Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20620 - 20639)

  20620. You have never been able to use the bridge, save a 650-metre detour, because of the steps at one side, the steps at the other side and the bits in the middle, yes?
  (Mr Kelly) That is right. In all the period of time I have lived here, I have never been able to access this bridge at all. In order to visit family members on either side of this bridge currently I have to jump into a car, do a very brief drive down to one side of the bridge, get out of the car and get back in it to go to the other side. It takes me more time to get in and out of the car than it does to get to the person.

  20621. Lady Bright: If we could flip through the pictures of the bridge so you can see what it is that Mike has missed and what joins our two sides.[3] You can see it is a sort of tin box with various steep steps and there is the corner of the wall.[4] Next one, please. That is the structure, seen from the outside.[5] You can just about see those rather flimsy couple of posts that the thing is standing on, it is not by any stretch of the imagination a 21st century bridge, even to take William Whitely's workers across to the shop, which is what it used to be. What it will be now is a major thoroughfare to join the Academy, the new school and this side. Just before I ask you further questions, Mike, I should say we have had a letter from the Academy to say that a full quarter of their children will be coming from the south side so the families are split.


  20622. Mr Binley: Could you give us an idea of how many people that would be?

  20623. Lady Bright: It is difficult to judge. I think there are 1,200 pupils, is that right?
  (Mr Kelly) If I could help, Mr Binley. The Academy is designed to absorb the students who used to go to a school called "North Westminster". At its peak number I think there were 1,440 students there.

  20624. You have been involved in all the planning for the Academy through the Westbourne Neighbourhood Forum and the local neighbourhood partnership. Would you like to explain how thorough that consultation has been?
  (Mr Kelly) It has been very thorough. My involvement with regard to the Academy has been omitted because that is neighbouring to the one I live in; however, I have had involvement as a member of my resident-registered social landlord. We have significant numbers of residents living on the road to the north side of that bridge so we have involvement with that there and, as I say, there are family members on the south side. From there and anecdotal evidence it does appear to be that the consultation has been through several different and extensive corridors, written communications, vocal communications, communications through the Civic Watch and, again, there has been some co-operation through the Civic Watch movement. Civic Watch is a Westminster-orientated group which involves multiple statutory agencies within the area to try to address resident concerns and improve and, in the areas I work, regenerate those areas.

  20625. These are just a few pages from the Westbourne neighbourhood plan for 2006 to 2009 which was produced after this widespread consultation. There are 10,000 people within the Westbourne Neighbourhood Forum immediately on the other side of the bridge, and safety and accessibility on that bridge came in their top three priorities, an area which is in the top five per cent of the most deprived in the country. The Westbourne Neighbourhood Forum is partly state-funded and partly local authority-funded. It has got a three-year plan and the Academy is going to open when, do you think?
  (Mr Kelly) September 2007 it is expected to open.

  20626. So the bridge is needed in a form that people can use. I believe you have some information on the number of pupils who are disabled, in fact there will be quite a few.
  (Mr Kelly) I do not have specific numbers as such, but one of the things which has come out through consultation discussion is that the Academy will be a first-class DDA compliant establishment. As a result of that, it is quite likely to act as a magnet for other disabled students within the area because other educational establishments are, to varying degrees, DDA compliant and some of them have listed building status, so the level of change which is available in that establishment is quite limited. It tends to be the new which adapts to the circumstances that are required at the time rather than having a proactive approach of being an adapted premises to the broadest range of disabilities available. Nothing is entirely perfect, there is always something you can add, something that perhaps needs changing, but sometimes you can get conflicts of interest within various groups. To have the Academy as accessible as it is expected to be and to be as open to as wide a range of students as possible, which is what the exception is, I can certainly see the number of disabled residents going to the Academy and then, as a result, will need to cross over the bridge from both sides, and that will increase particularly with time.

  20627. Lady Bright: Thank you very much. It is probably worth out pointing out that for the extended congestion charge barrier we are the frontier of that too, so if you are on the north side of the bridge you are out of it and on our side of it you are in it, and that road inevitably includes foot traffic. The Academy head also wanted me to point out that they are desperately keen to encourage students to cycle, walk and get some exercise. We need a bridge that you can push a cycle over which will obviously be perfectly doable if you have decent disabled access. There will be lots of mothers and small children and older people. This is a bridge that needs replacing and I will tell you just that point about the middle view, if you would not mind showing us the next two pictures, please. They should follow on. That is what you see when you get to the top of the steps.[6] The width in the middle goes down to 1.6 metres, it is 1.8 I think at this end, it is in three sections basically. I have to explain this for Mike because he has never been able to get up over it, of course. By no standards can you get two wheelchairs past each other or even a wheelchair and a buggy?


  20628. Mr Binley: My colleague has a question.

  20629. Mrs James: I was going to ask that, because I have visited on a separate occasion and what struck me was for a person with limited ability there are quite a number of steps and I could not imagine how anybody meeting in the middle would pass. If you met somebody, Mr Kelly, would you be able to pass them?
  (Mr Kelly) Certainly not on this bridge as it is at the moment. My other concern, having seen this picture now, is if you go to the end of the bridge, there is a curve in the bridge, so you would need a wider circle at the end.[7] To meet somebody else, whether it be somebody who has a pushbike or a dog, you need a wider curve to get around them. It is certainly not wide enough.


  20630. Mrs James: It also concerns me that you cannot see anybody coming towards you. It did give me the impression that you cannot see beyond.

  20631. Lady Bright: You cannot, it is a dog-leg and Crossrail is refusing to remove it. When they make the north bands—it is in three parts: south, middle and north—disability compliant, which they are only going to do because they need to raise it to accommodate the overhead electrical wires, they are going to refuse point blank to put it back straight, it is going to go back with a kink.

  20632. Lady Bright: I should also mention the police concerns. It is the safety side of this that concerns the largest number of people here. We had some break-ins in cars two weeks ago on our side, the perpetrator escaped, a neighbour was chasing him in total darkness; very easy to escape and disappear. When the police came around afterwards, they said, "Look, we are advising residents not to walk across that bridge in the dark". Even the school children coming home in the winter would be advised not to walk over that bridge. Therefore, it is a complete nonsense that it should not be replaced and in time for the Academy's opening but it belongs to Network Rail. Crossrail says, "We are not interested in bridges, we are not going to replace it as you wish", so can we find a way out of this? Westminster is very happy, Crossrail said they have to consult with Westminster and your groups and the enabled forum and so on, which is one step forward, but they refuse to adopt in its entirety the document of inclusive mobility, which you have. We do not need to read the whole document.

  20633. Mr Binley: Before you continue, I need to know about school use in the evening. I know the local authorities are very keen to maximise the return on the size of the investment in the school and they would open that to the community. Is that the case?

  20634. Lady Bright: That is definitely the case. If you remember that first slide that showed the area as a whole you saw a label where the Academy is going to be, it is now there and it is almost finished. Next to it is a very swanky private health club, The Harbour Club, and around it all is going to be community and sports facilities that will be open to the community.

  20635. Mr Binley: Just one final question, I noticed there were no lights or there did not appear to be any lights on the bridge. Is that one of the things that is vital too?

  20636. Lady Bright: That lighting and CCTV is vital. Network Rail will not put CCTV on their property because it might set a precedent, so Crossrail offered to make passive provision for CCTV on the south side. The Academy will have some CCTV receptors on the other side, I do not know about the middle. The chances are we are back where we started, the bit in the middle will have nothing done to it. Obviously we need to hurry this one through, but the worry is that if it is left until too late in the process, Westminster will not be able to get on with its consultation and produce the bridge that is required. I should just say—I am sure Crossrail will say something about it—there is a plan for repossession of the tracks for about a month, I think, in the course of building the work and they say repossession is needed. If some of that could be brought forward, it would be very helpful. I do not know if there is anything else you feel you need to say.

  20637. Lady Bright: Inclusive mobility. Could you put the slide up for us.[8] It is just a page, you do not need to see the whole document. It is the rule book, recipe book, for disabled access and disability act compliance produced by the Department for Transport and Transport for London. If it is good enough for them and they are two co-promoters of the Bill, I would have thought, would you not, that it should be adopted for this bridge, and how Crossrail can say, "We will take it into account" rather than applying it I do not know. I think Crossrail may want to show us some of the drawings for the ramp, et cetera, at the end. All I can say about that is we have barely begun to get the design going. I think Mike may have something to suggest in general terms of the design of the bridge that would make it a great deal better than anyone has thought so far.

  (Mr Kelly) Could we go back one picture to the one we were looking at before.[9] First of all, if I can address what I believe to be the major concerns with regard to the bridge that Lady Bright has already made reference to. My most important concern is that this bridge needs to be as inclusive in terms of DDA as possible so we are not looking to make this just a stepless bridge, which has been proposed, we want to make it accessible and useable for all residents irrespective of what disability or restriction there may be. Just to highlight a couple of these, sound reverberation has come up in another issue, and if we look at this picture at the moment we have got the hoarding on either side. If you have got a blind resident with a guide dog walking across here and a train passing at the same time, my understanding is that there is a potential for this noise to bounce around in this area and therefore cause problems for the blind and their guide dogs. Apart from anybody else they would be going over there anyway, but the blind would have additional sensitivities to that kind of noise. Multiple wheelchair users we have already addressed in terms of not being able to use the bridge in the first place. I have seen several sets of plans, and I do appreciate that the drawings of the plans are being negotiated now, but one of the absolute minimum things I would like to see is that the width of the bridge is two metres wide at all points. Some of the plans we have seen show that the platform part of the bridge reduces down to 1,600 at various points, it is absolutely essential that the absolute minimum would be two metres. In addition to that, there should be rails on both sides of the bridge for various reasons and also rails with passing points in the centre. If you agree to that, then you would need to expand the bridge slightly more to about 2.5 metres. Natural light again with regard to people with visual impairments, as you can see this bridge is currently open with a cage at the top there to stop things being thrown onto the track. A suggestion I would like to propose in respect of that is we retain the same principle of the cage but we make this a perspex cage and that would then help to address some of the issues with regard to the noise and reverberation of the noise. It would also provide natural light into the area and protect users from external weather in the event that they get caught midway. The Academy proposes an issue to have 25 per cent of its students using this bridge on a regular basis. In addition to that, there will be, as Lady Bright has mentioned, all the evening classes and events on the north side of this bridge and there are extensive community sports facilities. I understand that the Academy does intend to make full use of those facilities both during school time and in the evening, so traffic over the bridge will be substantial in the evening. I think CCTV and lighting in particular are very, very important, the right sort of lighting as well. I know we hear various discussions about the right sort of this, right sort of that, but the lighting, as much as possible, needs to be natural lighting. Sodium is a yellow light which, for some visually-impaired people, is quite difficult to work with, so it does need to be almost natural light.


  20638. That chimes in with the need for translucency from a safety and security point of view which the police are concerned about, they want a straight bridge with disability pass and good lighting at either end so people will scoot off, because the bridge will not be used as long as people continue to be afraid of it.
  (Mr Kelly) Could I mention two final points. With regard to access to the bridge, one of the designs I have seen suggests an elevation level of 1:17. Under the building regulations, it is suggested that the maximum elevation which should be considered for DDA compliance is 1:20, so that is something we need to look at. In addition to that, all the proposals that I have seen suggest quite a lengthy ramp. Some have already suggested this as an option, but it is absolutely imperative that along that ramp you have approximately ten metres apart level platforms so people going over those ramps can then stop and rest before going on to the next point, because the longer the ramp is the harder it is to get to the top of it. I know I would not make it over a 1:17 ramp, I have tried it and it is absolutely impossible and I do not consider myself to be unfit or weak by any stretch of the imagination.

  20639. Lady Bright: Perhaps we should point out that Mr Kelly is a Guinness Book of Records holder for the number of wheelies.
  (Mr Kelly) It was quite a time ago and has been superseded, but it was for the amount of time I managed to sustain a wheelie.


3   Committee Ref: A236, View of Westbourne Park Villas from footbridge (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-012). Back

4   Committee Ref: A236, View of footbridge steps at Westbourne Park (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-019). Back

5   Committee Ref: A236, External view of footbridge at Westbourne Park (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-020). Back

6   Committee Ref: A236, Alternative view of footbridge at Westbourne Park (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-016). Back

7   Committee Ref: A236, Alternative view of footbridge at Westbourne Park (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-021). Back

8   Committee Ref: A236, Inclusive Mobility, Department for Transport, www.dft.gov.uk (WESTCC-AP2-10-04-006). Back

9   Committee Ref: A236, Alternative view of footbridge at Westbourne Park (WESTCC-AP2-10-05-021). Back


 
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