Examination of Witnesses (Questions 18060
- 18079)
18060. I would add in connection with the point
that these are matters for the franchisees and the Franchising
Authority, and my colleagues and predecessors, I think 16 or 17
years ago, were able to obtain the insertion of a clause in the
Channel Tunnel Bill to ensure that bicycles would be carried through
the Tunnel, so in some respects there is a precedent, if need
be, for the case that we are putting being turned into some form
of statutory provision.
18061. Chairman: We will read all the
documentation that you have given us and we will consider all
the evidence put before us, and we will at a later point, as a
Committee in full and in private, discuss these and come to what
we believe will be reasonable decisions on the matter, to present
back to Parliament for it to decide. I can give you the assurance
we will consider all the evidence that you have put forward.
18062. Mr Selway: That I understand,
sir.
18063. One reason for maintaining our objection
was, if there were any opportunity for questions to be put, that
we might be able to assist on elucidating the material that we
have put in. I know it is a very short time between it being made
available to you this morning --
18064. Chairman: It is really the other
way round. It is not for you to question us; it is for us to question
you.
18065. Mr Selway: That is what I meant,
sir.
18066. Chairman: The way to proceed,
if you want to elucidate some --
18067. Mr Selway: You misunderstand me,
sir, I am sorry. I meant that you could ask me questions.
18068. Chairman: I think the best way
of proceeding is this. You have a witness who has been here all
day who has very kindly stayed, so if you would like to call your
witness and ask him some questions Members may feel that they
want to ask questions on some of the responses that he gives,
and take into consideration some of the questions that you ask.
18069. Mr Selway: That was my intention,
sir, if you are happy for me to do that.
Mr Andy Holladay, Sworn.
Examined by Mr Selway
18070. Mr Selway: Mr Holladay, would
you kindly tell the Members of the Committee who you are, what
your position is, and what your experience is, relevant to the
Crossrail Bill?
(Mr Holladay) My name is Dave Holladay. I have
worked in the transport industry for over thirty years, some of
it as a British Rail management trainee. I then joined British
Rail as a manager. I have since worked for CTC as their specialist
in public transport and integrated transport, and I have from
time to time worked with rail operators to design equipment for
conveying bicycles on trains, so I have a moderate amount of experience
on the issues. I have also worked on cycle parking and access
to stations and other premises.
18071. Thank you. You have looked at the Crossrail
proposals and you would, I think, agree with me that they are
somewhat lacking when it comes to making best use of the opportunities
that a combination of the use of a bicycle and rail travel can
bring.
(Mr Holladay) There are
a number of aspects to this. There are the existing customers
who are already using the system who demonstrate quite clearly
that it works, and this is where our concern principally over
travel to Paddington and Liverpool Street exists in quite substantial
numbers already. Some people leave bikes at those stations; others
bring bikes on the trains; and there is additionally the connectivity
of being able to travel through London with a bike on the underground
network by changing. To say that bicycles could be left at either
end is something that could be possible for the commuter, who
was making regular journeys and can plan these things, but people,
for example, like tourists travelling out to Harwich for the boat
or something like that, people with a specific disability that
requires them to ride an adapted bike may wish to take their bike
with them and adapt it accordingly, so the ability to take a bicycle
of some kind under certain conditions on through trains is something
we want to see as a core principle. This has already been proposed
on an international basis before the European Parliament, that
passengers would be able to take bikes, or that provision would
be there for them to take bikes on all the trains. By painting
that out of the picture you leave yourself with a difficult thing
to rectify.
18072. Thank you. I wonder as well if you could
explain how the combination of bike and train increases the business
case, not just for commuters, in relation to a project such as
Crossrail.
(Mr Holladay) There are
both internal and external issues here. Basically the Bicycle
Study, which I think you probably have in the bikerail report,
notes potentially 60 per cent of households within a 15-minute
bike ride of a station in the existing network compared to only
19 per cent with a 15-minute walk, so immediately you increase
the convenience of being able to access the system. This means
that the system becomes accessible with low impact as well. Instead
of having to build large car parks at every station because people
perceive they have to drive, a lot more people will be able to
come by alternative means and freedom of choice, I think, is quite
important, to make sure you can still preserve that freedom of
choice. It may be that the freedom of choice is forcing people
because they can no longer afford to make short journeys by car;
I am not sure what the future holds there. In terms of the external
issues, Crossrail will be generating a lot of trips which deposit
people for onward travel, and that onward travel has an impact
also. I have in mind particularly some of the inner London stations,
where you will be putting additional passengers into the Underground,
the bus or the taxi networks, and to some extent the effect we
see at stations like Waterloo is that passengers are realising
that you arrive at Waterloo with an uncertainty as to whether
the Underground system is going to be working, but if you have
a bike with you, you have a guarantee that your connection is
there for onward travel. That is the personal side of it, but
to the Underground network you are offering a way of decanting
a percentage of passengers who will otherwise be poured into the
system, so you are offering an additional mode of transport to
disperse the people from the station. Off peak as well there are
considerable benefits where, for example, at weekends public transport
services may be less frequent than they are during weekdays, or
not available, so for people who are travelling to outer stations,
the option is there of actually taking a bike along with them
and cycling that bit when they would otherwise have caught a bus
route because there is no weekend bus, so it gives you that immense
flexibility. I notice it myself particularly with shift workers.
I travel on trains very early in the morning and very late at
night and you tend to bump into a lot of shift workers who take
their bikes on the trains because there is no bus to get them
back from the station late at night, or to the station to make
their shift, so the ability to have that flexibility in the system
is very important.
18073. You also mentioned benefits to the disabled.
Now, I understand that Crossrail will take disabled travellers
in wheelchairs. It may be helpful to the Committee to explain
the situation of why people who might otherwise have to use a
wheelchair are, in fact, able to ride a bike. I am sure in this
country at least it seems paradoxical.
(Mr Holladay) I would draw
the Committee's attention to a submission we made for the Disabled
Persons' Transport Advisory Committee programme for 2007-2010
in which we gathered details of people using bicycles as mobility
aids. When I say "bicycles", probably the more accurate
term is "cycles" as mobility aids, because there are
people who have balance or motor problems who obviously cannot
cope with riding on two wheels, so they ride on three.
18074. Chairman: Is there a possibility
that you would be able to forward that documentation on to us?
(Mr Holladay) Yes. Basically
we have over the past two or three years at CTC gathered information
from a lot of people who have a disability who want to take their
adapted bicycle with them on the train because it makes a phenomenal
difference to their ability to move around independently. For
example, there are people who are registered as blind but they
can ride a bicycle, and that means if they get to an end station
and they want to get to a place which is not served by a bus service
they are totally dependent on having a driver and a vehicle supplied
for them, whereas with a bicycle they maintain that independent
mobility which is a very dignified means of getting about. There
are people with severe spinal injuries who also cannot walk more
than five yards but they can cycle five to ten miles in great
comfort. It becomes almost a mobility aid issue but for some people
who can use a bike it transforms their lives. As such, obviously
the use of the bike on the train forms an equivalent for them
of driving a car. We know two blind people who use a tandem, two
brothers, who run their business by using their tandem and the
train to get around to visit customers. They cannot drive so between
them they can manage the tandem and the train to cover the distances.
As such they have become very skilled negotiators with the train
operators.
18075. I was wondering as well if you could
assist the Committee by explaining the benefits that come from
the much greater area covered by stations where access is achieved
by cycle rather than on foot, and how that may compare with, for
example, bus access and car access and what the implications are
for station design.
(Mr Holladay) I think we
are getting examples in stations like particularly at Waterloo.
I cite Waterloo because we have been working with the management
there on this issue because they see the parked bicycles. I do
not know if any of the Committee go through Waterloo but you will
see at night parked bicycles tied on every lamp-post, bollard
and spare space. When you create a station, which as Waterloo
does, carries four times more passengers than Heathrow through
that space, one of the key ingredients is dispersal and collection
because railways, as public transport, are a consolidated means
of transport. It is economic and sensible to bring your passengers
into a station which is convenient to stop at. With Crossrail
you have a limited number of stations through Central London because
you need to have a particular service pattern, you do not want
to have a station with a density that you have on some of the
Underground routes. The ability to consolidate passengers and
also disperse them from those stations with a minimum impact to
all four points of the compass in the most economically practically
way is where the bicycle ties in with pedestrianised access but
the bicycle gives a benefit that you can extend that access over
an area at least 16 times greater because you can travel about
four times as far on a bicycle in the same time as you can walking.
That obviously affects the stations. If you want to turn to the
Melbourne map. The bike rail one is Sydney. You can see the effect
on the catchment areas of a cycle to station against a walk to
station and how the corridor of catchment grows quite neatly in
that respect. Of course it is fairly cheap to ride. To build a
road in from every point of the compass is costly on land and
resources, whereas to build a walking and cycling route takes
a lot less resources to do. In terms of dispersal, next to pedestrians
going out of a place, getting cyclists through a corridor, you
can get a lot of them moving very, very quickly. We do not have
figures for places like Waterloo because nobody has bothered to
look at them. That is where we feel very frustrated by the existing
network. They do not realise what they are sitting on.
18076. I was wondering whether Ms Jones was
hoping to put something up on the screen for you?
(Mr Holladay) Can we have
the Melbourne exhibit?
18077. Ms Lieven: Yes, that is it there.[20]
18078. Chairman: Do Members of the Committee
have this document?
18079. Mr Selway: They do, sir. I think
you would agree, Mr Holladay, when you look at the map, which
is figure 5a, the blue circles which represent the standard assumed
walking distance within 750 metres of station is in fact quite
a generous walking distance. I understand planners frequently
work in this country on a 500 metre distance from stations. You
have an isolated set of areas served upon foot, especially in
the outer areas, but you see continuous belts at the outer ends
of the trips, apart from the gap between Heathcore and Waterfall,
and that in the city centre you see the whole area is covered.
Would you agree with me on that?
(Mr Holladay) Yes, I would
agree with that. I am also looking at the speeds to check that
the seven and a half minutes is recognized as being the time it
takes to walk 750 metres and 7 and half minutes at 2.25 kilometres
of cycling which seems to tie in. Although you would not be hanging
about walking 750 metres in two and half minutes, it is very much
walking as transport at that speed, it is about six kilometres
an hour, is it not?
20 Committee Ref: A198, LRT and Cyclists' Guidelines
for Planning and Designs, Figure 5a, Comparison of the cyclist
and pedestrian catchment areas of public transport stops in Sydney,
Australia (LINEWD-35205-039). Back
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