Found this from CIOB International:
Having passed the historic milestone of the Second Reading of the Crossrail Bill in the House of Commons, Cross London Rail Links, a joint venture of Transport for London and the Department for Transport, is appointing consulting engineers and other specialists to carry out detailed design work for this £15 billion railway project. It will also be appointing a new chief executive.
As Crossrail’s acting chief executive Keith Berryman put it, the venture is now moving forward to establish a framework for the next stage of the operation, procurement of the engineering services required to take the design to a more detailed and inclusive level.
The current situation concerning the ‘hybrid’ legislation is that the Select Committee examining the Bill in the Commons is expected to start consideration of petitions against the Bill some time next month, a process that may go on well into the following year.
No construction activity will be possible until examination of the Crossrail Bill is completed in both Houses of Parliament and it receives Royal Assent, expected at the close of the 2006-07 Parliamentary session. Until then the project will not have any source of funding it can draw upon apart from that provided by the joint venture partners. It is understood that the Secretary of State for Transport will be making an advance of the order of £200 million to finance the initial stage of procurement, using his powers under the Transport and Works Act.
To recapitulate the scale of this huge building and civil engineering project, the central section of the line will require construction of 23 km of twin-bore full-size tunnels, running from Royal Oak west of Paddington in the direction of Stepney Green, where the line diverges north-east to Stratford and south-east towards the Royal Docks. Twin-bore tunnels are also needed between North Woolwich and Plumstead to take the south-eastern section of the route under the River Thames.
Whitechapel station facilities expanded
One important modification has been made to the scheme submitted in the Crossrail Bill. In the interests of integration with existing rail services, the station at Whitechapel in East London is to have a street level western ticket hall over the District Line platforms. There is also the possibility of an eastern ticket hall also at street level which will improve access at the other end of the station.
This is a sensitive area of the project. Strong opposition has been registered to the construction programme proposed in the Spitalfields area of London. Though not strictly required by the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, Crossrail has recently released to undisclosed recipients all the documents concerning construction of this part of the railway, seeking to establish in particular the engineering justification for the proposed shaft in Hanbury Street E1, named after one of the families owning the no longer active Truman Hanbury & Buxton brewery in Brick Street.
CIOB International readers will recall from previous reports on the Crossrail project that the Hanbury Street shaft is designed to act as an intermediate intervention and ventilation facility in the Spitalfields area. Its purpose is to enable emergency services and maintenance personnel to gain access to the running tunnels as well as to provide forced ventilation when required.
Without it, the engineers fear that some 18 months could be added to the tunnelling timetable and so put the project outside the six-year timetable for funding determined by the Department for Transport.
Voicing his opposition to Crossrail during the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, George Galloway representing the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency was probably right when he quoted the belief of his supporters that Crossrail will never pay for itself. The same could be said about the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, except that the enormous economic advantages of the new high speed line are now becoming apparent.
Mr. Galloway urged the Secretary of State for Transport to drop the Whitechapel station from his proposals, on the grounds that people who live in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets are finding it difficult to obtain employment at Canary Wharf. This is the next station along the line and one would think that the improved facilities being proposed at Whitechapel would make it easier to find employment at a place being made more accessible.
Conversely, it seems apparent that removing public access to Crossrail at Whitechapel would have the opposite effect. Be that as it may, the improvements now being put forward will promote access to the whole of the London Underground network. There was no sign of any manifest opposition to the scheme when it was opened to public discussion at the Whitechapel Sports Centre as part of the project’s public engagement strategy.
Nick Raynsford, who is fast becoming the construction industry’s Parliamentary spokesman, saw the whole issue as one might expect from a quite different viewpoint. He accepts that two major infrastructure projects running in the capital at the same time – the London Olympics and Crossrail – will put pressure upon the capacity of the construction industry. with implications for prices and deployment of skills. He admitted there might be conflicts relating to sites needed for both Crossrail and the Olympics. But he urged Ministers not to allow challenges of this kind to be used as an excuse for further delay.
Conviction of the need for Crossrail seems to be the prevailing view in London and the South East. It was cancelled once before due to loss of nerve by the Government of the day. But the project’s power of resurgence is demonstrated by the support it enjoys ten years later at both at government level and in the business community. The resources argument needs to centre around the advantages of the scheme which is bound to justify itself in terms of economic growth. What Ministers now need to do is find financial mechanisms which will bring the cost to the Exchequer and the advantages to the community into some kind of balance.
Crossrail seeking new chief executive
The Crossrail company is to appoint a new chief executive to succeed Norman Haste. In the meantime the design and construction chief for the project will be Keith Berryman who as head of operations and development is responsible for Crossrail’s engineering operations. A civil and structural engineer, Mr. Berryman has spent the past 30 years on the design and construction of new railways including the Docklands Light Railway, West Coast Main Line, the Jubilee Line (London Underground) and Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway. Martin Buck, the new commercial manager, will be responsible for financial management, as well as for procurement and works agreements with contractors and consultants.