Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


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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