Examination of Witnesses (Questions 12720
- 12739)
12720. Sir Peter Soulsby: Yes, it is,
but we need to do that first.
12721. Lady Bright: I am so sorry.
12722. Sir Peter Soulsby: I am sorry,
I should perhaps have asked you whether you wanted to call a witness.
If you do, let us go back and do that and enable you to call your
witness.
12723. Lady Bright: I am so sorry.
12724. Sir Peter Soulsby: Can you stand
down for a little while, Mr Walters, and allow Lady Bright to
call her witness. I do not think we were aware of this so it may
be we need to swear your witness in.
12725. Lady Bright: Yes. It may sound
a bit irregular because the witness is my husband but he has got
much more relevant expertise than I have as a former Chairman
of London Transport. This is not a criminal case, is it, so presumably
it is all right.
12726. Sir Peter Soulsby: I am sure it
is.
Sir Keith Bright, sworn
Examined by Lady Bright
12727. Lady Bright: Perhaps you could
introduce yourself.
(Sir Keith Bright) I am apparently required
to tell you my qualifications and experience so I will do that
very quickly. I have a degree in physics, maths and chemistry,
followed by another bachelors degree in honours chemistry, followed
by a doctorate in surface science. My experience is as one of
a merchant banker in Hill Samuel a long time ago; two, I ran a
giant company in the Far East called Sime Darby; three, running
London Transport as Chairman for seven years and, finally, running
Chelsea and Westminster Health Care NHS Trust as founder chairman
for another seven years. I have spent most of my time between
the public and private sectors.
12728. Lady Bright: Residents are very
keen to have a noise barrier across the wall which Crossrail have
told us they do not want to give us, a permanent noise barrier
to be introduced before the works begin. Could you perhaps explain
why you disagree with Crossrail's view that it cannot be done?
(Sir Keith Bright) There are a number of aspects
to this. First of all a noise barrier depends on the height, the
surface and the type of materials that are used before it can
work effectively. At the moment we have a wall between Westbourne
Park Villas and the railway. It is a slightly curved wall in as
much as it is not quite vertical on one side, it is pretty vertical
on the other side. There is a rule of thumb which says if you
cannot see the origin of the noise you cannot hear it. It is a
very trivial thing because it is clearly nonsense because you
can obviously hear lots of noise which you cannot see the origin
of. It is a first approximation. The other thing is that if you
want to live at the top of a house and you are looking down at
a railway, essentially if you cannot see where the noise is coming
from then it is not a factor that will be taken much into consideration
by a wall between you and the sound. If you want to prevent the
sound from reaching you, the rule of thumb says you need a very
high wall so you cannot see where the sound is coming from essentially.
From where we are the wall would have to be increased vertically
to an enormous height, almost to the height of the house itself.
That is actually nonsense because you can get curve barriers which
are parabolic or in an arc in the circle which can actually increase
the effective height of the wall. The other thing is to say that
I think nothing has been done at all at any time since the railway
was built to constrain the noise coming from the railway. We have
tried very hard to get attention drawn to this but to no avail
at all. The second thing is the type of surface that is used is
just common bricks so all sorts of absorbent surfaces can be used
to minimise the noise. The point also about noise is it is not
just the ambient noise that worries anybody very much it is the
peak noise, as Lady Bright said. It is all very well, you can
live in Dartmoor, if you like, and be very quiet but when the
Express goes by at 3.30 in the morning it makes your hair stand
on end and jumps you out of bed, that is the point I think we
want to make. It also been said by Crossrail that the trains that
they will supply will be very, very quiet indeed, and I am sure
they will. They will be on continuously welded rail, unlike the
rail we have at the moment, and I am sure the rolling stock will
be modern and pretty quiet. However they will make noise, it is
nonsense to think they will not make noise and it will add to
the noise we have already which is quite high. 48 trains an hour
is rather a lot of trains to add to the peaks of the noise we
get and the more trains there are the more likelihood of peaks
being heard.
12729. Lady Bright: Do you think there
are any specific noise reduction measures which can be taken?
(Sir Keith Bright) There are a lot of noise
reduction measures that can be made on all railway lines but very
few are used. If you can attack the noise at source then you do
not need barriers at all. If you have the noise at source from
trains essentially it is the noise between the wheels and the
rail. When you get above a certain speed I am told by an expert
the engine noise tends to be very low and the noise between the
wheel and the rail is very high. You can have small barriers which
will impede the line of vision, if you like, between the eye and
the wheels, it need be no more than three or four feet high but
when it is the right material it would impede the noise greatly.
12730. Lady Bright: Is there anything
else of that sort?
(Sir Keith Bright) Yes, there is a company
called Corus, I am sure everyone in business will know about Corus,
they are a steel company, they have been working on noise reduction
measures. They have developed a product which can be attached
to the rails which kills enough sound to be the equivalent of
something like six decibels. If you remember the noise levels
double, each three decibels. These particular products they have
developed which are now in situ in Holland and Sweden and are
now being used in Germany will reduce the noise enormously from
the rail itself and the vibration from the rail which of course
stops the transmittent noise under the ground as well as overground.
That is something I have not heard from anybody dealing with the
project at all. Perhaps I can just add to this one that in California
they spend one million dollars a mile on sound insulation; in
Europe they average 600,000 euros per kilometre which is roughly
the same amount and here in Paddington they do not spend a bean.
We feel it is a very good point to use and if I understand it
£80 million is saved moving from one place to another, from
Romford to Old Oak Park. A good deal of that would be very useful
to insulate the sound in the area that we are talking about.
12731. Lady Bright: Is there anything
you are burning to suggest which may work well?
(Sir Keith Bright) Just one thing, I do not
know whether this project will go ahead or not, I have heard various
views about it and I read the submission by Mr Michael Schabas
which I was deeply impressed by. If this project at all falls
by the wayside might I suggest that everybody goes back to the
report of Mr Schabas and re-reads it and looks up this whole project
from scratch again because I do believe it is a wrong route in
the wrong way. I think Crossrail is an extremely good thing to
have and I think we need more than one Crossrail in London but
I do believe that we have got so far down the line now that this
project should not stop but I do not think it is the most optimal
one you will find. One final thing is this turn round discussion.
I think two-thirds of the train will go to Paddington and be turned
around and go back again, out of the remaining one-third, one-sixth
I think will go to Maidenhead and one-sixth will go to Heathrow.
One wonders why you need Crossrail at all. There is a perfectly
good scheme there already in the Heathrow Express which is running
at fairly low capacity at the moment. That could be increased
enormously, they have a train every quarter of an hour but it
could be doubled. It would carry all the people you need to carry
and if the Crossrail project were to stop at Paddington, you could
whiz up by escalator on to the Heathrow Express and then you would
not need to extend it to Heathrow or Maidenhead and you will save
an awful lot of money. These are rather technical points, I know.
Earth has to be removed from the tunnels and you need a way in
for that. Finally, when we talked about the steady state of Crossrail
once it is finished, say 48 trains an hour, what I have not mentioned
is the immense engineering project to make it. That will be terribly
noisy and it will be dusty. I think that is something we have
to look at very much from the point of view of noise and we want
noise barriers whilst it is going on. Since the noise barriers
we hope will be put up while the work is going on they might as
well remain permanent noise barriers to make the life of people
who live locally much more civilised than has been. Thank you.
12732. Sir Peter Soulsby: Sorry, Ms Leiven,
did you want to cross-examine.
12733. Ms Lieven: No, I think the sensible
way forward is for me to call Mr Walters and then Mr Taylor.
The witness withdrew
12734. Sir Peter Soulsby: Just let me
double check: Lady Bright, you do not have any other witnesses
do you?
12735. Lady Bright: No.
12736. Sir Peter Soulsby: Back to Mr
Walters.
12737. Ms Lieven: Sir, can I explain,
I do not think the Committee has heard from Mr Walters before,
in the excitement of introducing a new witness to the Committee
I did not mention that Mr Walters is the chief engineer for Cross
London Rail Links Limited. He has many, many years' experience,
30 years in the design and construction of major civil engineering
infrastructure; examples such as Channel Tunnel, Docklands Light
Railway to Bank, Channel Tunnel Rail Link and various Metro schemes
in the Far East. He works with Mr Berryman on the engineering
and we thought it would be fun for the Committee to have a new
face tonight as well as fun for Mr Walters to give evidence.
Mr Anthony Walters, Sworn
Examined by Ms Lieven
12738. Ms Lieven: Fortunately there is
very little I want to ask Mr Walters. The principal point is that
of why we are having a turn back facility at Paddington given
the change in the depot strategy from sending the trains on to
Old Oak Common. Can you just explain the thought process behind
that, please?
(Mr Walters) First, if I can just
explain what the turn back facility does and then go on to the
reason for its location. As has been outlined by previous witnesses
we have 24 trains an hour in the peak going through the tunnels
in each direction and ten of those continue on to destinations
such as Heathrow, Slough and Maidenhead. We have to turn 14 of
them back close to Paddington. The turn round facility, in order
to operate efficiently, needs two through lines and we have chosen
to take those lines round the north and the south of the facility
and then the two sidings where the trains stop and are checked
before they go back into service are in the centre. The turn back
facility needs to be wide enough to accommodate four tracks and
for the platforms for people to be de-trained if they go beyond
Paddington for the drivers to inspect the train, walk through
the train and so on. We had to find a location that was wide enough
for the four tracks and the platforms and we also wanted it to
be close to Paddington because the idea was to turn the trains
around at Paddington not half way down towards Heathrow. We did
look at Old Oak Common and indeed the new depot strategy, as you
know, has increased our use of the land at Old Oak Common. We
looked again when we revised the depot strategy to see whether
we could come up with a different solution. Old Oak Common is
some two kilometres beyond the Westbourne Park turn round facility
so should anybody be unfortunate not to get off the train at Paddington
they would be whistled away to Old Oak Common should we use that.
Perhaps more importantly to get into Old Oak Common without having
conflicting moves is for the trains coming from the West into
London having to either wait or for the trains going into the
depot from Paddington having to wait to go across the lines, we
would have to build quite a substantial dive under to take either
the main lines for Crossrail underneath the tracks going into
Old Oak Common or vice versa. There would be quite a considerable
expenditure to construct a dive under at the throat of Old Oak
Common depot which of course is operational at the moment and
will continue to be operational while they are constructing Crossrail.
We really reconfirm our view that we have the width at Westbourne
Park to provide the turn round facility there.
12739. Ms Lieven: You mentioned the dive
under to get to Old Oak Common, how easy would that be to construct.
(Mr Walters) I think it would be very difficult
because, as I say, Old Oak Common is an operational depot at the
moment. It is quite constrained on the entry and exit anyway.
A dive under would have to start before the entry to the depot
and then come up in the depot. We will be looking at constructing
part of that under operational tracks similar to the sort of arguments
that we have rehearsed here about constructing tunnels underneath
the throat at Paddington Station. Constructing underneath switches
and crossings is a much more sensitive activity than constructing
under straight main line track such as we might have done at Romford
for the Romford depot.
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