Examination of Witnesses (Questions 12860
- 12879)
12860. That is 34.[4]
(Mr Berryman) You can see now
that there are five mainline services, five fast services offering
22- and 23-minute services, so they are still reasonably consistent
with what was before. The main difference is that the 8.03 service
which is currently run as a fast-line service would actually become
a Crossrail service and would go into Paddington high level. That
could conceivably become a mainline service as well and that would
give a faster journey time, but you can see that the sort of maximum
journey time we have got there is 42 minutes and we have got quite
a number of 32s, so, on balance, the service remains roughly the
same to Maidenhead. Twyford, the current situation, as I understand
it, is that there are in the peak hour seven services running
into Paddington and five of them are fast or semi-fast, but, of
these five, two of them are on the main line, so they are not
affected by Crossrail in any event. We will be replacing the three
remaining services with two semi-fast services, so there will
be a loss of one train service from Twyford in the morning peak
hour. There will, however, also be a service which is a diesel
service which will go as far as Slough and turn back at Slough.
The reason for this is the significant inward commuting into Reading
from the Twyford and Maidenhead direction and we would expect
to provide at least four trains an hour to take people into Reading
from that direction.
12861. When you say "we", that will
not be a Crossrail service, but you mean that the capacity will
be there for that service?
(Mr Berryman) The capacity will be there for
that service. It will probably be First Great Western or their
successors at the time and those trains will of course go beyond
Reading, so we expect, for example, the semi-fast services we
are providing from Paddington high level to form an onward service
to Oxford, as is the case now with the current timetable, so that
will stay as is.
12862. Guards Club Park, again we heard a lot
about this yesterday. Just explain in a couple of sentences why
your view is that taking materials in by barge to the bridge rather
than from Guards Club Park is not a frightfully sensible idea.
(Mr Berryman) Well, I mentioned yesterday the
difficulties that that causes and I think one important point
I ought to make in response to what Mrs May said is that, even
if we were to use a barge for delivery, we would only be using
it for the last 100 yards or 100 metres of the journey. We will
be still having to deliver the materials to that barge at some
other point on the riverbank by lorry, so the difference it would
make in terms of environmental impact would be minimal in the
extreme. It is also worth pointing out that there are two piers
actually on the edge of Guards Club Park which would have to be
served by lorry in any event and we are really only talking about
whether the island should be served or not. As I kept saying yesterday,
the scaffolding works on the island are of a domestic scale and
they are not massive works. We are not talking about great big
deliveries of scaffolding at all.
12863. Can you just remind us how long the delivery
of scaffolding will take?
(Mr Berryman) Well, we think, including the
delivery of some site caravans, that it will take about six days
to get the whole lot into place.
12864. Impact on the Brunel Bridge—remind
the Committee why a third rail is not a preferred option here.
(Mr Berryman) Again I gave evidence on this
point yesterday. It is a very longstanding policy that there would
be no third-rail railways other than extensions to existing systems
in the UK. It is primarily for reasons of track safety to track
workers and also to members of the public who are in these places,
trespassing, but having isolated a stretch of third rail in what
is otherwise a 25kV railway would be even more dangerous than
having it in the southern region where everyone is used to dealing
with a third rail.
12865. A final point was a general one, the
impact on Maidenhead and more particularly on the aspirations
that the Council has for a transport interchange at Maidenhead
Station. To some degree, this is an issue we are going to come
back to with the Royal Borough when they return because they did
not finish yesterday, but is it your understanding that Crossrail
is preventing the provision of such a transport interchange at
Maidenhead Station?
(Mr Berryman) I cannot see how it is, no. The
works we are proposing are to expand the station somewhat to improve
it more than anything else and substantially in the same site
as is occupied by the station now.
12866. Ms Lieven: I think that is all
I need Mr Berryman to cover at this stage.
12867. Sir Peter Soulsby: Mrs May, do
you want to cross-examine?
Cross-examined by Mrs May
12868. Mrs May: Am I right in thinking
that, when Crossrail was originally proposed, Reading was going
to be the western terminus?
(Mr Berryman) A good question—when was
Crossrail originally proposed? Yes, Reading has been in and out
from time to time. Certainly the scheme which was brought forward
in 1992 did have Reading as the western terminus.
12869. If I could ask about the timetable which
was shown, the timetable I had previously seen had a 41-minute
journey time from Maidenhead to Paddington and I think we have
now got a journey time of 32 minutes. I wonder if you can tell
me what has changed.
(Mr Berryman) Of course we are working with
a timetable as will be put up next week. The 22-minute services
first of all are trains which are going to Paddington high level,
as are the 32-minute services. Generally speaking, the range of
39 to 40 minutes are trains which will go down into the Crossrail
tunnels, so there will be two kinds of service running to Maidenhead.
There will be a diesel service not dissimilar to what is there
now, although all of the slower trains will be taken out of that
timetable, and the slow trains will be subsumed into the Crossrail
network.
12870. You are talking about Crossrail trains
taking 32 minutes as opposed to 41 minutes?
(Mr Berryman) No, the 32- and 22-minute trains
will be going into Paddington high level.
12871. So it will still be the case that all
the Crossrail services from Maidenhead will be taking 41 minutes?
(Mr Berryman) I think the fastest is 38, but
in that range, yes.
12872. So that is longer than many of the services
today.
(Mr Berryman) No, there are a significant number
of slower, all-station services from Maidenhead now. If you put
the previous chart up, we can see that some of those go to 49
and 50 minutes.
12873. They do indeed, but not many people would
actually choose to take those.
(Mr Berryman) No, indeed, but passengers from
other intermediate stations between Maidenhead and London would
choose to use those.
12874. Could I ask about the decision that Crossrail
would be a slow, stopping service from Maidenhead and what consideration
was given to the possibility of a fast and semi-fast service on
Crossrail from Maidenhead to Paddington as against, say, Slough
with intervening services which are slow and stopping services?
(Mr Berryman) Well, because of the need to
serve Twyford, which you have drawn attention to, and the inward
commuting into Reading, it is necessary for us to provide some
services beyond the limit of our electrification at Maidenhead
and those obviously need to be diesel services. It makes sense
that train services which are serving Twyford, which is quite
a long way out, should form the fast services. You could do it
the other way round. You could say that we will make all the trains
from Twyford slow and make the trains from Maidenhead fast and
put them down to Crossrail, but that would not appear to me to
be very desirable for your constituents. What we have been trying
to do throughout the timetabling exercise is not materially make
anyone worse off than they are now. That is the whole starting
point of how the timetable was drawn up and of course for people
going to central London to significantly improve their position.
12875. I am sorry, but I may have misunderstood.
Setting aside the mainline services, the diesel services, which
currently exist and might be expected to continue in the future,
was any consideration given to the Crossrail services, some of
those services being fast and semi-fast into Paddington because
it seems to me that the whole point of Crossrail is that it benefits
people? If all you are saying is that, at best, people will get
the same service as they have got at the moment, then there is
no benefit, so why disrupt Maidenhead for no benefit? What consideration
was given to some Crossrail services being fast and semi-fast
into Paddington?
(Mr Berryman) We had this argument, I guess,
over Shenfield in the east. The terminus station on the line is
always going to be difficult to give it a big improvement, particularly
when that terminus already has a reasonably good service. The
idea of the service is not just to serve Maidenhead, but to serve
all people who travel in on the Great Western line from as far
out as Maidenhead and to do that we need to provide a mixture
of fast, semi-fast and slow, all-station services. It makes sense
to have the fast services coming from further out because that
is where people want the quickest journey time. When you get further
into London, the convenience of not having to change at Paddington
becomes much more significant because the overall journey is shorter
in any event. If you were to make the Twyford and Maidenhead diesel
services into the slow services and the Crossrail services into
the fast services, that would be materially disbenefiting your
constituents.
12876. I am not suggesting that, Mr Berryman.
I am sorry if you are maybe misunderstanding here my questions.
The benefit of Crossrail to passengers in Maidenhead is the ability
to get fast into Paddington, but not to have to change a train
in order to access the rest of London. Would you agree that for
somebody in Maidenhead the benefit of Crossrail should be that
they can get into Paddington at the same time as they do today,
but then not have to change trains in order to access the rest
of London?
(Mr Berryman) In an ideal world, if we could
do all things for all men, yes, but if you think about your constituents
making a journey from Maidenhead to, say, Liverpool Street or
Canary Wharf, their way of doing that would be to get a semi-fast
train as far as Ealing Broadway where all the semi-fast trains
stop, get out of the train there, get on the next train which
will be following a minute or two behind, and then be taken straight
through to Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf and the like, so they
would have a very much improved service compared to that which
they have now where they have to get to Paddington and go through
what can only be described as a very unsatisfactory London Underground
interchange and a very indirect service to get to destinations
in the City or east London.
12877. So they would get on to the diesel mainline
service from Maidenhead and change on to Crossrail?
(Mr Berryman) They would get on what we call
the `residual diesel service', the semi-fast trains which go from
Maidenhead, and change at Ealing Broadway.
12878. So what is the benefit of Crossrail for
Maidenhead passengers?
(Mr Berryman) It speeds his or her journey
to and from the City or from the eastern part of London.
12879. But not if you use Crossrail from Maidenhead?
(Mr Berryman) If you use Crossrail from Maidenhead,
that would be another alternative. It would be a slower journey,
but you would not need to get on and off trains. That is the advantage.
4 Crossrail Ref: P102, Projected Train service from
Maidenhead to Paddington 0400 to 1100 Monday to Friday with Crossrail
(WINSRB-14604D-034). Back
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