Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1520
- 1539)
1520. The final issue that I am going to touch
on in opening is cycle parking in which we have been under discussion
with the local authorities and we gave a commitment to the CTC
to discuss with them the provision. Mr Berryman will put up a
table which shows you the exact position, but, to cut to the chase,
we believe that, with the co-operation of the local authorities,
we will be able to provide bicycle parking, or bicycle parking
will be provided, at all the stations, except Bond Street and
Tottenham Court Road where again for very obvious reasons to do
with the urban grain, there just is not the space, and we have
been discussing it with Westminster and we do not think it will
be possible to provide cycle parking there. Just to take one good-news
story, Farringdon, where at the moment, as the Committee may be
aware, I do not think there is any bicycle parking at all, the
street outside Farringdon Station, Cowcross Street, is proposed
to be pedestrianised by the London Borough of Islington and we
have been in close discussion with Islington about providing cycle
parking at Farringdon. Mr Berryman can go through the table in
much more detail, but we do feel on that issue that we have absolutely
gone as far as we can.
1521. Then the final issue is the interaction
between bicycles and construction traffic, and I think the best
thing is that I will not say any more about that, but I will hear
what the CTC have to say and then Mr Berryman can give evidence
on what comfort we can give on that specific issue.
1522. That is a quick whizz through what I understand
to be the issues and, unless the Committee have any questions
for me at this stage, I will hand over to Mr Peck.
1523. CHAIRMAN: Can you give the CTC
any idea of roughly when they ought to start requesting both the
train operating company and local authorities to deal with these
issues? It will not be yet.
1524. MS LIEVEN: As far as the local
authorities are concerned on the cycle parking, in some instances
it is now, because, for example, at Farringdon lots of things
are being done now in anticipation of Thameslink 2000 and Crossrail
and there are works going on to Cowcross Street and there have
already been some works, so it depends a bit station to station,
but we are in discussion with the CTC on that.
1525. As far as the carriage on trains issue
is concerned, my recollection is that that will not be decided
for four or five years, but let me just check with Mr Berryman.
At least, he says, so we will, as it were, alert the CTC when
the issue starts to be under discussion because there is no train
operating company appointed yet. As there is not a physical railway,
there cannot be a train operating company yet, so once that process
is undertaken, we will inform the CTC and involve them in discussions.
1526. CHAIRMAN: Very well. Then I think
it is for the CTC to start their presentation.
1527. MR PECK: Thank you, my Lord. May
I first introduce myself. I work as the Policy Co-ordinator at
CTC and I am, therefore, not a qualified barrister, so I warn
you that this may be a slightly unorthodox performance compared
to what you may be accustomed to.
1528. CTC is a national cyclists' organisation,
formally known as the Cyclists' Touring Club, which was founded
in 1878, and we have about 60,000 members. We represent the interests
not only of our members, but of those who cycle either for transport
or recreation. We believe the encouragement of cycling has benefits
for tackling health, congestion and the environment, both globally
and locally, and we believe that it provides the only alternative
to private car travel when taken in conjunction as a cycle-rail
combination. Cycle-rail combinations also bring in additional
passengers to rail operators whilst at the same time reducing
congestion pressures on station car parks and on interchanging
public transport services. As an organisation, we have no particular
stance for or against Crossrail's chosen route or the location
of stations. Our position, as Ms Lieven has put forward, results
from the proposed provision for cyclists on trains at stations
and in the approach to dealing with freight traffic during the
period of construction. I will set out each of those points from
our perspective very quickly and then get on to calling my witness.
1529. On cycle carriage, we acknowledge that
during our discussions with the Promoter some slight alterations
have been made to E2, the cycle carriage and cycle parking information
sheet, but we do not unfortunately feel that the changes are significant
enough to warrant modifying our position at the moment. In particular,
we are not satisfied with the decision of the Promoter to continue
with the working assumption that cycles will be banned throughout
the tunnelled sections and we feel that the working assumption
will become a reality.
1530. On cycle parking, we feel very strongly
that the plans as they are at present for the central stations
are limited in scope, although we understand some of the reasons
given for that, but we believe that they will have to be changed
in the future, looking ahead the ten or more years that we are
looking at until Crossrail's eventual use. Our plea is that the
expensive retrofitting which will happen in the future can be
avoided by designing high-quality infrastructure from the beginning,
and we will be giving examples of problems which have occurred
very recently in this regard later on.
1531. Finally, on lorry movements and cyclists,
which makes up the third part of our Petition, we believe that
the current Construction Code issued by Crossrail only meets the
existing guidance from the Health & Safety Executive and does
not go far enough to deal with the issues arising from increased
lorry traffic, particularly in the central London and inner London
areas, so what we want to point out is a few of the statistics
and examples which back up some of the problems which other Petitioners,
such as Tower Hamlets and other local authorities, have with lorry
movements. Given the numbers of cyclists killed and seriously
injured in collisions with lorries in London every year and the
likelihood that Crossrail will result in a very large number of
lorry movements around London, we believe that steps must be taken
to reduce lorry movements wherever possible and ensure that a
zero collision target is set for Crossrail construction traffic.
1532. On the wider issue of cycle-rail integration
and its benefits, we estimate that currently there are around
25,000 round trips every day into London which are made by a combination
of cycling and rail. The greater part of those trips are made
by people who are carrying their bikes with them on the train,
not parking at the station at either end. We know, for instance,
that 60 per cent of all UK households are within a 15-minute cycle
ride of a station and in London it is considerably higher than
that. This is a very easy solution to reducing, say, congested
car parking at stations. A few weeks ago the Mayor of London announced
that cycling would hence forth be seen as a key part of the public
transport system, and he announced funding of £500 million
over the next ten years which he expects to result in a 400 per
cent increase in cycling by 2025 which is seven years after Crossrail
comes in. This equates to a 5 per cent modal share of all transport
in London and it is over one million extra journeys a day travelled
by bike. For £500 million, we feel that this is extremely
good value for money, especially compared to Crossrail, but that
is not the discussion we are having today. Achieving this target
of a 5 per cent modal share for cycling may sound strange, but
it is not just possible; we feel it is very likely. The Mayor
had a previous target of an 80 per cent increase from 2000 to
2010 and he achieved that, or TfL achieved that, five years early
and growth has continued since then, so we think it is very likely
that they will meet this target of one million extra cycle trips
a day. Cycling, therefore, we feel, has a major part to play in
London's transport future, but we believe that growth can only
happen if it is properly integrated with other forms of public
transport, and Crossrail is an obvious example of this.
1533. My Lords, I would now like to call my
witness, David Holladay.
MR DAVID
HOLLADAY, sworn Examined
by MR PECK
1534. MR PECK: Please can you introduce
yourself. You are an employee at the CTC and have been for some
years?
(Mr Holladay) My
name is Dave Holladay and I work with CTC as their specialist
in bikes and public transport. I have previously worked for British
Rail and various people in this line of transport.
1535. We are in the interesting position today
where both the Promoters and ourselves are producing the current
policy of the London Underground as evidence to support both our
cases. Mr Holladay, could you explain, and this is Exhibit D,
how the current policy of London Underground stands?[1]
(Mr Holladay) From the slide, you can see that
the lines coloured in dark are the lines on which cycles are carried
and the lines which are white or hollow are the lines on which
cycle carriage is permanently banned. Generally, London Underground
carry bicycles on all routes operated by what they call `surface
stock'. This is stock built to mainline loading gauges, the District
Line, the Metropolitan Line and so forth, and they are carried
on those routes, all routes, with the exception of at peak hours
obviously, as Ms Lieven noted, when passenger numbers are such
that it is an inconvenience to try and load a bicycle. London
Underground chooses to regulate by dedicated time and other operators
choose to do it by sheer passenger volume when you just cannot
get a bike on. The other stock that London Underground operate
are what is known as `Tube stock'. This is designed to operate
in a tunnel of in the region of four metres in diameter. Most
of you, I hope, will be aware of the shape and size internally
of Tube stock. As a person almost two metres tall, I can only
stand up in the centre gangway, so within the confines of that
stock there is not much space, whereas on the District and Metropolitan
Line trains, obviously they are a much more spacious vehicle.
The other constraint on deep-level tubes of the original Tube
network is the four-metre-diameter tunnel. It means that you cannot
evacuate passengers through the doors and you have to evacuate
them along the length of the train and, within the confined space
of a Tube train, that is going to be very difficult if someone
has brought a bike on, whereas the District and Metropolitan Line
trains do actually operate in deep-level tubes and there is a
deep-level tube on that map currently closed between Wapping and
Rotherhithe and there is also a deep-level tunnel up through Kilburn
on the Metropolitan Line. The rest of the surface-stock lines
are generally cut-and-cover tunnels and all of them have double-track
access from the side to the train. This also applies to Tube trains
when they are operating on the surface, so you will note on that
map, for example, Hounslow West through to Barons Court, taking
it from the left-hand side of the page, that the Piccadilly Line
will carry bicycles between those points because evacuation of
the train can be established through the doors and they do not
have to evacuate passengers through the train, and that is the
main reason I have established with London Underground that they
have set their rules. Where you have the problem of evacuation
of passengers through a confined space on a train, they consider
it not appropriate to put bicycles on. Where the rolling stock
is of suitable dimensions or evacuation can be effected through
the side doors of the train, they allow cycles.
1536. Mr Holladay, can you explain the current
cycle policy of Mersey Rail which does have a deep-level tube?[2]
(Mr Holladay) I alluded to that in my answer
to the London Underground question. Until 1996 Merseyrail operated
very much as London did, with a peak hour ban on carrying bicycles.
In May 1996, for an experiment they dropped the peak hour ban
and relied on the common sense of the cyclists and clearly approbation
of fellow passengers to discourage people taking their bikes on
the train. They have never reinstated that ban. It operates fairly
well. A similar regime operates in Strathclyde which has a comparable
system. Ironically, they also have a Crossrail project in Glasgow
which gets me very confused because I sometimes have to discuss
the two Crossrail projects. In Glasgow, Strathclyde Passenger
Transport have never had any peak hour restrictions on carrying
bicycles, they rely on commonsense, staff and other passengers
to discourage it. Anybody who commutes regularly finds this out
and people who do commute regularly who wish to avoid the hassle
go for parking a bike at either end or making alternative arrangements
for that facility. It does not cause a problem on Merseyrail.
They do have a deep level tube that runs on the loop underneath
the Mersey from Birkenhead and, in fact, you can see the bore
tunnel in places.
1537. Thank you. Can I point you to page two
as well, please?[3]
Similarly, I would say that it is likely that the Bay Area Rapid
Transit System—which is not a UK system, it operates in
San Francisco in the Bay Area, as the name suggests—also
consists of a deep level rail tunnel, deeper than Crossrail, running
under a large expanse of water in a highly seismic area and, indeed,
was operating during the earthquake in 1989. Can you explain why
BART allows, as Section C makes clear, cycles on all trains except
at peak times?
(Mr Holladay) This goes very much in line with
the policy developed with CTC on cycle carriage on all trains
which is that BART have established a protocol which is clearly
understood by the riders. It has been established over a number
of years much in the same way as the Washington DC Metro, which
is also another deep level tube line. Bikes are allowed on all
trains. The front car of every train does not carry bikes for
the obvious reason that if the driver needs to get out through
the car and carry out functions they want the front car to be
accessible. Basically it is setting out how to behave with a bicycle
when you are using the system. People do behave. There is a big
demand for taking bicycles. A number of people use the BART to
get to various destinations around the town. We know of one example
where a person avoids this problem of bicycles by renting five
bicycle lockers but not everyone can run to having five bicycles
distributed around the London Tube network or London rail network
to do that. Most people would take a bicycle on the BART so they
could get to their destination, which is generally beyond the
station, in a convenient and rapid way. To say more, we know the
evacuation works. The availability of parking is good. BART have
just announced improved parking facilities to encourage people
to park and, again, management is the key to this rather than
policing. Policing tends to be confrontational and any form of
ban presents a confrontation, this is why we always prefer to
look at the managed systems.
1538. Thank you. The growth in cycling experienced
in London in the last few years has led to more bans being imposed
on the commuter rail network. Can you explain some of the consequences
this has had for some of our members and other cyclists?
(Mr Holladay) The most significant and rather blunt instrument
of a ban was in 2004/05 when Southern opted to ban entirely cycle
carriage on trains for blocks of three hours in the morning and
afternoon. One person was effectively denied employment because
he could not leave a bike at his remote or vandal-ridden station
on the South Coast. He had to get to an early train which he could
only catch by cycling to the station because there was no bus
service and then would continue his journey at the other end conveniently
by bicycle because to connect would have meant a series of short
journeys on Tube lines. A lot of people coming into London are
using the bicycle, for example, to alight at Clapham Junction
rather than change trains at Clapham adding to the churn and filling
trains up for the short journey to Waterloo or Victoria. We found
that people in London were choosing to do this because it avoided
the uncertainty of using the Tube, it assisted the Tube lines
by relieving the Tube line of short journey traffic which drains
its capacity for very little benefit for the whole line and they
have got a very reliable journey time. An instance of where this
happened demonstrably was at St Pancras, which I think we are
going to a bit later, where the closure of Thameslink resulted
in a massive transfer of people to bicycles simply because it
was much faster and more convenient not to try and walk to the
Tube, walk to Pentonville Road Station, it was quicker to transfer
to bicycles at St Pancras. Likewise, the closure of the Waterloo
& City saw a substantial increase in the number of bicycles
parked at Waterloo because the alternative arrangements offered
were considerably slower and less convenient, so people were using
bicycles to make that journey. Around London termini over the
last five or six years I have taken photographs which have shown
dramatic increases in the number of parked bikes but, regrettably,
Network Rail do not positively monitor it. The only time it has
been seriously monitored was when CTC was working with the SRA
in 2003 and we actually took numbers of it.
1539. Thank you. I think we will be addressing
some of those issues later on. In terms of people with disabilities,
we have been given assurances that all Crossrail stations and
rolling stock will obviously be accessible to wheelchair users.
Is it not the case that any facility that is accessible to wheelchair
users and, indeed, people with buggies and other people with impairment
issues would also satisfy cyclists? Is it not also the case that
a lot of cyclists themselves are needing cycles as stability aids?
(Mr Holladay) I am considerably aware
from people who write to me in my role as dealing with bikes on
public transport at the CTC of people with disabilities who actually
use bicycles as mobility aids and this has posed a number of issues.
The other aspect which you have alluded to is the provision of
step-free access at stations and space to move around with a wheeled
appliance, whether it be a wheelchair, a buggy, a piece of luggage
or a bicycle. We do find that you must design in for the bicycle.
Even at peak times, if somebody is taking a folded bicycle the
possibility is that they will unfold it and wheel it where they
can. Carrying a folded bicycle up a flight of stairs or around
a building is a considerable weight and the natural instinct is
to unfold it and wheel it. Even if you have no bikes travelling
on the trains you would still have bikes circulating getting to
the trains before they are folded, so there will be a need to
make sure that bicycles are designed in at all times. The other
issue is when the design for a wheelchair is often marginally
shorter than for a bicycle. If the bicycle is considered to be
using the same space it must be designed in.
1 Committee Ref: A9, Transport for London, Bicycle
Tube Map, www.tfl.gov.uk
(LINEWD-93_05-011) Back
2
Committee Ref: A6, CTC Exhibit A: Cycle carriage policies on
similar light and heavy rail underground railways-Merseyrail Cycle
Policy (LINEWD-93_05-001) Back
3
Committee Ref: A6, CTC Exhibit A: Cycle carriage policies on
similar light and heavy rail underground railways-Bay Area Rapid
Transit (BART) Cycle Policy (LINEWD-93_05-002) Back
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