Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 15620 - 15639)

  15620. Mr Liddell-Grainger: If there is a case for you to come back, we will look at it and have a think about it, but it will be for us to decide.

  15621. Mr Straker: Yes, of course, sir.

  15622. Ms Lieven: I think, sir, before I cross-examine, it may be just important to clarify this a tiny bit. What we are intending to do is write to the Committee explaining where we have got to on timetabling and something about the conclusions that are reached and how they are going to be handled from here on. We do have a desire to bring this Committee to a halt one day and not to keep coming back on issues because there is quite a long shopping list by now of people who are coming back generally wholly appropriately, but we would not want to raise the expectation that everybody who is concerned about freight and timetabling, which is in truth all the Petitioners in this two-week slot, are going to get some other slot by which we will call evidence on timetabling and they will come back and make their case again. We are going to write to the Committee in the terms discussed yesterday. I hope that is acceptable, sir.

  15623. Mr Liddell-Grainger: I totally accept that.

  15624. Ms Lieven: I think Mr Straker may have expectations which we were not intending to meet, unless the Committee directly instructed us to.

  15625. Mr Liddell-Grainger: We will wait until you come back to us, Ms Lieven. As you are well aware, by the end of the year it will not be our problem, but the House of Lords', so Mr Straker may get a second bite of the cherry.

  15626. Ms Lieven: He will undoubtedly get a second bite of the cherry in the House of Lords and about that there is no issue.

  15627. Mr Straker: Sir, I am more than happy obviously to be entirely in your hands about this matter. The point I do make, if I may, and emphasise is the single importance of Hutchison Ports in connection with this given the volume of material actually carried and, sir, in that regard we stand differently maybe from others as to our need to be involved, at the very least, in the working of the Timetable Working Group because one of the deficiencies, it may well be thought, is the inadequacy of those who have presently been involved in terms of the list of those involved.

  15628. Mr Liddell-Grainger: I think your learned colleague Mr George made that very clear.

  15629. Mr Straker: I am sure he did, sir. He makes matters very clear.

  15630. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Ms Lieven?

  Cross-examined by Ms Lieven

  15631. Ms Lieven: There is just one thing I want to ask you, Mr Garratt, because as I have, I think, said on a number of occasions, you are coming back on Tuesday to have the pleasure of locking horns with Mr Elvin on some of these matters and I will not, therefore, engage. There is just one thing which is very specific about the Haven ports on your exhibits which I wanted to ask about. Could we put up exhibit page 11 of your exhibits.[53] I do not have the slide numbers, I am afraid. You refer at the second bullet point to the point that the pathing exercise identifies 14 further paths available from Haven to the West Coast Main Line. Do you see that?

  (Mr Garratt) I do.

  15632. And that is coming down the Great Eastern and then getting on to the North London and then skipping round to the West Coast Main Line.

   (Mr Garratt) Yes.

  15633. How many of those paths are on the electric lines during the day? Just so the Committee understand the question—

   (Mr Garratt) I understand the question, but—

  15634. Well, you may, but the Committee may possibly understand less. The point I am trying to get at is to establish how many of those paths are affected by Crossrail because a large proportion of freight paths are generally at night and the vast majority of freight paths on this route coming in from Shenfield are, as I have already said, on the main lines and not the lines being used by Crossrail, so I just wanted to know whether you knew the answer to that, Mr Garratt.

   (Mr Garratt) I can provide the answer, I have it in front of me, so perhaps people would care to wait for a couple of minutes while I check that.

  15635. I am quite happy for you to come back to us informally and then Mr Elvin can come back to this on Tuesday if he wants to.

   (Mr Garratt) Yes, okay, but can I just make another point which is that I am not sure I agree with the statement you made that there is no interaction between the services from the Haven ports and the electric lines. You made that point in opening this morning and I am not sure I agree.

  15636. I do not think I said there was no interaction, and Mr Berryman will give evidence on that in a minute. Could we put up Mr Watson's exhibit page 31 which we saw before. As far as the trains from the Haven ports are concerned, coming in from the east, they are coming in on a two-track line as far as somewhere just a bit east of Shenfield, yes?

   (Mr Garratt) They are.

  15637. There are very significant constraints, are there not, on how much more freight you can get coming down the line before you ever get to Shenfield?

   (Mr Garratt) Yes, there is an issue here. They are sharing tracks with the passenger trains, without question, and there certainly is a limit. That limit is dictated by the speed and the stopping patterns of those passenger trains. We saw only in the last few days how that sort of relationship can be changed. On July 7, so only a few days ago, Network Rail produced a conclusion, if you like, on their East Coast Main Line reanalysis of the timetable at the ORR's instruction and found an extra 10 paths a day per direction specifically because precise timings had been adjusted with the co-operation of other train operators once it was taken that maximising capacity was the prime objective, so these are not absolutes and there is definitely an opportunity here to make some changes. I personally think that until that sort of exercise has been done on the Great Eastern, we cannot really have a proper baseline from which to start arriving at different conclusions. We are all the time making and amending, if you like, but yes, I would be happy to agree with your point.

  15638. Ms Lieven: Thank you very much. That is all, sir.

  15639. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Mr Straker, that evidence is A174.


53   Committee Ref: A173, Base Line Rail Volumes-Forest Gate (LINEWD-11705A-011). Back


 
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