Examination of Witnesses (Questions 5700
- 5719)
5700. MR TAYLOR: Indeed. That is precisely
the idea.
5701. CHAIRMAN: So that will be the final
version upon which their Lordships and the House as a whole can
rely?
5702. MR TAYLOR: That is indeed the intention.
5703. BARONESS FOOKES: Amidst this welter
of papers and technical information, you will not lose sight of
the fact that, basically, the Petitioners do not want to hear
this noise?
5704. MR TAYLOR: The whole basis of the
approach that the Promoter has adopted, as Mr Thornely-Taylor
has explained this morning, is to identify a means of ensuring
that the railway is designed to meet appropriate noise levels
within properties so that the amenity of the residents of all
the sorts of buildings that we see in the Table on the screen
is appropriately protected for the future. We are hoping we will
get to a point where local authorities agree that that is exactly
what we have done.
5705. CHAIRMAN: Ms Jones, there is quite
a lot of extra material there that you had not heard before. Is
there anything that you want to raise in relation to what Mr Thornely-Taylor
has now said?
5706. MS JONES: Yes. Her Ladyship has
hit the nail precisely on the head and said it much more succinctly
than I have managed to. Basically, Petitioners do not want to
hear the noise of the trains in their properties. Camden, I appreciate,
are dealing with this generically, or Havering, but of course
what they come up with may not be acceptable to the Petitioners,
so I would very much like the opportunity to come back when we
have seen what the revised information paper says and give you
my further views on that. Is it appropriate now for me to simply
sum up?
5707. MR TAYLOR: I have two points I
would like to make in re-examination, if I might, with Mr Thornely-Taylor,
before we get to that point.
5708. CHAIRMAN: You do those now.
Re-examined by MR
TAYLOR
5709. MR TAYLOR: They are matters which,
hopefully, will assist the Committee. The first relates to background
noise levels in the Princelet Street area. I have in my hand a
copy of Volume 6A of the Crossrail Environmental Statement which,
at pages 72 and 73, sets out noise survey results for seven-day
monitoring sites and weekend averages.[9]
One of the sites is at 51 Princelet Street. It is very difficult
to get the whole thing on the screen, but we can see on the page
in front of you that Princelet Street is about five from the bottom
there. We have figures for the 16-hour, LAeq day period, from
7 in the morning to 11, and so on, set out in LAeq: 55 in the
16-hour day LAeq; 55.6 for the 12-hour; at night from 2300 to
0700 50.6 and the 18-hour day, from 0600 in the morning to midnight,
54.8. Can we go across, please, to the next page? The numbers
continue across the page—it is very hard to see precisely
which row we are in, using the screen, unfortunately—but
the figures I wanted to draw the Committee's attention to are
the LAMax,f figures for night-time for 51 Princelet Street. We
have got a range, ranging from the lowest to the highest figure.
The lowest figure is 50.1dB LAMax,f and the highest figures is
79.3dB LAmax,f. With those figures in mind, Mr Thornely-Taylor,
how would you characterise the noise environment in Princelet
Street?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor) Can I first make absolutely
clear that these are outdoor noise levels, and to convert them
to indoor noise levels one needs to subtract 15 if the window
is open and about 25 if the window is closed. So all these numbers
need to be reduced by anything up to 25 to give us an internal
noise level, which leaves us with the low 30s inside Princelet
Street, which is indeed what we get. I have been in Petitioners'
houses and found that.
5710. CHAIRMAN: On this table, is this
a fac"ade reading?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor)
It is a façade, yes.
5711. That is not on the screen at the moment.
What does that mean?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor) That means the microphone
was placed a metre in front of a building façade for the
purpose of baseline noise measurement for the Environmental Statement.
People, of course, hear underground trains inside rooms and those
façade levels need to be reduced by 15 to25 according to
whether the window is open or closed. The LAMax that counsel asked
me about of up to 79.3, or thereabouts, is going to be equivalent
to the 60s inside the room. As anybody who has ever lived in London
knows, all sorts of events take place in the street with high
maximum noise levels, and that is no exception. It is quite common
to get internal maximum noise levels in those circumstances which
are well into the 60s.
5712. In the case of 51 Princelet Street, it
says it is not a façade reading.
(Mr Thornely-Taylor) Yes, all these are
façade readings.
5713. It says "N".
(Mr Thornely-Taylor) That may mean it
is not actually one metre in front of the brickwork, but it is
an outdoor measurement. There is a convention that you say you
add 3 units to a measurement that is in free space, so to speak
not immediately in front of the brickwork. However, generally
speaking, the point I am making is that they are outdoor noise
levels, and I would not want your Lordships and your Ladyship
to think that this is what it is like inside the rooms; this is
measurement out in the street.
5714. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Mr Thornely-Taylor,
if you use that method and you are 1 metre in front, does that
not have the effect of increasing the bass content of the noise
quality and, effectively, making a bigger rumble sound?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor)
No, my Lord. In an ideal world one would put a microphone right
against the wall and you get a completely uniform effect. You
simply double the sound field. It is like a mirror; it behaves
as if the world behind the wall were exactly the same as the world
in front of the wall. For practical purposes we do put the microphone
1 metre in front and that slightly muddies the water—so
it is not exactly like a mirror. Generally speaking, all you are
doing is creating the circumstances as if the world behind the
wall were identical to the world in front of it—at all frequencies
and in all respects.
5715. MR TAYLOR: You were asked some
questions about the model that is being used and whether it has
been used on other projects. Do you recall?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor)
Yes, I was.
5716. Can you tell me, Mr Thornely-Taylor, what
model is available which is better at prediction than the model
that you utilised in relation to the Crossrail project, that you
are aware of?
(Mr Thornely-Taylor) I ought to use some
modesty because it is my own model, but I do not think there is
one, my Lord.
5717. MR TAYLOR: Thank you. Those are
all the questions I have.
5718. CHAIRMAN: Ms Jones, I am not at
all sure about your coming back again when the next information
paper is produced. This is, as you know, a dynamic process (and
a very good thing too) and if we go in for that we shall have
all the Petitioners back on their own individual points, and I
think the thing will be interminable. So I hope we can arrange
with the Promoters to let you see the new information paper but
I am not entirely certain that we are going to be able to fit
in an opportunity for you to come and address us about it.
5719. MS JONES: I appreciate that, my
Lord. It must be very difficult. If I could just place on the
record the fact that we have not seen that information paper and,
therefore—
9 Crossrail Environmental Statement, Volume 6a, Appendix
B2: Listed buildings and settlement, Table 1.3 Noise Survey Results
for 7 day Monitoring Sites-Weekend Averages, pp72-73 (SCN-20080318-002) Back
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