Examination of Witnesses (Questions 13040
- 13059)
13040. Let us look very briefly at this one
alternative which is being put up now and where it is being suggested
that we should carry out a further SES, Supplementary Environmental
Statement.[6]
How many Environmental Statements have we had by now? Perhaps
you cannot remember.
(Mr Berryman) I actually do not know but it
is quite a large number.
13041. We have had a fourth Supplementary Environmental
Statement, have we not?
(Mr Berryman) We have.
13042. As far as the alternative alignment known
as the Wigmore Street alignment is concerned, it runs from Paddington,
across the Hyde Park estate and north of Oxford Street, does it?
(Mr Berryman) That is right. It runs about here (indicating)
where I am just putting the pointer.
13043. Just explain to the Committee why that
was not considered to be a main alternative which needed to be
assessed in the Environmental Statement?
(Mr Berryman) As has been explained to the Committee, we
commissioned Parsons Brinckerhoff to do a study of this matter
almost at the start of the project. It was not the very first
thing that was done but it was in the first couple of years, at
the time really long before a Bill was being prepared or even
before ministers had agreed that we should have a Bill, so this
was a very early study that was done. We looked at this idea,
it had been looked at before by the 1992 scheme and rejected for
a variety of reasons, but we decided that in our consideration
of alternatives, which obviously we have to do as part of the
process, we would look at it again, so we commissioned a report
from Parsons Brinckerhoff. There were a number of problems with
it. The particular difficulty was with the stations. We have heard
a great deal from the Petitioners here about the harm that will
be caused by the construction of Crossrail. We would argue quite
strongly, as I think you have heard us argue on many occasions,
that the only harm that we would conceivably do to people who
live in the area is where we come to the surface. When we are
30 metres below ground then we would argue quite strongly that
we do not do any harm. The issue of harm which the Petitioners'
barrister referred to is really to do with where the station entrances
are and where the accesses are for the underground works from
the surface. One of the problems with the Wigmore Street alignment
is it proved to be quite difficult to identify suitable sites
for that to be done. It did not seem to have any environmental
advantages over the route which we have taken forward. The disadvantage
is that it is about 150 metres further away from Oxford Street,
which is the main destination point for people in this area. There
is also much more traffic going to the south into Mayfair rather
than going north.
13044. You do not mean vehicular traffic, do
you?
(Mr Berryman) I do not mean vehicular traffic, I mean pedestrian
traffic. It just seemed that a scheme which had no environmental
benefits, in other words the environmental consequences of building
it were at least as bad and probably worse than the alignment
which we finally selected and the transport benefits were manifestly
less attractive, there was no point in pursuing. We did pursue
two other alternatives in more detail: one is called the northern
alignment, which links the mainline railway stations, and the
other is called the southern alignment, which I have spoken about
with Mr Schabas, because they were going to completely different
areas. If we had found that one of those was more attractive in
traffic terms then we would have done more detailed design and
more refinement. The Wigmore Street alignment was dismissed at
a fairly early stage because it was clear that it was serving
the same destinations but less well.
13045. MS LIEVEN: In terms of interchange
at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road, and therefore relieving
the Central Line, did the Wigmore Street alignment work as well
as the Bill scheme?
(Mr Berryman) No, not as well at all. There would have been
long corridors to allow interchange. Certainly up here (indicating)
and also at Tottenham Court Road. Indeed, at Tottenham Court Road—this
plan does not show it—there is a major problem, in that
there is a whole group of tall buildings with very deep foundations
immediately to the north of Oxford Street at that point, and that
would have pushed the alignment very far to the north, well away
from the existing Tottenham Court Road station, and obviously,
interchange with that station is an important factor in the project.
13046. Yes. I was just going to touch on those
two construction problems. I think one of the buildings you are
referring to at Tottenham Court Road is a building some members
of the Committee may be familiar with, the YMCA Building.
(Mr Berryman) I doubt if they are as familiar with it as
I am, because I designed the basement for the YMCA when I was
a graduate trainee. You can guess my age from that!
13047. Just on construction difficulties east
of Regent Street, Oxford Circus, so well away from the concerns
of the Mayfair residents, was there a problem with putting a ticket
hall on Post Office land?
(Mr Berryman) Yes. One of the issues with these very large
stations and very long stations is that you have to have ventilation
and escape provision at each end of the station, even if you do
not have an entrance at each end. In fact, we have entrances at
each end in most of our stations. Even if you do not have an entrance,
you have to have ventilation and escape stair provision, and they
have to come up somewhere. It is much better if you can bring
them up from between the tracks, for obvious reasons: you can
serve both tracks with one shaft. That proved to be a very difficult
thing to solve on the sites we briefly looked at on the Wigmore
Street alignment.
13048. Bringing that all together, was it your
view and that of the project, when the environmental statement
was being drawn up, that it was necessary to consider this as
a main alternative?
(Mr Berryman) No, we did not consider it as a main alternative.
We do not consider that it is a main alternative.
13049. MS LIEVEN: That is all, Mr Berryman.
I do not know whether you want a break now, my Lord.
13050. CHAIRMAN: I was going to suggest
we did break now but Mr Elvin wanted to say something, I believe.
The witness withdrew
13051. MR ELVIN: My Lords, I thought
I would come back on Lord James's query in relation to the safety
paper and the issue as to what extent, in looking at safety issues,
have we modelled catastrophic possibilities, namely, in particular,
the cumulative occurrences of events which, in isolation, may
be less serious than when they are combined in unexpected combinations.
Certainly, it is accepted that, of course, there may well be accidents
or failures which occur in combination which may have far greater
catastrophic consequences than if they occurred singly and in
isolation.
13052. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Shall
we give the bemused Committee an idea as to the cases we had suggested
between us would be the sort of case, that if the increase in
the rail lay-out that is created put such an extreme strain on
the track checking machinery that they had a breakdown of two
of the seven pieces of equipment or whatever it is that were available,
that they had for a period of time a deficiency of track checking
equipment which coincided with a failure of the signalling system,
and the two half-factors together combined to create a catastrophe.
13053. MR ELVIN: Can I tell your Lordship—and
I hope your Lordship will be pleased to hear this—that there
is no issue that those are matters which have to be taken into
account in the modelling, and certainly it is common ground that
such combinations of factors have in the past led to catastrophic
failure and that catastrophic failures have often occurred as
a result of unexpected combinations of different failures.
13054. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: The
one I have just described is very close to Hatfield.
13055. MR ELVIN: Indeed. The position
is this: that the modelling which has been done to date at a high
level already takes account of such matters but, as you will have
seen from the paper, there is continuing development of the model
and the safety assessment as the detailed design continues and
whilst the catastrophic cumulative consequences are already factored
in at a high level, they will be factored in properly in detail
as the detailed design is developed. That sort of modelling will
be part of the modelling which will take place and that will then
factor itself into the safety mitigation measures and the development
of the detailed design.
13056. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: For
the sake of completeness, Mr Elvin, I might just say that my concern
with the paper that was presented was that it did not adequately
address the impact of superimposing another rail structure on
top of another without looking at what the collective effect of
small collective errors might be together in creating a disaster.
13057. MR ELVIN: My Lord, I am assured—and
I asked for the two senior staff members who have been concerned
with the modelling to come and explain it to me, and I am told
that they would expect all of this modelling, as I say, it is
partly factored in because, of course, as your Lordship will be
aware, the modelling takes account of the existing history of
failures and accidents on the rail networks to date, and some
of those, of course, include to a certain degree catastrophic—
13058. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: I hope
you and your colleagues will forgive me therefore, as this is
the last day, if I say that in this particular case I thought
that the exercise that had been undertaken was extremely lightweight
and inadequate given the size and horrendous potential for risks
that are involved.
13059. MR ELVIN: My Lord, I think we
have probably done a disservice to the modelling in producing
so short a paper.
6 Crossrail Ref: P80, Bond Street Station-Transport
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