Examination of Witnesses (Questions 13620
- 13639)
13620. What I found particularly useful was
Mr Chapman's exhibit 05 where he overlaid the proposal 4C on the
existing structures. I found that quite helpful in identifying
what was possible as a result of capping those railway vaults.
The pillar remains there and it shows three additional gates.
There is a little bit of space left but it would be much more
than one beyond that.
(Mr Spencer) I do not think we disagree.
13621. I am trying to focus on what the benefits
are of 4C as against 3B and it is really in that corner where
you get some extra gates. If there is an improved 4C, it is possible
there is also an improved 3B.
(Mr Spencer) I am not disagreeing. I am not
an engineer and I am certain that there are better schemes that
could come forward. I suppose I should say something on option
7. I am not speaking entirely to my brief because you did not
ask me to say anything about option 7. It obviously has appeared
very late in the day. There is a substantial extent of agreement
between the Promoter and the Petitioner with regard to large aspects
of the work that has been done. We did get very close to having
a substantial agreed statement to present to you today but unfortunately
time did not allow that. I built up a box file yesterday of the
information that was sent to me regarding this case. A lot of
that information relates to option 7. It has not been subjected
to any scrutiny by the Petitioners in terms of their demand forecasting
and the key assumptions that were built into the Legion model
that you have seen today. We have been party to that but please
be aware that that is not a jointly conducted piece of work. I
would have severe reservations about point M as it has become
known with the extent of conflict at that location with passengers
trying to get to and from the Central Line as well as the enormous
flows that you may generate from the Metropolitan Line, trying
to get to street by what is a superb route, as well as all the
passengers coming to and from Crossrail. That creates a severe
conflict of location and, as we have recognised, the proposal
currently as far as the SOR is concerned is only to remove very
small parts of it. As far as the facility itself is concerned,
I would see almost that the gateline requirements are reversed.
There should be 21 gates in option 7 and 12 in the rest of the
station in terms of what people want to do. The vast majority
of people want to be at street and this scheme does give them
that opportunity to get to street very quickly and easily. That
is the vast majority of people who come to ticket hall B. They
are not catching trains. Thirdly, there is obviously a severe
risk with option 7. If it were to be shown that queues will develop
back into the Crossrail corridor itself with the additional gates,
there are no effective run-offs between those gates and that corridor.
As soon as you have any congestion in that corridor, it will prevent
people getting to and from Crossrail, which is the whole purpose
of it being there in the first place, particularly for passengers
going to Crossrail from the National Rail concourse.
13622. Chairman: Could you give us a
note of your fears over the conflict situation that may arise
in relation to 7.
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely.
13623. Ms Lieven: I am not intending
to cross-examine. On that point you made, sir, there are points
on the conflict point and where the development potential is and
so on which relates back to the evidence. Perhaps we can respond
to Mr Spencer's note?
13624. Chairman: We would take note of
his fears and we would welcome your responses.
13625. Ms Lieven: I will deal with it
in that way.
The witness withdrew
13626. In response to some of the questions
Mr Laurence has put today, it is worth thinking about why we are
here today. Mr Laurence referred on a number of occasions to the
letter that you, sir, wrote to us and the petitioners. I am going
to assume that the Committee's concern is to ensure that there
is adequate provision for passengers at Liverpool Street now and
in the foreseeable future rather than that we are constrained
to take a very legalistic approach to your letter and we are only
looking within ticket hall B physically. Assuming that that is
what the Committee is concerned about, the correct starting point
is what is the number as a base.
13627. We say that 42,000 is already a high
figure. It is 40 per cent above the observed figure in 2001. On
our exhibit three you can see that if you take 42,000 and add
the 35 per cent we have planned for a total of 89 per cent above
the existing use of Liverpool Street. We say that is on anybody's
analysis a high case.
13628. Taking another 15 per cent becomes unrealistic.
That is 117 per cent above observed and we say it is most unlikely
that you would manage to squeeze that many people on the trains
in the peak three hour level. I do not know how often the Committee
travels on the Central Line in peak hours. I do every day and
the idea, even taking the Crossrail capacity, of anything like
that increase on existing LUL stock seems pretty unrealistic to
me.
13629. I turn then to the options. Option 3,
and I cannot stress this too much, achieves acceptable performance
at 2016 and at 35 per cent when tested against Pedroute and Legion.
We accept, and Mr Berryman accepted it straight off—we could
have saved a lot of time this morning—that in terms of the
static gate calculation in the standards it does not meet the
standards, but that is just one part of the design process. I
would simply rely on what Mr Chapman said about designing the
static point of view and then optimising the provision, and that
is exactly what we have done. As Mr Berryman said, what is the
point of all these very expensive models, except to keep me entertained,
if it is not that you do your static calculations and then you
test against the computer models? If you just did the calculations
you could forget the whole modelling exercise. A good example
of that, with great respect to Sir Peter, is the point he made
a few minutes ago. You could get more gates in. If that is what
you want to do there are ways of optimising the layout at more
detailed stages which overcome some of the static problems. These
things can all be worked on over the period.
13630. As far as sticking to the statics as
they are at the moment and the gatelines are concerned, we have
every confidence, after very expensive discussions with LUL about
the layout of this station, that we can achieve the appropriate
concessions where we need them.
13631. Following on option 3, Mr Laurence, I
think intending to be dismissive, says I call it "cheap and
cheerful". Actually, sir, cheap and cheerful can be a good
thing if it works. That is the question. One great advantage of
option 3 is that it minimises the disruption to existing passengers,
those very passengers that the City and British Land are so concerned
about. It minimises the impact on 42,000 people travelling through
here at the design year. It has got to be a very good thing from
that point of view.
13632. On option 4C, again I am very happy to
rely on Mr Chapman's evidence. He said it is a complex piece of
engineering and he went on to say, yes, there are other more complex
ones, and we accept that on Crossrail, there are some horrendous
bits of engineering going on on Crossrail, but, as Mr Berryman
said, that is where we have no choice. Mr Chapman then said it
needs to be done very carefully, which is exactly what Mr Berryman
was emphasising. Mr Chapman also said it is not unprecedented.
No, Mr Berryman has not suggested that it is unprecedented, but
it is complex and it is quite unnecessary, and in those circumstances
it cannot be recommended. Because it is complex that impacts on
cost. The important point about the cost figures is that the same
risk or contingency or optimism bias figure has been applied to
each. In my submission, on the evidence you have heard today there
is no doubt that option 4 is the most complex in engineering terms
and, therefore, on any contingency or optimism bias you apply
a higher percentage than you would to, say, option 3 which has
really got no risk to it whatsoever, or option 7 which has got
nothing more than minimal risk.
13633. The other point about option 4C is that
it is very disruptive in the ticket hall just at this point where
British Land are so concerned about 42,000 people because they
are all having to get round what will be a major engineering site.
It is not impossible, not unprecedented, but highly undesirable.
13634. Then we come to option 7. It is completely
offline. It can be done obviously if it is done at the same time
as the rest of Crossrail with no interface with existing passengers,
but one of its great benefits is if it is done later then, again,
it can be done behind a hoarding and it has absolutely no impact
on existing passengers whatsoever. It is important to note that
British Land and Mr Chapman have not know said that it impacts
on the developability of the site next door at the 100 Liverpool
Street site. It has minimal engineering risk because it is in
an existing structure and it is not comparable, for the reasons
I went through briefly in cross-examination, with the work that
has to be done on the post office vaults because of the issues
of both underpinning and putting in a transfer level on the post
office vaults.
13635. The Committee has to ask itself why we
moved to option 7 when we had been discussing, quite rightly—British
Land was entirely right about this—options within the ticket
hall and post office vaults. The answer to that is precisely because
unexpectedly the post office vaults started throwing up these
really significant problems and that is why we have moved to looking
at the sub-station in more detail and why we see it as a better
option.
13636. Can I say something very briefly on cost,
because it is clear from Mr Laurence's questions that he is going
to make a lot of this. This is a very unusual situation and I
hope the Committee will notice that. This is the first time on
Crossrail before the Committee that we have said that we should
go for a more expensive option and the Petitioner has said go
for a cheaper option. That is not because we want revenge on British
Land or to be horrible to them or deliberately mess them around.
That is because the advice from our engineers, and Mr Berryman
in particular, is that the risks attached to option 4 mean that
it is a less desirable option in engineering terms, and the advice
from Mr Anderson's team is that if you have got to choose between
4 and 7 then 7 has major benefits in passenger terms which 4 does
not have. It would be absolutely bizarre for the Secretary of
State through this team to be suggesting to you that we want to
go for a more expensive option when again and again we have said
to this Committee the Secretary of State is deeply concerned about
pushing down the costs of Crossrail generally. This is not an
exception to that, it is that we have taken the advice of our
experts and reached the view that if it has got to be 4 or 7 then
7 is much the preferable option.
13637. I do submit to the Committee, with respect,
that the Committee should be extremely wary of overriding Mr Berryman's
expert engineering judgment and seeking to force the Secretary
of State to undertake an option that he is being advised by his
own experts is not a sensible engineering thing to do. That is
somewhere where I would suggest the Committee tread very, very
warily.
13638. Finally, can I just emphasise, because
there is a danger here that we lose sight in the battle between
4 and 7, of the Secretary of State's core point, which is that
option 3B is wholly acceptable; not just now and in base year
2016 but in 60 years' time. I would pick up a point that you made,
sir, and urge that Members of the Committee who were not here
today but who are in the deliberation session do see the CD or
DVD of the Legion runs because they do show so graphically that
option 3 is absolutely fine. I do not want the Committee to get
locked into this "is it 4 or is it 7?" when actually
the answer is 3.
13639. Thank you very much, sir. As always,
I have done it in a mad rush but I hope I have covered the main
points.
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