Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 15680 - 15699)

  15680. Do you say that you, Crossrail, have no effect at all upon that which is forecast to grow and has been agreed to grow in the Secretary of State's decisions for the container terminal ports?

   (Mr Berryman) Yes. As far as I am able to see, we have no impact at all on that.

  15681. Are you prepared for Crossrail to undertake that you will not displace any of that freight traffic both present and forecast to 2023?
  (Mr Berryman) I do not know what better undertaking I can give you than I already have to say that our system has been designed to allow for the uninterrupted flow of freight from that direction. Proving the kind of statement that you have made or measuring it would be an impossible task. You would have to have two identical railways, one which was running some traffic and one which was not.

  15682. Well, we have your answer. Can you just look please at page 24 of 50 of the Crossrail Timetable Working Group, which is P106.[57] We have seen this before and the Committee have seen this before, so we are familiar with it.

  (Mr Berryman) Yes.

  15683. The right-hand column, Stratford to Shenfield, at the top is what we are concerned with. That of course is a line which affects my clients, is it not?

   (Mr Berryman) It is indeed, yes.

  15684. We see there, do we not, that we have got a worsening of the situation, minus 16 compared to minus eight.

   (Mr Berryman) Yes, compared to the forecast demand in 2014, but how many of those trains could be accommodated now? The point I am trying to get across to you, and obviously failing, is that what we are doing is not making the situation any worse or any better than it is now. We are saying that you can run 35 trains a day on this route in one direction and, I think, 27 in the other. I would be prepared to wager that that is no different from what can be accommodated now. You are making a much more general point that the possible growth in your traffic cannot be accommodated by the railway. What I am saying to you is that that may well be the case, but that is not because we are making the situation worse, but it is because the situation is as it is.

  15685. You say that, despite the fact that the Committee has had evidence that Crossrail is making it worse.

   (Mr Berryman) Well, they have had evidence which we are responding to in writing in due course.

  15686. Mr Liddell-Grainger: I think, Mr Straker, this is a little unfair. We are waiting for a response from the Promoters. I take the point on board, but I think until we get that response, we cannot deal with it.

  15687. Mr Straker: Very well, sir. I am very happy with that and we have obviously the transcripts available. Can we then touch upon one or two other matters please, Mr Berryman, because you say that you cannot think about these matters ahead because your wife wakes up in the morning with a freight train going past.

   (Mr Berryman) It is very disturbing.

  15688. Can we just see that a little bit further. Have you spoken to, for example, Hutchison Ports in connection with how they organise the carriage of freight by rail?

   (Mr Berryman) No, I do not think we have.

  15689. Have you spoken to any port or operator as to whether in fact there is a programme involved with a forward consideration of traffic movements which might depend upon precise timetabling and working out?

   (Mr Berryman) No, we have not and neither have we spoken to any supermarket operators who are freight-users or steel suppliers who are freight-users or coal miners. The only people we have spoken to are people who actually have premises on the railway, which is mainly the aggregate carriers obviously, and the people who operate trains and we have relied on the operators of the trains to tell us what their customers would be doing. It would be an impossible task to go round the entire freight industry and establish at customer level what everyone is doing. All we can do is take the overall economic forecast which we have referred to in the past and then talk to individual train operators about how they would work, and we have had many, many meetings with those train operators. We totted up yesterday that we had had over 60 meetings with EWS, for example, and I would be surprised if we had had less than 30 meetings with Freightliner who I think are the main carriers from your clients' ports.

  15690. As far as my clients are concerned, am I right in supposing that you have read and agreed that my clients' proposals are of vital national importance?

   (Mr Berryman) I do not doubt that for a second.

  15691. Am I right in supposing that you have read and agreed that my clients are the single biggest contributor to rail freight carried on the railway?
  (Mr Berryman) Yes, I have no reason to doubt that.

  15692. Just tell me please, Mr Berryman, why it is that you have not spoken to my clients about the impact of Crossrail upon their services.
  (Mr Berryman) Because the people that we deal with are the train operators, the people who operate the trains on the network. They are the people who will, together with Network Rail, set the timetable and work out how the trains are going to move and the whole operation of the railway. The fact of the importance of the ports of course is accepted and no one would deny that for a second, but it is not something that is appropriate for us to go to any ultimate end user to find out why they are using the railway. That would be an absolutely impossible task.

  15693. Mr Berryman, did I ask you to go to every end user?

   (Mr Berryman) No, you did not, but I think there would be a precedent set, would there not, if we went to your clients and not to other end users.

  15694. Sir, I am going to leave matters there because plainly we are going to touch back, as far as timetabling matters are concerned, which are critical, as this witness has agreed, to the question of capacity. Sir, you have a variety of material on capacity and I will be making some observations in a moment.

  Re-examined by Ms Lieven

  15695. Ms Lieven: There is just one point, Mr Berryman, and I am sure the Committee has got it, but let us just make it absolutely clear. Staying on that table, this worsening that Mr Straker keeps going on about for freight, what we see on this table is that the first set of figures comes down to a figure of minus eight, yes, and that is without Crossrail?

   (Mr Berryman) Yes.

  15696. The second block comes to minus 16 with Crossrail.

   (Mr Berryman) Yes.

  15697. Can you just explain what that means in practical terms? Does it mean that Crossrail is actually practically in 2015, when it comes on line, stopping any freight trains running or have they been stopped effectively already, or constrained, to use the jargon?

   (Mr Berryman) They have been constrained already, yes.

  15698. So in real rather than theoretical terms, does Crossrail make any difference to the ability of freight to grow on the Great Eastern?

   (Mr Berryman) No.

  15699. Ms Lieven: Thank you very much.


57   Crossrail Ref: P106, Crossrail Timetable Working Group, Great Eastern line Freight Train Paths (LINEWD-GEN13-025). Back


 
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