Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20660
- 20679)
20660. We can turn to the page if we need to,
but according to the Department for Transport document the 95th
percentile of wheelchairs is slightly over 700mm, which means
that, as I understand it, 95 per cent of wheelchairs are a little
over 700mm or less.[11]
Assuming, let us say, a wheelchair of 800mm, to be generous, and
remembering one has to have hands pushing, so you have to have
space for hands as well, my understanding is that if you have
wheelchairs of that dimension, 800mm, they are a bit above the
95th percentile and a bridge of 1.8 metres—width of 1.8
metres—is wide enough to pass.
(Mr Kelly) I would argue that
it probably is not, for several reasons, particularly with regard
to this bridge. If we can go back to that picture, I know there
are going to be proposals to change the boarding, but as part
of DDA you would want to have railings along both sides of the
bridge here. You have the encroachment—it is almost shown
as a curve along the side there. Presumably there would be something
like that, again, in any revised bridge, so you have got run-off
from the bridge, and also, when you get to the end of this, there
is a curvature in that bridge, so you need to allow a wider circle
at that point for two wheelchairs to be able to bypass or pass
each other in a curve. It is not a straight-over crossing.
20661. Mrs James: I am fully respectful
of disabled access here but speaking as somebody who has had to
organise disabled access and disadvantaged access at many different
places, you have to take into consideration people with double-buggies;
anybody pushing a double-buggy along there would certainly cause
a problem, and anybody carrying large bags along there meeting
somebody with a wheelchair—there are many, many different
permutations rather than two wheelchairs meeting. Anybody on crutches
would have a problem to manoeuvre around and certainly you are
going to get other people, elderly people, and people with babies
in prams, buggies, etc. So there is an advantage in having disabled
access but it also has a wider advantage for the less able.
20662. Ms Lieven: Absolutely, Madam.
I was only using the two wheelchairs as a kind of aide memoir;
I completely accept that is why London Underground call it "mobility
impaired" rather than disabled, because there is a whole
gamut of different kinds of users. I will just let the Committee
know there are two points here: one is we are widening the part
of the bridge we are rebuilding, and we are widening it to 2 metres.
That is wholly DDA-compliant. So far as the other stretch of the
bridge is concerned, it is acceptable in DDA terms because it
is not 2 metres but it is 1.8, it is not far off and there is,
in reality, enough room for users to pass with a small amount
of flexibility, with one, perhaps, in exceptional circumstances,
having to wait. The other point is, and it is an important one,
albeit I accept not necessarily a wildly attractive one sometimes,
that that bridge is nothing to do with Crossrail. It is going
across Network Rail land, it is a Network Rail bridge and if the
Academy do not feel the need to upgrade it for their purposes
then Crossrail do say to the Committee it is not our responsibility.
In the same way that we cannot go across London sorting out every
transport problem we cannot go across the route sorting out every
pedestrian accessibility problem. This is a bridge where we are
doing, we would say, well beyond what is strictly a Crossrail
issue, and if there is unacceptability about the remaining bridge,
that is ultimately not our, I am afraid, responsibility. I will
ask Mr Berryman to deal with that.
20663. Mr Binley: The Committee did ask
for this matter to be looked at and, of course, you have undertaken
to do one part of the bridge. There is a concern about that, and
we have a right to express that concern. That needs to be noted
in response to what you have just said.
20664. Ms Lieven: Of course. I think,
Mr Kelly, those are all the questions, because the other issues
I will ask Mr Berryman to deal with, and obviously noise is for
Mr Thornely-Taylor. I am not going to ask any more questions on
that. Thank you, Mr Kelly.
20665. Mr Binley: Lady Bright, would
you like to re-examine? You do not have to.
20666. Lady Bright: I just briefly wanted
to make a few points. I think it is terribly unfair to blame the
Academy for not making arrangements on the south side of the bridge;
it is nothing to do with them, it belongs to Network Rail and
Network Rail will not let anybody touch it. Now Crossrail get—I
do not know quite what it is, it is not a leasehold—whatever
they get over this bridge because they are going to be—
20667. Mr Binley: Lady Bright, you will
have the chance to sum-up at the end of this. The point at this
moment is if you wish to re-examine Mr Kelly.
20668. Lady Bright: It is not necessary.
Thank you very much.
20669. Mr Binley: Thank you. We are very
grateful to you.
(Mr Kelly) Is it possible to make one point
of clarification before I go?
20670. Mr Binley: Yes, of course.
(Mr Kelly) With regard to the Academy's view
on the bridge, my understanding is that the north side, which
they are in the process of making DDA-compliant, does not satisfy
them that the bridge itself will be DDA-complaint. One of the
reasons that they continue to maintain that stance is because
at this stage that appears to be as in the photograph.
20671. Mr Binley: Thank you very much.
The witness withdrew
20672. Mr Binley: Do you have any other
witnesses, Lady Bright?
20673. Lady Bright: Yes, not on the bridge,
but on the noise issue.
Ms Nicky Hessenberg, sworn
Examined by Lady Bright
20674. Mr Binley: Make yourself comfortable
and then tell the Committee your name and a little about yourself.
(Ms Hessenberg) Good morning. My name is Nicky
Hessenberg. I have lived in Westbourne Park Villas as a resident
for the last 42 years, and I am a member of the Westbourne Park
Villas Residents' Association. I cannot really add any more to
that.
20675. Mr Binley: That is perfectly adequate,
thank you.
20676. Lady Bright: We thought it might
be helpful to have Ms Hessenberg come along because of the freight
sidings and the batching plant that you have heard about before.
I will not go into that in any further detail because we have
got such unreliable drawings, but I know Crossrail will. The Hessenbergs
suffer, like the rest of us, the effect of this, but it works
in a rather peculiar way. Would you like to explain how the noise
of that freight train affects your house and the people in it?
(Ms Hessenberg) I live at number 60, which
is about halfway down the street. My sister and brother-in-law
live at number 58, so we have a bit of a rabbit warren, how it
is joined up. My daughter and granddaughter sleep on the top floor
of our house. Our houses are basement, ground floor and first
floor. Our daughter and granddaughter live on our top floor. My
husband and I sleep on the ground floor level on a bit which is
joining numbers 58 and 60 together. So we are on the ground floor
level on the south side of the house. My sister and brother-in-law
in number 58 sleep on the south side on the top floor. So, again,
it is a basement, ground floor and first floor building. My husband
and I have very sleepful nights, quiet, overlooking the garden
with just the blackbirds in the spring. My daughter, who sleeps
on the south side of our house, on the top floor, and my sister
and brother-in -law, who sleep on the south side first floor of
their house, are shaken by freight trains that come and load and
unload every night between the hours of 11 and one, or something
like that. They say that they lie in bed and things shake on the
shelves, literally shake—bottles, china, whatever—vibrate
with the noise. But where we are, on the ground floor level, we
hear very, very little—a few clanks sometimes, but we do
not get the vibration. So the noise is obviously going up. We
are protected by our wall, which you saw on the photograph, and
I think where we are on the ground floor level we have greater
protection than people who are living on higher levels. So the
noise is going up.
20677. How often have you tried, over these
45 years, to get something done about it, or is it, perhaps, only
the last few years that have been particularly difficult?
(Ms Hessenberg) The noise at night, we have
had `phone calls about. The noise that I have been particularly
embattled with are the 125 trains which stop just outside our
house during the day, waiting to get in and out of Paddington
Station. In the old days when British Rail owned the tracks if
we had a train sitting there waiting to be admitted you could
ring them up in the duty office and someone would be sent down
the line and the driver would be asked to turn his engine off,
to stop the vibration. Plus you do get fumes; it is really unpleasant
smoke going up. That we have battled on for the last 10, 12 or
15 years on a regular basis. I have got worries for my granddaughter,
who is 18 months going on to two years, because I was extremely
worried about the effluent coming off the train, and also about
the effect it was having on our house because the vibration is
really terrible. It is quite low level but it creeps up through
the ground and you can feel it in the house, shaking. But since
British Rail gave up, or were passed on, we have had absolutely
no response at all; we have been passed from pillar to post, telephone
call to telephone call; drivers are given instructions which they
do not follow because, obviously, it takes time to start a train
up, so it is much easier for them to leave their generator running.
That is very unpleasant, and we dread the summer months because
that is when the summer timetable comes in and that is when we
get the 125s sitting on tracks during the afternoon, and sometimes
in the morning as well, and the freight trains at night. So it
makes for a fairly vibratory situation, let us say.
20678. You have your file of unanswered correspondence
with Network Rail.
(Ms Hessenberg) It has been answered but it
has always been deflected.
20679. The line is: "We always wish to
be good neighbours". Silence. Sir, we wanted to raise these
points just so that you could, if you wish, ask questions of Ms
Hessenberg, just to hear that it is not me making it all up! I
wanted to make a couple of points to see whether you agree. You
mentioned the wall and how effective it is as a sound barrier.
That, basically, is what it was built for. It is to hold up the
railway embankment but it is there to protect the remaining houses
on the street after they knocked those down on the other side.
As I am sure Mr Thornely Taylor would agree, it works only at
the lower level and only to a certain degree. That is why we wanted
to go on to tell you something about noise.
11 Committee Ref: A236, Inclusive Mobility, Department
for Transport, www.dft.gov.uk (WESTCC-AP2-10-04-007). Back
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