
published two years ago, there have been a number of very significant
changes to the design, notably the dropping of a complete branch
out in the west of London.
9805. And, as the Committee knows, the termination
of the proposals at Abbey Wood rather than Ebbsfleet?
(Mr Berryman) That is right, yes.
9806. Can we just put up the report on consultation
and can we zoom in please at the bottom right-hand corner.[49]
We can see there that this is the overall Crossrail report on
the consultation that was carried out in terms of visitor centres
and we can see for round one and round two the numbers of visitors.
Mr Berryman, you can confirm this in a moment if you need to,
but it is clear that, of all the London boroughs, Tower Hamlets
had the greatest number of total visitors visiting its centres
for both rounds of consultation?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is true.
In addition to that and not part of this round, we set up an information
centre nearby which was open for a period of several weeks.
9807. Can I then turn please to the question
of whether any consideration was given to options other than Hanbury
Street, and ask Mr Fry to put up Supplementary Environmental Statement
Volume 1 of 2005, page 624 and could we go to paragraph 6.2.5
just to set the context.[50]
We can there see at 6.2.4 and 6.2.5 that the options initially
considered are set out in the main ES, that the Hanbury Street
shaft location was initially fixed after reviewing six other potential
sites in the area. It then refers to the opposite page and figure
6.1.[51]
Can you just describe briefly what the position was?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, the sites that
we considered there were Hanbury Street, which was number seven,
which is the site that was selected, number one is the cash-and-carry
store which was across the road from Hanbury Street, number eight
is part of the old bottling plant of the Trumans Brewery site
and number five is another part of that site. Four, three and
two are smaller sites which are located within a residential area
and they are all warehouses or buildings of that sort, non-residential
buildings. You can see, I think, even by inspection of the map,
but certainly by inspection on the ground, that those three small
sites, two, three and four, are just not really ever going to
be suitable on residential streets and so on. We later considered
site six which is marked there, which is the Woodseer Street site
which we have been talking about. Basically, what we found with
all of these sites, one, six, eight and five, was that they introduced
curves in the alignment which were sharper than the curves which
our preferred design standard calls for.
9808. And that was an issue which was dealt
with in the Tower Hamlets hearing last week?
(Mr Berryman) Indeed.
9809. Although in the context of Woodseer Street,
a new alignment option was looked at, you explained to the Committee
last week what the engineering issues were for piling it, the
Bishops Square development and the issues that arose with regard
to that?
(Mr Berryman) Indeed, yes. If the Bishops Square
development was not there, it would be possible to generate an
alignment for Woodseer Street which was adequate, probably still
not as good as Hanbury Street, but adequate.
9810. Keeping that plan there for the moment
just because it allows us to look at the comparative locations,
it was being suggested that, by reference to the layout for Hanbury
Street, lorries could not be easily got on to the site. Are any
of those layout options, A to C, set in stone or immutable in
any way?
(Mr Berryman) Not at all. Indeed the form of
development above the shaft head is not fixed yet in any event.
The decision as to whether to have sub-surface plant rooms or
above-surface plant rooms has not been made. All of those things
will influence the site layout. The arrangements for traffic and
so on are all still to be finalised as what we are showing is
illustrative at this stage, and, generally speaking, we are only
looking at this stage at outline planning, not detailed.
9811. I am just going to ask you to look at
the map for lorry routing please, which is the main Environmental
Statement Volume 8, map C8(iv).[52]
While that is being put up, we saw from the photographs produced
by the Spitalfields Society a number of articulated vehicles on
the Woodseer Street site. Is Spital Street and the route which
is to be used by Crossrail traffic already trafficked by lorries
at all?
(Mr Berryman) It is indeed. The
several times I have been down there I have seen very heavy lorries
going up and down Spital Street presumably to park in the back
of the Trumans Brewery site, though I am not quite sure where
they go.
9812. In terms of the very largest lorries,
can you give the Committee a feel for how many times they will
be required and what they will be required for?
(Mr Berryman) I think it is extremely unlikely
that any lorries of the dimensions shown on Mr Wheeler's photograph
would be used by us. The material that would be delivered by articulated
lorry, if it is delivered in that way, would be reinforcing steel.
The majority of the deliveries would be of concrete, which would
be in an ordinary concrete truck mixer, and empty lorries coming
to take spoil away from the site. Flat-bed lorries of the type
shown, as I say, would be used mainly for delivering reinforcing
steel and possibly some other specialist equipment, but these
would be relatively rare visits. I think on our histogram we are
showing one a day for the duration of most of the works with possibly
two a day for a few months, but I would be very surprised if our
heavy lorries exceeded that number.
9813. Here we have at last the plan showing
the lorry routing up towards Hanbury Street from Greatorex Street
and then up Spital Street, Allen Gardens, Buxton Street and back.
Concern was expressed that, if there were problems, traffic might
somehow get into more local streets, Brick Lane and the like.
Could you give me your views on that please.
(Mr Berryman) Certainly our traffic would not.
There is a very well established code of practice which is used
by many, many sites and construction companies to follow prescribed
lorry routes. You will have seen signs as you go around the country,
"Construction traffic this way" and so on, and they
are usually rigidly adhered to, so we can be reasonably confident
that our lorries will use the routes shown there with the arrows.
I guess what Mr Wheeler and Mr Adams might have been concerned
about is that in some way we would block the road so that Hanbury
Street, which runs one way from left to right in this slide, would
get blocked up, but, as I have said, the number of big lorries
that would be making deliveries to the Hanbury Street site would
be very small and would be controlled by banksmen. There is no
question of having traffic lights or a single line blocking off
part of the road there, but it would be that a lorry would just
come in, quickly unload and then go away again.
9814. I just then wanted to ask you about implications
for the footpath which were raised. Can we focus in on the right-hand
side of the page please. This is Volume 8 still of the Environmental
Statement dealing with the assessment of the Hanbury Street worksite,
9.3.5 and 9.3.6.[53]
We can see here that the Environmental Statement specifically
considers the implications of the use of the Hanbury Street site
for the footway and we can see that there will be closure for
the works, pedestrians will be diverted, a zebra crossing to provide
a safe criss-cross point and the like, so the issue is dealt with
in the Environmental Statement.
(Mr Berryman) Indeed.
9815. Are Tower Hamlets content with that as
an issue?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, they appear to be.
9816. Finally, the question of working hours
was raised. Certain assumptions appear in the table that was referred
to this morning. What is the current position on working hours,
Mr Berryman?
(Mr Berryman) Well, we are trying to develop
a policy which will apply across the whole of London, across all
the local authority areas. Westminster City Council is the lead
authority in this matter and we are getting very close to an agreement
with them which is likely to be along the lines that working hours
will be eight in the morning until six in the evening, normal
working hours. That is going to be hopefully finalised in the
next few weeks and that will apply across the whole of the project,
not just this area.
9817. Finally, just flowing from that, it was
suggested that if there is working during the night and, as Mr
Philpott kindly pointed out, underground working 24 hours, would
high levels of illumination have to spill upwards and illuminate
the surrounding houses?
(Mr Berryman) No, they do not. The lighting
levels that would be required would be at ground level and, with
modern lighting design, it is possible to achieve those kinds
of levels without very excessive light spillage. The whole site
would not need to be illuminated at that level and it would only
be the walkways to allow access to the shaft and so on.
9818. Mr Berryman, thank you very much.
Cross-examined by Mr Philpott
9819. Mr Philpott: I am going to start
off with just some matters of general chronology, if I can, picking
up a point you touched on in your evidence-in-chief about the
order in which decisions were made relative to the environmental
information which was available. Do you recall that?
(Mr Berryman) Yes.
49 Crossrail Ref: P89, London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Consultation Figures (SCN-20060613-008). Back
50
Crossrail Supplementary Environmental Statement, Hanbury Street
shaft, paras 6.2.5-6.2.6, http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk
(SCN-20060613-009). Back
51
Crossrail Ref: P89, Cash & Carry Warehouse Site (SCN-20060613-010). Back
52
Crossrail Environmental Statement, Volume 8, Whitechapel Station,
Transport and Access-Map C8(iv) http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk
(LINEWD-ES44-014). Back
53
Crossrail Environmental Statement, Volume 8, Hanbury Street worksite,
paras 9.3.5 and 9.3.6 http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk (LINEWD-ES44-004). Back
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