Examination of Witnesses (Questions 18960
- 18979)
18960. Mr Thompson: I think, sir, we
say that it is more important that you should think about this
very carefully and we should pose the question because the scheme
which you are being asked to endorse, we say, has not been worked
up, has not been properly justified and may be the wrong one.
If we can now move to modelling. Can we say something first about
PEDROUTE? Is PEDROUTE a reliable modelling tool?
(Mr Spencer) PEDROUTE is
a means by which designers are able to test their designs during
the evolution of a project. So it will tell you the pedestrian
level of service, and it is very much a design tool that helps
the architects and the engineers to perfect the design of the
project. As the Select Committee knows only too well, there is
another tool which is the use of software called Legion Dynamics,
which provides a far more sophisticated appraisal of complex situations.
It has to be the case that the scheme being brought forward for
planning has to be subjected in detail to Legion analysis. The
PEDROUTE analysis you have got at this point in time is a helpful
design tool; to actually get to the bottom of the issues that
need to be addressed there should be Legion modelling of these
stations. It is an extremely complicated station, no less complicated
than the Liverpool Street situation, where obviously Cross London
Rail Links were happy to do the Legion analysis. We have not got
the Legion analysis here.
18961. Given that it is PEDROUTE that we have
got, can you tell us what it does show about the congestion relief?
(Mr Spencer) In 2016 I think
it is completely inconclusive as to whether or not Crossrail makes
the situation better or worse. As such, I do not think the analysis
is particularly helpful for a variety of reasons. One is that
there is not the quality of the design to appraise. As I said,
you would expect it to reach Stage B. If you run a PEDROUTE on
a RIBA Stage B design then you have got very little confidence
that you would actually be able to build it. The PEDROUTE modelling
that has been done, for some reason, excludes some of the problem
areas with Bond Street Station. Bond Street has a sub-surface
ticket hall. For a large number of people you actually get to
that sub-surface ticket hall through a retail development. That
retail development is a congestion problem but is actually not
part of the PEDROUTE modelling. So you are left with a whole series
of unanswered questions, likewise the access to Liverpool Street
and subway underneath Oxford Street. Neither of those appear in
modelling. So it is really only telling you about half the story
at present, and I do not think you can reach conclusions on the
basis of that. I would like to take a few points which do not
necessarily flow from PEDROUTE but they are basically dealing
with numbers. Numbers are important, and I know I cannot use too
many of them, and I will only use three or four. Fundamentally,
without Crossrail, about 20,000 passengers seek to leave LUL station
in the am peak hour to go to street. With Crossrail this number
reduces significantly from 20,300 to 17,200. That is, maybe, a
15 per cent reduction. It seems illogical to suggest that you
need a new ticket hall in Oxford Street occupying a prime retail
pitch when you are actually faced with the proposition that demand
to go to street is significantly less with Crossrail than without
Crossrail. There cannot be a case for provision of that ticket
hall. Now, other aspects of the scheme, as indicated by what is
for LUL and what is for Crossrail that appeared in the Minister's
briefing note, undoubtedly some of those aspects are related to
Crossrail, which are the issues on interchange and potentially
providing new escalators, and Crossrail can be potentially picking
that up, but for Crossrail to be building a new ticket hall when
there is a reduction in the number of people that go to street
because those people have transferred to Crossrail using the Dover
Street ticket hall, clearly raises a number of questions about
the proposal that has come forward. Significantly fewer passengers
would be using the escalator system that I just talked to you
about within the West One Centre. That is where the congestion
is: those people that have moved to Crossrail. So it is completely
missing the point to add capacity when problems have been solved
by Crossrail in the first instance. Also, to be absolutely clear
for the record, the demand forecasts show that absolutely no Crossrail
passengers would attempt to reach street level by way of the LUL
station complex. In other words, it is always assumed that they
are given a fantastic route to street by Crossrail and they will
all use it and that nobody would use the labyrinth of tunnels
within the LUL station to leave Crossrail and go to street. I
think it is an important point. So, really, there is no justification
for an additional ticket hall facility at all on the back of the
Crossrail project. Some of the numbers that have been produced
I have looked at in some detail, and as an example the flows from
Jubilee Line using the escalators where you gain an extra escalator,
in the base situation the movement from the Jubilee up those escalators
is identical with or without Crossrail—no change whatsoever.
So quite clearly there cannot be a justification for providing
additional escalators driven by Crossrail if the demand forecasts
are saying they are the same. That is the case on the evidence
that has been put forward. As I said, the fact that the West One
retail centre has not been assessed as part of this analysis,
in many respects we had actually looked at doing something in
that centre as a means of solving the existing problems because
the escalator vertical circulation is inadequate. That is not
even a proposal in what is coming forward here; it is all about
a new ticket hall for Crossrail, and that is a significant problem
for us.
18962. Mr Spencer, would it be helpful; we know
the Promoters have handed us some PEDROUTE exhibits, just to have
your take on those, about the position in 2016, so it is entirely
clear?
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely. I have severe reservations
about any in-depth analysis of this work because it is so preliminary,
but if we can have a couple of the examples. On page 2, there
are four plots.[18]
Can you zoom in?
18963. Sir, I do not think you have seen this
yet. The Promoters did provide us with some PEDROUTE examples
and it may just be helpful to have Mr Spencer's take on it. What
they do is they include some coloured PEDROUTE diagrams which
tell us the position with and without Crossrail in 2016 plus 35
per cent. I just wanted to make sure that Mr Spencer indicated
quite what his position was on this.
(Mr Spencer) If we can move to the second page,
I will only take an example. Can you zoom in either of the bottom
ones? As ever, the overhead is of significantly less quality than
the screens in front of you. This is the 2016 am peak PEDROUTE
modelling and you will see there are locations within the station,
particularly the escalators up from the Jubilee Line, where there
is the yellow coding, which is a congested situation for periods
of time within 15-minute periods. When you are looking at the
escalators it is important to look at the fact that there is no
crowding back off the escalators. Basically, the escalators are
very busy but there are no queues to get on the escalators—or
no significant queues—which means that it is pretty much
a normal escalator in London Underground stations. You can see
the bulk of the station platforms, both the Jubilee Line platforms
and the Central Line platforms, are relatively uncongested. There
are small amounts of green dotted around. I give very little weight
to either interpreting these things in too much detail or relying
on them, because of the lack of supporting information. If we
move to the next page, if you can blow up the bottom one, I do
not think it is at all helpful for me to speak too much about
it, but this is a situation with the introduction of Crossrail
without the congestion relief scheme.[19]
On balance, you would say it is neutral. You could argue it is
better or you could argue it is worse but I think you would be
doing that within such a narrow confine it would be a pointless
discussion. To all intents and purposes it is the same, as far
as I can see. Clearly, as far as my proposition is concerned,
to the limited extent I use this information, there is no compelling
case that Crossrail is creating a far worsening of the situation
that would lead you to conclude that Crossrail should be mitigating
that problem.
18964. Mr Spencer, you have given us a feel
for your view on that and the position in 2016. Can you tell us
what your position is on this plus 35 per cent scenario?[20]
(Mr Spencer) Plus 35 is future-proofing
and we have been through this in the Select Committee. It is a
requirement of LUL, unless there are circumstances that dictate
otherwise. You would do an analysis of plus 35 per cent on the
demand forecasts, which essentially is saying this is what the
view is of how the station will operate in 16 years' time—16-year
future-proofing. You should never interpret it on the basis that,
particularly in a situation like Bond Street which is a very stable
location, it is suggesting that demand forecasts are wrong and
that you should add 35 per cent to the demand forecast. It is
not that proposition. It is entirely to do with future-proofing.
18965. Chairman: Before you move on,
Mr Thompson, the Committee is going to adjourn for five minutes.
After a short break
18966. Mr Thompson: If I can move on,
Mr Spencer, I indicated in opening that you took the view that
the design detail in this case was slightly impoverished—there
was not a lot of it. Can we move on to that? We have confirmed,
I think, the design provides not just for underground escalators
but the full ticket hall on the site. Can you tell us a bit more
about that? How detailed is the design?
(Mr Spencer) The report is what it says; it
is a Stage B report. The electronic copy that I received on Thursday
was missing all of the plans. The only design drawing I have at
my disposal at present is the axonometric—absolutely nothing
else.[21]
As you have seen outside, that axonometric has been translated
into a physical model. There was a schedule in this report which
purported to include a series of plans, which would have shown
me the layout of the ticket hall and the intermediate concourse
and platform levels, and so forth, but it was not supplied to
me. So I do not know if it is an administrative error or that
when this report was published those plans did not exist, certainly
not in my electronic version of the report. What I am able to
glean from this report is that the scheme is costed at £110
million at this stage of the project development, which is very
early days, but I am also aware of the fact that in the AP documentation
the financial consequence of incorporating this congestion relief
scheme, I think, was £158 million, in terms of the net increase
to the Crossrail budget, if these measures were incorporated through
the Hybrid Bill. I take you back to some of the earlier scheme
developments which were clearly schemes of £10 to £20
million, which were being looked at quite seriously a few years
ago to address the critical congestion problems within Bond Street
Station. I see this as being a project that is in a very early
stage of development. The costs I have got are shown in the Stage
B report, which was issued to us on 24 January of this year. The
level of design information is clearly insufficient to properly
consider the proposals in any level of detail with any confidence.
Indeed, the report itself self-critically admits that this is
a quick assessment with a minimal level of design that has not
been fully detailed. That is as documented in the risk assessment
of the Stage B report. So I can conclude from that that you can
look at a very impressive model but you can have no confidence
in the detail and deliverability and, really, what the final outcomes
will be for the project because it has not been subjected to the
full investigation, and has not had the amount of time put into
it that would allow one to have confidence that it was truly deliverable.
18967. Mr Spencer, can you remind the Committee
what the estimated project costs are for this proposal, this congestion
scheme?
(Mr Spencer) In here it
is £110 million but in the AP3—I cannot remember what
the document is called -
18968. It is the departmental memorandum on
the promotion.
(Mr Spencer) That quotes
a figure of £158 million. What I have no idea about is what
the year is for the costing. You are quite likely to find that
158 is an inflated version of 110 to take account of when the
expenditure would occur, but—
18969. Relatively speaking, this is not a minor
add-on; this is a substantial piece of work in financial terms,
not just in physical terms.
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely.
It is an enormous investment.
18970. With the complexities that that infers.
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely
the case, and it needs to be subjected to not just capacity appraisals,
it has to be subjected to an entire economic appraisal, and there
is no evidence of that appraisal being undertaken for a scheme
of this cost. That inflation does not appear anywhere.
18971. Sir, if it helps, we will not be much
longer; we are coming towards the close of this. I think you want
to say something about the demand forecasting, and whether it
is intuitive.
(Mr Spencer) Yes. I have
looked at the demand forecasts and some of the forecasts do concern
me and do appear to be somewhat counter-intuitive, such that more
people use the Jubilee Line to get to the local area because you
have built Crossrail, which does not seem to make sense. They
are not using Crossrail, so why should there be more simply because
you have built a new railway? Those kinds of things are actually
feeding through at this stage, because the driver for the congestion
relief in the case of Crossrail is because they are saying there
are more people in there, but in reality I am not at all certain
that the demand forecasts do stack up. A lot more work would need
to be done to ensure that the demand forecasts make sense and
then you would use those as a basis for the detailed capacity
assessment, which would be by way of Legion analysis.
18972. Just before we leave the question of
design detail, I said something in opening about this being a
rather special site. Did you want to endorse that?
(Mr Spencer) The ticket
hall location?
18973. In Oxford Street.
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely.
Oxford Street is an international shopping centre of world renown.
The quality of the retail end, the commerciality of the retail,
in terms of rental—I am no expert on this but I am pretty
certain—is about the most expensive in the world.
18974. I do not think this is in dispute but
the reason I ask you to turn to this is the fact that in the London
Plan it is a conservation area. In your experience as an engineer,
not as a planner or whatever, does this suggest to you that you
would expect quite a lot of design work here?
(Mr Spencer) It would be
an extremely complicated project to take through the full design
process. There are so many possibilities. The risk assessment
is quite clear; they are saying: "We just have not got enough
information to properly understand how we are going to build this
thing because we have done it too quickly and the information
is not sufficient." It does not surprise me in the slightest.
18975. If we then move on to look at what sort
of design work could be undertaken and what alternatives you might
expect to emerge. Can you tell us something about that?
(Mr Spencer) There are certainly
opportunities to improve matters within the existing West One
complex substantially, which I personally would take to be a major
problem within the interchange at present.
18976. That is on the south side of Oxford Street,
as opposed to our site which is the north side.
(Mr Spencer) Absolutely. I absolutely
100 per cent support the principle of the stations being made
to be DDA compliant. Basically that responsibility would very
firmly rest on LUL. It is not as though they can avoid that because
the works to the LUL station by Crossrail in effect would trigger
the requirement for the station to become DDA compliant. This
is a very serious matter for London Underground. It is going through
that process where there is a physical intervention that they
would then say triggers automatically the need to make the station
DDA compliant or MIP access compliant and no doubt there are dozens
of ways that that can be done without using my client's site.
18977. Thank you. If we can then just conclude,
can I have my exhibit 5 again, which is the headline summary of
Mr Spencer's preliminary findings.[22]
I just want you to have a look at this, Mr Spencer, and make sure
that we have not misrepresented your position. I read it to the
Committee earlier. Are you happy with that?
(Mr Spencer) The first point
is recognised by the designers themselves. There is no documentation
of optioneering, so it is impossible for me to conclude anything
on what has been assessed because I have no knowledge of it. In
a planning situation you would have to very clearly set out the
options that have been considered before a planning inspector
would give you consent for a complex scheme. I certainly do not
think the modelling is at all conclusive and it is not pointing
towards there being a problem induced by Crossrail. I totally
agree with the proposition that there is no evidence that Crossrail
makes it materially worse.
18978. Can we sum up? In your opinion, does
the Select Committee have sufficient information available to
it to determine the propriety of taking our client's property
and spending in excess of 100 million on this proposed scheme?
(Mr Spencer) It is absolutely
clear to me that the Committee does not have sufficient information
in front of it to be able to reach that decision with any certainty.
18979. Is there anything you would like to add,
Mr Spencer?
(Mr Spencer) Responding
to the Chairman, London Underground are doing an enormous amount
of work in upgrading the Tube system in London, partly in preparation
of 2012 but partly because the much-maligned PPP is actually beginning
to deliver projects on the ground now. There is an enormous amount
of work to be done and LUL is in a position to deliver this, and
that is their role. They have got very precise objectives in terms
of safety and accessibility and in terms of consultation procedures
and design qualification, making sure they get it right. I think
this Select Committee can rest assured there will be a congestion
relief scheme brought forward for Bond Street, I think you can
be certain of that. What you cannot be certain of is if they became
the drivers of this project whether it would be the same project
that you are being asked to give, in effect, planning consent
to.
18 Crossrail Ref: P137, PEDROUTE Existing Station
No Crossrail-2016 Base AM (WESTCC-AP3-49-04-003). Back
19
Crossrail Ref: P137, PEDROUTE Existing Station with Crossrail-2016
Base AM (WESTCC-AP3-49-04-004). Back
20
Crossrail Ref: P137, PEDROUTE Existing Station with Crossrail-2016
Base AM+35% Demand (WESTCC-AP3-49-04-013). Back
21
Crossrail Ref: P137, Crossrail Amendment of Provisions Environmental
Statement (AP3), Bond Street Station, Amendment of Provisions-Axonometric
(LINEWD-AP3-49-04-001). Back
22
Committee Ref: A216, Headline Summary of Tim Spencer's Preliminary
Findings (WESTCC-AP3-49-05-005). Back
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