Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2280
- 2299)
2280. MR MIDDLETON: I am not poopooing
what Crossrail would do, but I think if you do Crossrail as we
are now doing it, it is not going to attract anyone from outside
London, no-one is going to get on Crossrail at Shenfield when
they can go into Liverpool Street, so the relief to Liverpool
Street is minimal because all the local journeys are forced on
to Crossrail because they are the only trains. The vast majority
of people on Crossrail will then get off at Liverpool Street.
The same thing from the other end, the Paddington end, everyone
from outside Maidenhead will go into Paddington. Obviously Crossrail
will benefit the east-west central section of London Underground
and one would not poopoo that at all. If you have someone like
me coming from Milton Keynes going to Canary Wharf, at the moment
I go into Euston, I stroll around the corner to Euston Square,
go around the line, get on a station at Bank and end up on the
Docklands Light Railway, I would go straight from Milton Keynes
to Canary Wharf. That is what you would call relieving central
London on the underground. Crossrail is a good thing, but the
way it is proposed now would do the minimum and, of course, Crossrail
again in its minimal form, 35 stations or whatever it is, all
journeys, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, that then is the maximum
number of people getting on it, whereas if Crossrail was regional
you get someone from Ipswich going to Aylesbury would go on Crossrail.
Someone from Ipswich now going would go to Liverpool Street, go
around the Metropolitan Line to Marylebone and then carry on.
A regional scheme would capture a whole raft of more journeys
that could relieve both central stations and the underground.
I think if you decide the best thing is to plough on with Crossrail
and then come back because we have spent £16 billion and
have not got it quite right, when we can step back and say, "Well,
yes, we plough on with Crossrail and do the central tunnels exactly
as proposed but make better connections at each end", that
is not a re-writing of Crossrail, that is thinking about the project
as a better project for London and the wider region.
2281. CHAIRMAN: It is still not within
the Bill however.
2282. MR MIDDLETON: Not within the Bill.
2283. CHAIRMAN: I wonder whether, Ms
Lieven, you have any questions to ask Mr Middleton?
2284. MS LIEVEN: I was not going to ask
Mr Middleton any questions, my Lord, no.
2285. CHAIRMAN: Lord James?
2286. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: You are
clearly more than an enthusiast, you clearly have a very detailed
and expert knowledge of your subject. You are recognising that
you are going to hit the buffers, if that is not too bad a pun
in this context with regard to us at the moment, but with all
the energy and commitment you have to this, is there no way you
can go away, rip up what you have got and try and work on the
creation of a modular variation that would be capable of enticing
the powers that be to do a modular development of what they have
got when they have done Crossrail? Do not waste your thinking
and your energy, but think of what they could do on a modular
tack-on basis next time round.
2287. MR MIDDLETON: I think I lose this
argument solely on the one premise that the only way to operate
a reliable railway is to hive it off and go very slowly, stopping
at every station. My view is we are going to spend billions of
pounds and we add something. The Crossrail Promoter's view is
the only way to have a reliable railway is this segregation and
avoidance of bringing more trains into the Crossrail network and,
to my mind, that is a very restrictive view of how it should work.
Thameslink is how it should work.
2288. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: You made
the point that you do not expect to see the creation of this in
your lifetime and you are, therefore, in the business of trying
to leave some sort of inheritance for the future from your thinking.
I am not a railway historian by any means but, as I understand
it, the whole of the British railway network was not created in
one bound, it was not a single concept from the beginning, it
grew and evolved. On the same spirit of that evolution which brought
us to the network we have got, and which has survived post-Beeching
and everything else subsequently, where we are now, can you not
conceive of this as a modular development which would be consistent
or is it a complete wreck so far as the fact that you have got
to build the infrastructure and the tunnels and everything now
or you never have the chance again?
2289. MR MIDDLETON: I think you have
to build the tunnels now and the central stations, but if you
look how Crossrail could connect, all it means is the eastern
end of the tunnel you connect properly to the Great Eastern Line,
at the western end Paddington, Old Oak Common, Willesden area,
all these three lines sit virtually next to one another, the West
Coast Mainline, the Great Western and the line to Aylesbury. It
is not a huge change but it is a change of philosophy. The philosophy
of Crossrail Promoters is slow operation, stop at every station,
do not join in with everyone else. Thameslink's philosophy is
an addition to the national rail network, some journeys very long,
some very short and unless you can shift the Crossrail Promoters
into being willing to go the wider area, they are not going to
be interested in connecting to Aylesbury and Milton Keynes, they
want to stick with the London Underground approach.
2290. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Mr Middleton,
you are definitely an enthusiast who has got beyond the point
of objectivity within the terms of what in reality can be done,
there is no shame in that, but you are very keen on leaving a
legacy behind. I would have thought it is better for you to try
and conceive of something to leave behind as a vision that can
be worked on for the future within the concepts you have developed
and leave that as a developed idea rather than wreck the whole
thing for the sake of not being able to live with the fact that
the tunnels are not going to be there.
2291. MR MIDDLETON: I do not think you
should stop the whole project, but you can easily move. It is
only connections, it not changing the project that much. The big
expensive difficult bit is exactly the same, it is a connection
thing and this theory that we are so far down the line we cannot
look at different connections—
2292. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: You are
not going to be able to stop the project, but that should not
be a reason to stop your thinking and that is the encouragement
I am trying to give you. Go on from there and leave something
behind that others can build on for the future. You may yet have
a role to play and have given some great thinking for the future,
but you are not going to stop the project now, so do not waste
your energy trying to stop it, but equally do not stop thinking
about it is my last word to you.
2293. MR MIDDLETON: I think you have
to ask the Promoters are they absolutely rigid with this one thing,
the reliability of separate operations because that is what dictates
everything they have done, the removal of various sections of
line.
2294. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: As they
have come as far as they are, I suspect the answer to that is,
yes, they are rigid and you should be working within the reality
of their being rigid.
2295. CHAIRMAN: Ms Lieven, I suspect
that you may wish to have some very brief comments to make at
the end of this. You did consider a large number of other schemes,
I believe?
2296. MS LIEVEN: We did, my Lord. If
I was going to show your Lordships the reports on the large number
of screens it would be a great deal bigger than this file. No,
this is the information paper file. My Lord, there are two ways
we can do this: I can very briefly take the Committee to IP, A1
and show you what we did consider, or I can call Mr Berryman to
answer whatever questions the Committee has, or I can do neither,
so there are three ways.[15]
As I said in opening, I am completely in the Committee's hands
as to how we handle this.
2297. CHAIRMAN: I doubt if there is anything
that you can usefully do. If you take us through all the alternatives
it may take a little while and I do not think it is going to advance
the matter in any way, and I do not think that Mr Berryman is
going to be able to add anything very much, is he?
2298. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: My
Lord Chairman, I do not want Ms Lieven go through the alternatives
but I do want to know whether you refute the two key points that
are made by Mr Middleton—for me they were key points anyway—that
it will not do much to relieve congestion on the London Underground;
and passenger usage will be not much.
2299. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, I can answer
those. We completely refute those. Your Lordships will remember
from opening that we put up a table of massive decreases in congestion,
in particular the Central Line but also the other lines. I cannot
emphasise too much that those are based on years of detailed modelling
about where people are going and their time savings in changing
to Crossrail and why Crossrail would have those effects. You may
also remember—and I think this was evidence that was given
in response to the Newham Petition—that the evidence of
the Jubilee Line extension was that the kind of modelling work
that is done by LUL, and in this case was done by Crossrail, is
actually very good at predicting levels of passenger usage. So
we are absolutely confident that there will be a major, major
benefit to London Underground congestion within the central area
of London. My Lords, unless there be some utterly unpredictable
situation in the next 15 years, on that the evidence is extremely
robust.
15 Crossrail Information Paper A1-Development of the
Crossrail Route: Appendix 1-Western Route Options (LINEWD-IPA1-012) Back
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