Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1160
- 1179)
1160. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: A football
crowd can easily become terrorists in their own way.
(Mr Berryman) They can be more frightening than terrorists
in some ways.
1161. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: I would
be very cautious on this. I think there might be a need for further
thought on the safety implications for those who are naturally
and innocently using it in a wheelchair during those hours. I
think you might need to think of some special protection to be
provided.
(Mr Berryman) I think the other thing to just mention is
I get off the train at Luton, and Luton Town were playing last
night and the visiting side supporters were arriving by train
and there was a very large police presence there, and that is
the way it is usually dealt with.
1162. MS LIEVEN: Very briefly the next
point that came up yesterday—Romford—
1163. CHAIRMAN: Before we go to that,
how do people get to the Leyton Orient ground?
(Mr Berryman) Probably some of them would use Stratford I
would imagine. Many of them would use the Central Line which goes
up here roughly in this orientation here (indicating) and there
are two stations, one at Leyton and one at Leytonstone which are
relatively close to the ground.
1164. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Leyton
is the main concentration?
(Mr Berryman) Yes, that is right.
1165. MS LIEVEN: Romford, Mr Berryman,
was raised briefly yesterday in respect to the Select Committee
in the House of Commons report. Very quickly can you explain what
the differences are between the situation at Romford and what
is being proposed at Manor Park and Maryland.
(Mr Berryman) The situation at Romford is that there is a
bus station immediately to the south of the existing station and
our new station will be positioned underneath the existing station.
Unfortunately, on the south side of that railway, the Romford
Station, is the original Braithwaite structure which was built
in 1846, I think. That is virtually solid brickwork and we could
not actually get in there. The local authority initially wanted
us to make an entrance through there and they came to the Commons
with that in view as their Petition. By looking at it again and
looking with their advisers, we were able to come up with an arrangement
which satisfied their concerns without actually doing what they
had originally asked for in their Petition. There was never any
question of not having PRM access at Romford, which is a very
busy station in a town centre.
1166. MS LIEVEN: The final point which
just arose yesterday, and I do not know, my Lords, whether you
want me to deal with this now is in Newham's Petition there was
an issue about putting a cut-and-cover tunnel at North Woolwich,
and my Lady, Baroness Fookes referred to it.
1167. CHAIRMAN: I thought Mr Reed said
that he had abandoned that.
1168. MS LIEVEN: He did and so long as
the Committee are happy that it is abandoned and they do not need
to know any more about it, we can leave it there.
1169. CHAIRMAN: Yes, we are happy that
it has been abandoned.
1170. MS LIEVEN: Those are all my questions
to Mr Berryman. I do have a copy of the note although one statistic
in it is being checked outside. I do not know whether the Committee
would be prepared to break slightly early for the coffee break
and then when we come back I could have five minutes to go through
the note with Mr Berryman before handing him over for cross-examination.
1171. CHAIRMAN: We have got a serious
logistical problem about that. Coffee is not going to be there
until 11.40 today whereas normally it would be there at 11.30,
and so I think we are going to have to fill in a bit more time.
1172. MS LIEVEN: In that case, Mr Mould
has gone out to retrieve the note and I hope your Lordships will
bear in mind that various members of the team have worked very
hard on this overnight and if there is one figure we have to do
a bit of running around on, that may be necessary, but I am reliant
on Mr Mould coming back with the note.
1173. CHAIRMAN: We have got to wait for
the coffee anyway so we will wait for Mr Mould.
1174. MS LIEVEN: Perhaps, my Lords, what
we could do is put up the front page of the note which really
deals with the critical point for present purposes, and the figure
in debate is on the second page.[24]
Probably the best thing is for me to take the Committee through
it and then Mr Berryman may want to comment. The critical point
that we are trying to get across in this note is that the question
of how many passengers with restricted mobility will use the station
is very, very far from being a straightforward one.
1175. The point at 1.2 is one that Mr Berryman
has already made to you, which is that you can really split people
with restricted mobility, which is a term without definition,
into two broad categories—physically impaired passengers,
whether they be in wheelchairs or they just find it very difficult
physically to get round steps, and then what is called in the
trade "incumbent" passengers, and that can cover your
person with a suitcase, your parent or carer with a buggy, or
anybody else who has got temporary physical encumbrances which
make it very useful for them to have step-free access.
1176. We go on to say in 1.3 that neither group
has a clear definition so the proportion of disabled people, say,
in the catchment area of Maryland gives no indication of how many
of them will actually travel. If one relates back to the figures
Mr Reed put up earlier about Disability Living Allowance (DLA),
there will be a high proportion of those people who will not travel
in any event whatever provision you make for them.
1177. Then we say in 1.2 that the total usage
will depend on a series of factors such as number of population
obviously, car ownership, highway congestion, job location and,
crucially, public transport, so models have been developed to
help predict the number of people who will use a new provision,
equally to predict the number of PRMs who will use it.
1178. So what we say in 1.4, which is particularly
important in the light of Lord Brooke's questions yesterday, is
that the only way to address the issue of the number of passengers
with restricted mobility is by considering the proportion of total
demand forecast by the model. It does not help to consider how
many people in a particular ward receive a particular kind of
disability benefit because you do not know how many of them will
travel and you do not know which stations they will use, so the
station catchment plot to demonstrate this point because the station
you use depends on where in the ward you live and what bus route
you are on. You might live in Maryland ward but never use Maryland
Station because you are closer to Stratford. It is just not a
useful way of doing it.
1179. What we come to at 1.6 is no universally
agreed figure for the proportion of passengers with restricted
mobility and data is extremely hard to come by. Then at 1.7 we
make the point that some passengers with restricted mobility use
the system anyway, however inaccessible it is, so people with
prams do battle onto London Underground regularly, but for those
people there will be a great benefit in being able to battle more
easily, in this case, onto Crossrail. Thus there are two categories:
the people who benefit because their journeys are made much easier
and the people who benefit because they are not travelling at
all at the moment, and it is important to keep both of those in
mind.
24 Crossrail Ref P12, Passengers with Restricted Mobility,
26 February 2008 (SCN-20080227-008 to -012) Back
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