PUBLIC SESSION
MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE
taken before
HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE
On the
HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL
Tuesday 30 November 2015 (Afternoon)
In Committee Room 5
PRESENT:
Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Mr Henry Bellingham Sir Peter Bottomley Mr David Crausby Mr Mark Hendrick ______
IN ATTENDANCE
Mr Timothy Mould QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport
WITN ESSES
Professor Andrew McNaughton, Technical Director, HS2 Ltd Ms Hero Granger-Taylor, Camden Civic Society Mr Colin Elliff, Camden Civic Society Mr Robert Latham Sir Ke ir Star me r Rt Hon Frank Dobson ______
IN PUBLIC SESSION
1 INDEX
Subject Page
Update from the Promoter Presentation from Professor McNaughton 3 Professor McNaughton, questioned by Mr Elliff 13
Camden Civic Society Submissions by Ms Granger-Taylor 14 Evidence of Mr Elliff 16 Mr Elliff, cross-examined by Mr Mould 28
HS2 Euston Action Group Submissions by Mr Starmer 31 Submissions by Mr Latham 35 Submissions by Mr Dobson 43 Response from Mr Mould 50 Professor McNaughton, examined by Mr Mould 52 Professor McNaughton, cross-examined by Mr Dobson 59 Professor McNaughton, cross-examined by Mr Latham 62
2 (At 2.00 p.m.)
1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome to the HS2 Select Committee. We start with Camden today. Before we start, we have Professor McNaughton, who is going to update the Committee on some plans for Euston.
Update from the Promote r
2. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you very much. I thought that it would be helpful to the Committee if, before you start to hear petitions about Euston, including the proposed alternatives to our scheme for Euston, Professor McNaughton just spend a few moments just running through the nature of the scheme and that is what this is principally designed to do. So, if we can put up please the next slide; P112792. Professor McNaughton, for those who don’t know – can I put it this way – you are the chief engineer for HS2?
3. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
4. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you. Now, the purpose of HS2, we’ve drawn out one or two pertinent passages from the underlying policy documentation just to remind people of the legislative purpose which lies behind the HS2 Phase 1 Bill. And if you forgive me, I will read these out. ‘The new north south railway is a long-term solution to a long-te r m prob le m. The aim of the HS2 project is to deliver hugely enhanced capacity and connectivity between our major conurbations. And capacity will be freed up on the existing network, especially on the congested lines to the north of London, creating sufficient capacity for extra commuter and freight services.’
5. Just help me with this; in relation to that last passage, which existing line principally, will be the beneficiary of that freed up capacity?
6. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: In the first stage of High Speed 2, it will be the West Coast mainline, running up towards Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, through Milton Keynes. In later stages, of course, it also relieves capacity at Kings Cross and out of St Pancras.
7. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you. Are there any other points you want to make in relation to this slide before we move on to the next business?
3 8. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Now, if I can take it on from there please, by the time – in doing this short overview it is always in the context of what the purpose of High Speed 2 is. I won’t give you a long history lesson, because this is not the purpose. But we did not start with any particular pre-conception, or any pre-conception of where HS2 would serve in the London area.
9. Where we’ve come to it as being led by the evidence, and the evidence starts with demand, where people actually want to go to. This slide simply puts up a couple of statistics on the HS2 network running towards London. The first comment is a lot of people using HS2; it’s a quarter of a million a day. And the second is that both the modelling and origin and estimation work being done over the number of years we’ve been working, has shown that some 90% of those passengers are travelling specifically to or from central London, or through central London, because that’s the way they get on with journeys, through central London termini.
10. If I could have the next slide please, we started this voyage with seeking every poss ib le place that you might serve London from. We did that in conjunction with Transport for London, to pick up a number of parameters, one obviously is impact on a local area, another is the ability for passengers to get onto the London transport systems. And a third was actually where is there physical space. I would just perhaps mention in passing that if we’d been doing this job 30 years ago, there would have been a lot more opportunities before the railway lands around a number of terminals were sold off for commercial development. You may see from that that not only did we come up with ideas, and Transport for London, but actually members of the public wrote in with their ideas, and met us with ideas. And there is a great diversity of possible places.
11. Moving on, the process of getting to a proposal for Euston to be the terminus went through a series of progressively more detailed sifts. We started with those 27, and I would note in passing, not only the rich variety of places, but some of the ideals included beneath Trafalgar Square, or beneath the Thames, and we examined them all, to a certain degree. When we sifted out the ones, which were of little practicality, or where passengers would never actually make a journey onward from, we got to stage two, which was rapidly becoming focussed on connectivity with the existing transport networks. We are still with some quite interesting ideals, such us beneath a Royal park, or out indeed Old Oak Common, or Willesden Junction.
4 12. By stage three several of those schemes demanded building a completely underground terminal the size of several football pitches, which was not reasonably achievable. And even if it were, we’d create such subsidence on the surface as to render no building above it possible. So, by stage three it had rapidly come down to Euston, K ings Cross, in other words the north and Euston Road.
13. The last part of this slide shows that by the time the first decision was made by the then Secretary of State, his preferred decision had become Euston broadly alongside the existing railway and overlapping it, which I will come onto very quickly now, but included possibilities of creating a double-deck Euston or of creating a station in or around Kings Cross lands. The other solutions around St Pancras had fallen away because of their total impracticality or their impact on Somers Town and hospitals and other transport systems. So, by the end of 2009 the preference for Euston had become set, if we could move on.
14. That initial preference, by the then Secretary of State in 2009, was reviewed by a new Secretary of State in 2010 was then consulted, as part of the strategy for High Speed Rail in 2011, was confirmed by a third Secretary of State in 2012, and has since been supported by a fourth Secretary of State in 2013, so it as survived four Secretaries of State, moving on. That Euston destination, or Euston as a destination, when I said 90% of people using High Speed 2 sought or would prefer to use a central London terminus, Euston serves great parts of north, south and east London exceedingly well. But the density of use is very much towards the centre of London. That is not to say that there aren’t people using it to go as far afield as Margate or Brighton, or wherever. But the point is where people actually want to go to; Euston is well served to do so.
15. Part of the reason, next slide please, is the connections at Euston, through various underground lines, bus routes and a statistic which I sometimes find surprising, but which is reinforced by existing train operators, around 22% of people, long distance travellers who arrive at Euston, actually walk to their destination, it is that central.
16. Moving on. That is not to decry the value of Old Oak Common, the two are complimentary. Old Oak Common does several things, it serves the west of London and particularly access to Heathrow, this is the only time I’m mentioning Old Oak Common today, but it’s to set it in context. It does provide, through using Crossrail-
17. CHAIR: Can you point out exactly where it is?
5 18. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: It is just here, thank you, just in there. So, because of Crossrail east west it is very helpful, for particularly business travellers travelling to Canary Wharf and the C ity of London, but if we were to zoom out further, along the Thames Valley as far as Reading, there are destinations where Old Oak Common is the natural changing point.
19. Because of the Crossrail connection, vitally it relieves the pressure on Euston, but it’s not a substitute for Euston. S ince this was developed there are, of course, other plans to build a regeneration site around the Old Oak Common, Park Royal area, but if I just recap for a moment, whilst 90% of our passengers are looking to use the centre of London, most of them will use Euston because that best serves where they actually want to go.
20. CHAIR: And Old Oak Common – people from HS2 can go to Crossrail to get back to Heathrow?
21. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
22. CHAIR: That relieves the pressure on a Heathrow link, or the vitality of a Heathrow link is –
23. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Quite dramatically, yes.
24. CHAIR: Yes, okay.
25. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: The numbers of people that we modelled, or saw going to Heathrow was actually relatively small. If you remember my 250,000 a day coming on High Speed 2, we reckon only 4,000 or 5,000 were heading towards Heathrow, most people are heading to the centre of London. Next –
26. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Before you go on, just to emphasise the point about the fact that Old Oak Common is complementary to, and not a substitute for Euston. The second bullet on this page mentions it is – mentions Old Oak Common via Crossrail, as a convenient access to the City of London. But if we just flick back to page seven, we just see the intensity of onward movement to and from the City from Euston station, one can see there, can’t one, that notwithstanding that role that Old Oak Common plays, the choice for many of those passengers using HS2, from Phase 1 onwards, to get to the City, as opposed to the Isle of Dogs, will be to go to Euston and to get on the Northern Line C ity branch, of the Metropolitan
6 Line or the Circle Line.
27. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
28. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you.
29. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: If we come back then, I’m trying to get a bit of a pace Chairman so that we have more time for petitions, so that’s been covered, next slide please. This is just to perhaps remind you that in the context of where Mr Mould started with the purposes of High Speed 2. One is to release capacity and a key part then, of developing the Euston proposition, is to ensure that we neither get in the way of the continually increasing usage of Euston each year as it is today. And also, to realise that opportunity for the West Coast mainline to fulfil its new purpose of greater commuter and freight travel after HS2 has come into being, but I have talked to you about that in the past haven’t I, and I shouldn’t detain you today, but it’s just that point. The proposition we have before you realises all the opportunity to reuse the West Coast for growth.
30. Next slide please. So, we come to Euston. A footprint which the green outline is essentially today’s station and the blue is the proposed new station approaches. Now, a lot of conversations around Euston often come to platforms and trains, and indeed you’ll get a little bit of that from me in a moment, but platforms and trains are not the be all and end all of the station. In fa ct, by themselves they are fairly useless. There are four aspects that I want to touch on briefly, one is platforms and trains, the other is actually this station is for passengers, that means it has got to be usable, people have got to be able to pass through the station; it’s got to be big enough for it. It has got to be big enough for people to flow freely to and from trains.
31. It has got to have sufficient capacity then, from the concourses into the connecting forms of transport, and our scheme, as I will mention in a moment, has been very focussed on that, again with Transport for London. And finally, the trains on all those platforms have actually got to get out of the place, and get north. And hence, when we come to talk about the – not just the platforms, but the route out to our tunnels, and that’s the sizing we’ve done, of this footprint. It is about ensuring that the trains themselves can flow, and we get the capacity on High Speed 2 that the proposition depends on. Next slide please.
32. So, why have we changed the AP3 design? I put up first, because it is a major
7 consideration, it is the government’s requirement that the design for Euston stayed within what the Chancellor was prepared to spend on High Speed 2. And therefore budgetary programme factors. There are a number of possible ways of doing Euston which, if time is of no constraint, or money is of no constraint, are possible; engineers can do almost anything. But it is done within a budget and with a programme.
33. But the two bigger reasons, and more significant reasons, at this stage, for changing to AP3, was first of all it was to support the wider development vision for the Euston area, and on that I have got a few more slides in a moment. In other words, it’s not just a railway station; it is part of the development of the Euston area. And the other is that whilst we’ve been developing Euston since 2009, rail services have continued to grow on the West Coast main line, and the growth is primarily in longer distance and commuting services.
34. There is growth in local services, in inner London services, but the greater growth is in the longer distance commuters and the longer distance travellers’ altogether and that has put new demands on us in ensuring that HS2 can be built without constraining or impacting or preventing people from getting to work. Next slide please.
35. Hence, in AP3 we’ve taken the new High Speed 2 Euston Station and proposed to build it in stages. Stage A is to create the initial stage by 2026, whilst largely leaving the existing station alone; that is to enable the existing station to continue to take the passengers who use it every day. And the sizing of that was after detailed joint work with the existing railway industry, Network Rail, but also the train operators, to understand how Euston needed to perform between now and 2026 against a background of that 5% annual growth in passengers.
36. The second stage to complete the High Speed 2 station is stage, so called here, B1, and I will describe that in a moment. That completes the high speed station and it’s been designed again in a joint work with Network Rail, to ensure that in due course, when Network Rail come forward with any proposal to rebuild the remainder of the station for classic railway in the future, that the two are completely joined at the hip.
37. Moving on. Reducing that, all this complexity, almost to absurdum, up to 2026 the existing railway has got 18 platforms. The railway industry has confirmed that it requires those platforms in order to operate a service reliably. Again, many people can do paper exercises to squeeze trains into platforms, but you actually have to run a realistic service, on a realistic day.
8 38. From 2026 to 2033, we will have introduced, on the high-speed side, six new platforms, to take the full Phase 1 service. We then cut into the existing station, leaving the platforms that Network Rail then needs to operate an intensive commuter service, because the long distance passengers have now transferred to High Speed 2. And in that space between the six and the 13, we then build the remaining five p la tfor ms, we need for the full high-speed service, which comes into play in 2033, which is when High Speed 2 service Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield and the like.
39. So, it is a staged way of ensuring that at each point through the journey the people who rely on Euston to travel can still do so. We did study with Network Rail, whether there were opportunities for passengers to be diverted to other London stations, and the answer is only to a very, very limited degree, moving on. So, 2026, in this more opt agonal view, is a new station, or the first half of our new station, it’s not just about the platforms. It’s the new concourses that that extra volume of people will have, and the starting, or the creation of new capacity into the underground, both a new southern concourse. A new connection across into – direct connection into the Euston Square platforms, which means that people have a few yards to walk to Euston Square platforms, rather than a walk down the street. And a further entrance on the south side of Euston Road, for that huge number of people who disburse today, across the Euston Road at Gray. So, it’s not just about the platforms, it’s about the concourses, and the underground connections.
40. Moving on, by 2033, that work has continued with another new London Underground entrance in the middle of a new north-south spine area, which is the way the majority of people from High Speed 2 will access a vastly increased London Underground concourse. When I say ‘largely increased’ over five-fold, we will have created, by this stage, more space underground for people to go to the underground, various underground stations and platforms, but between five and six times what there is today. Hence, the comment Mr Mould made at the start, a long-term solution to a long-term problem.
41. Moving on, and without going into great detail now, because there will be an opportunity I am sure, later, that is new accesses, new ways onto the Victoria Line and Northern (City) Line. I mentioned all the new accesses across directly onto the platforms of what is today Euston Square, on the Metropolitan and C ity Line. This vast new area, north, south, underneath that building, which is a free-flowing passenger route, including into the other Charing Cross branch. So, we have unblocked the congestion of Euston, not only in
9 terms of trains and platforms, but in terms of passenger concourses and passengers going on to the underground.
42. Moving forward; a little cross-section, looking south, and I’m sorry we’ve kind of rotated round; but if we look from the west side then and I would observe, in passing, you will see, various tube lines diagrammatically. Of course, they are not running north south; they are running across the site. But never forget the tube lines; they pop up in the most inconvenient places at times.
43. Our station, progressively is across to there, in Stage 1 and then across to there, in Stage 2. A station is not just platforms. In order to facilitate the Euston area plan and to create commercial opportunity above the station, all the things that make a station work have been put into basements. That’s not just the mechanical plant, but it’s the way you service the platform, service the trains. So, it’s a station, it’s not just what you see, it’s what’s underneath what you see. Once again, you see a north-south spine building; the purpose of that is to create a new permeability right the way through that doesn’t exist today, through the open spaces of that station, and I will show you that again in a moment.
44. May I have the next slide please? So, AP3 in placing all the things that service trains in basements underneath them creates the scope to build above the station and where you see, in this kind of buff orange, is all areas which –. And then there’s the green areas for lighter development, or open space, is all the things that go together to create our contribution towards the wider Euston development plan. And in that green is the replacement of green spaces that would otherwise have been lost through the development of High Speed 2.
45. Moving on, this is not our plan, this is the Camden area plan showing the desire for permeability in the future, a wonderful phrase, permeability. The ability for people to move between Regents Park and Kings Cross, and to move from the north of Euston, through towards the south and into down towards Oxford Circus eventually. All the areas, which the station today acts as a complete blocker too. So that is the vision by the local authorities, and the London plan.
46. Now, how do we contribute to that? Next slide, what we contribute towards it is our plan is compatib le with that; in Phase 1 we have created the start of the east-west links across the station and then, in Phase 2. If we can go to the next drawing, when we have completed our work we have created the full permeability of that first slide underneath and through the
10 open spaces of us, by building. And we have linked up the existing roads in the vision that when, in due course, other development of Euston is complete. I terminate there as ‘we have done our bit’ towards that.
47. A couple of slides on, programme, now, I really would wish to, having put it up, the main purpose of this, apart from – so there’s a lot going on, is that in the early years there is a great focus to the north of the station. Utility works around the station, the bridgeworks that you saw on your walk around both Mornington Street, Granby Terrace and so on, on to Bow Bridge and a part of the reduced area itself. That is an intensive piece of work, albeit staged as best we believe we can, and so the early 2020s. Thereafter, the focus of construction work is around the station itself. So, a lot of the continuing discussion about the way that Euston is constructed and the effects, and everything to do with spoil movements, and lorry movements etc. becomes, by the early 2020s, focussed on the station itself.
48. If we then go on to post 2026 the story is about creating those five further platforms and the additional Transport for London interchange space, concourse space, which is why the work is almost entirely at the station itself. In fact, it is entirely at the station itself. Having focussed on the station, I think it would be remiss, because I did mention four factors, and one was getting the trains out of the station to the north. I think I’ve covered in at least outline, three – the platforms, the passengers through the station and the movement on to their destinations whatever, so the fourth point.
49. And again, in your walk-around, you saw north of Euston station and this is immediately north of the existing station, coming under Hampstead Road Bridge. There are basically six running tracks today, the most important ones labelled A, B, C and D and X. The purpose of this line X, of which I am sure you will hear more in the coming hours, is to get departing trains from one side of the main lines to the other side of the main lines, without conflicting.
50. That is the existing layout. Our scheme is not without impact on the existing railway, we have minimised it and we have worked very closely with the train operator, and Network Rail, to achieve that practical minimal so that people can still get to London, get to work, but is not completely impact free, and it would be wrong to say so. So, if we move to the next slide, for some three years, almost straight after construction is intended to start, whilst the works are being constructed around Park Village East, that line that you saw earlier, so called
11 X line, is taken out of use. We can do this, or rather the railway industry can do this in these early years, because at this stage the passenger growth enables there to be various coping strategies to do without it for a short period of time.
51. But growth is relentless so by, next slide, 2022 part of AP3 is to reinstate line X over the top of our new railway. So, the intensive work around Park Village East has to be complete in the early 2020s, and then we are pretty much done with it. After that it’s about fitting out our railway, the track signally, the power lines and things. The civil engineering work is to get in and get out of the area as quickly as we can, and to get this line X reinstated to enable the existing railway to continue to grow.
52. And my final slide shows when we are all done but that’s got more lines on it than perhaps I shouldn’t waste your time now, but that includes the HS2 lines around Park Village East. Okay I think that’s the last slide. I was right.
53. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And we were just going to put up the P1183, just to bring us up to date with Network Rail’s position, a letter from Network Rail’s group finance director, 26 November in relation to the AP3 proposals. ‘Euston is the right terminus station for London for HS2.’ And the new line was ‘Must act as the catalyst for the modernisation and redevelopment of Euston Station and regeneration of the surrounding area. Network Rail continues to be involved in the development process for the scheme proposals, which were deposited in AP3 in early September this year. Network Rail agree that the proposals set out in AP3 represent the best practical solution for the high speed element of Euston Station. We are pleased that significant steps have been taken to try to minimise disruption to passengers and station users during the construction phase of the high speed station.’
54. They agree that the ‘AP3 station also provides a strong start for any wider development of both Euston Station and the surrounding area. The Bill –’ they say ‘is a critical first step of a longer process as would be expected at this relatively early stage of project development. There are a number of issues, which need to be resolved and developed as we move into the detailed design phased. And we jointly agreed these would be resolved by the continuing participation in the integrated government’s arrangements for the station and through the established railway industry processes.’ We will no doubt here more about those matters in the coming sittings of the Committee.
55. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you very much indeed Professor.
12 56. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Thank you for listening, and I hope, although it was a different pace, it was reasonably clear.
57. CHAIR: Just sit there. Would you like to ask Professor McNaughton any questions at all, having listened to him. I know I am putting you on the spot, but I think it’s a bit unfair if he goes and we don’t –
58. MS GRANGER-TAYLOR: I have some comments on what Professor McNaughton sa id; do you want to ask a question?
59. MR ELLIFF: Mr McNaughton has mentioned the aim of HS2 is to deliver the hugely enhanced capacity across the national network. One of the contentions that we putting strongly, is not that the failure of HS2 to think through the considerations of the national network and how it must perform as an entire national system. One of the primary causes for the problems that the Camden community is facing there, and there’s not really been a proper examination of HS2 as a national network to date, and a lot of things are based upon that.
60. CHAIR: Shall we take that as a question; can we have a response to that?
61. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Thank you, the 2011 public consultation was two- fo ld; one was on a strategy for high-speed rail, in fact whether there should be high-speed rail at all. And the other was on the first stage, the stage which is in the Bill before you. That had 55,000 responses, whilst many were on very detailed factors, others were on the strategy. All the different proposals for, if you like, different high-speed networks, were considered, the Secretary of State at the time considered them in receiving the response documents from correspondents. And from that concluded that the most effective line that met the strategic objectives that we talked about earlier, connecting the major cities of this country, the major conurbations in a way that freed the existing network, better to serve the other locations, and other cities, was the best solution.
62. And on that basis, in 2012, the Secretary of State instructed HS2 to develop the Phase 1 and Phase 2 networks, and of course, Phase 2 A I believe, has been announced today. But that was a result of that public consultation on the strategy for that, and everything we have done has been compatible with that strategy.
63. CHAIR: Okay, any further questions?
13 64. MR ELLIFF: Well, I can only refer Professor McNaughton to slides 41 and 42 of our presentation, which I would like the opportunity to show when this Committee has time.
65. CHAIR: I think what we’ll do is we will get on to your presentation.
66. MR ELLIFF : Yes, exactly.
67. CHAIR: I think otherwise we are going to go round in circles, a bit like the rail network, thank you very much, right, we start off then with The Camden Civic Society, 1837AP380.
Camden Civic Society
68. MS GRANGER-TAYLO R: Yes, I’m kicking off this. We are pleased to be her today, to have this chance to speak. The Camden Civic Society, which was founded in 1963, has always campaigned for improved public transport, and we are, in general, supportive of a high-speed rail network and we don’t, in fact, object to the use of Euston. We follow some of what Professor McNaughton’s arguments for the case of Euston. We also would particularly like to see a link between this high-speed nationwide network and HS1. But we cannot support HS2’s scheme, and this is because of the extra space its taking. Our position on that and I would say the great majority of people in the London Borough of Camden, is that this, if it comes into Euston that high speed service must remain within the footprint of both the railway and the station itself.
69. And I notice that Professor McNaughton referred to a new station; that’s what we feel we are being – having imposed on us, is an additional station and an additional railway line. Professor McNaughton also mentioned the Euston area plan, and this accepts, it’s a document which accepts the enlarge station footprint. And we also strongly object to that and we made representations against it and although it’s produced by our council, I don’t think the majority of people in Camden support the Euston area plan. And just as a side comment, that it talks a lot about permeability. Local residents are not fundamentally worried about permeability; it is the smallest of our worries.
70. Professor McNaughton also referred to the importance of keeping the existing rail line running, and in our AP3 petition, we have mentioned a section in the SES2 at 3.3.1. And this says that the purpose of this staged approach, which HS2 as introduced, it stated, ‘This has, in
14 particular, sought to improve the capacity and resilience of the conventional railway and station during construction and over the longer term. And we absolutely accept this is basic principle behind the scheme we see today. Of course, our objection to this is it doesn’t take into account the people living and using the area through which it goes. And again, we get this impression from Professor McNaughton, who said this ‘The conventional services must be maintained so that people can get to London and get to work’ that’s a quotation from what he’s just said and I may be wrong, I don’t think he mentioned local residents at any point.
71. The next slide please, so this is a view of the, at present a very beautiful photograph, which was distributed to celebrate the upgrading of the present line in 2009. So, our position is that we don’t see this land grab, this taking of extra space for the line of the station that’s something that’s in itself necessary. Rather we see it as resulting from the decision to keep all the classic lines running, including even during the construction period, that’s with the exception of line X but line X is a very small exception. And even if it was possible to keep, it’s really – absolutely vital to keep these classic lines running, this unrealistic view, there are better ways of handling the station and you will be introduced to the double-deck down scheme later on, which shows how the lines can be fitted into the footprint of the station. Next slide please, thank you.
72. So, but neither HS2 Ltd scheme, nor the double-deck down scheme deal with the number of people who will be arriving at Euston Station. So, we do not see this as realistic that all these people can be dealt with at the existing station. And also the present plan, the very – you will be told over and over that AP3, for us, it’s worse than what was proposed before, and in particular it doesn’t allow for integrated planning of connections with local transport. In particular, it doesn’t allow for the Crossrail 2 station to be integrated.
73. So, we are very grateful for this opportunity, next slide please, to introduce High Speed UK’s alternative scheme and we believe this creates and solves all the problems that are inherent in the scheme and many of which are created, we believe, by HS2 Ltd and Network Rail’s joint aim of keeping all the classic lines running. We think it makes very elegant use of the existing railways. It’s a much neater scheme and it achieves our primary ask of keeping within the footprint and it also makes possible the reconstruction of the entire station and not least, it provides a very neat link, sorry just one, and it hasn’t been costed, but we believe that this will be a much cheaper project to build.
15 74. And so I will just the last bit, it’s key to what we’re doing today, which is we are –. High Speed UK provide an example of how a new, high speed line, could be brought into Euston in a manner which is a good basis for a full high speed rail service and which, at the same time, is far less damaging to local communities. And at this point, I will hand over to Colin Elliff of High Speed UK, thank you very much.
75. MR ELLIFF: My name is Colin Elliff. I am a civil engineer with 35 years’ experience on the railways, working in lots of places. Probably the most relevant is Waterloo Station back in the late eighties and early nineties; when we were actually reconstructing, under British Rail auspices, the lines of the station to make the space, to create the Channel Tunnel terminal at Waterloo. There is of course, the terminal now abandoned after operations have now transferred to St Pancras. But it was an absolutely essential first step in high-speed services to the continent.
76. Now, throughout my railway career I have taken a view on the railway network, increasingly that everything else is updating, we are building new lines at places, we are building new trains. Nobody is really taking an overview on our national railway network and how it has to function for the benefit of the many, and of course, avoid damaging the interests of the few who are unlucky enough to live next to some of these proposed schemes.
77. My first outing into this was proposing a new and better rail service into Heathrow, to get the entire nation properly connected to its national hub airport. As high-speed rail has become into vogue, I have realised how it can become the opportunity to actually create a fully integrated national network, which will actually far better connect the nation than it currently does. High Speed UK is a scheme I have been pushing for several years, against the HS2 scheme.
78. Now, what I want to show you in this particular context is it was an exemplar, how, if it’s properly implemented as a national network we can create far fewer adverse effects for the Camden community, in particular but many other local communities also. The next slide please, now Euston, this is effectively the inner city gateway to the north. Now, this reflects Camde n’s dual concern, they have to look after their locality because they are a civic society, but they’ve got three major stations in their patch, and efficient functioning of these stations, which is a national concern, is also a local concern. An inefficient network creates problems in Camden, quite clearly, the next slide please.
16 79. Now, locally to Camden there are six major concerns, first of all the westward expansion of Euston to be a bigger station. There is the increased passenger volumes that are going to result, the fact that there is absolutely no masterplan, as yet, as to how this entire station is going to be reconstructed to provide basically a world-calls terminal that everyone can sort of recognise and identify with. The westward expansion goes much further up the Euston Road, creating major impacts, major loss of tower blocks in the – to the north west of Euston. And as we go further north, to the Park Village East area, there are some very large, and complicated and I would say unnecessary flyover structures in the Park Village East area.
80. And finally, and this goes for the entire community, massive and prolonged disruption from the construction activities. And this creates major problems, this prompt programme, it’s the fact there is no masterplan, which creates confusion and in iterate of cycle of works which really should be handled in one go. And there is the issue of excessive excavation depth, which itself causes huge volumes of spoil, for which we have really got no solution, sorry HS2 have really got no solution as to how we’re going to deal with properly. Next slide please.
81. Now, we’ve heard from HS2 repeatedly, that these are essentially collateral damage for the creation of vital transport infrastructure. My take on Camden is that it is a direct consequence of a failure to correctly design and specify HS2. And the primary problem is the lack of integration between the high-speed rail line and the existing railway, that creates so much wastage duplication and it’s completely contrary to the spirit of integrated transport and these are national failures being visited locally.
82. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Before Mr Elliff goes on, I really feel I should intervene sir at this stage. That slide makes absolutely clear that this presentation is predicated, not on an alternative scheme for Euston Station within the principle of this Bill, but rather is a scheme that is predicated, that Euston is predicated on a quite different railway line than that which is proposed under this Bill. And in fact you can see that, if one turns on to slide 20, where that is made plain, because what – this presentation assumes that the high speed rail network arrives in London, not as is proposed under this Bill, but rather alongside the Midland main line and the M1 motorway.
83. Now, Mr Elliff and his colleague appeared before you, all the way back in July 2014, to argue the case for that railway line. You heard them, at some length, and you acceded to the
17 promotor’s argument that they didn’t have a locus to appear before this Committee. And I would ask the Committee to consider whether, in the circumstances where you having ruled to that effect, where, as it appears, the case that they make before you today, is essentially predicated on the same fundamental problem, whether it is actually useful to the Committee to hear the arguments of this petitioner, on this issue. Rather than to go on and to hear arguments from later petitioners, which at least are seeking to focus upon an alternative scheme for Euston Station within the confines of the instruction that has been given by the House.
84. There has been, as Professor McNaughton indicated earlier, there has been ample opportunity for the public, and for Members of Parliament, to consider whether this Bill is the right Bill to promote a north-south railway line, to provide – to release capacity in the West Coast mainline. And this Bill was given a second reading in April of last year, and I do ask respectfully, whether it is good use of your time to go into any real detail on a scheme that is a different scheme than that which has been given that second reading.
85. CHAIR: Than you. The test really is that you have to confine your remarks really to what HS2, and if you can stick to whether you can improve.
86. MR ELLIFF: I can get straight back to Euston, the next slide is – we are in there. Can I just say, in response to that, the High Speed UK scheme could take a four track main line along an alignment that is suggested by this gentleman. I could give you a lot of reasons why it is not a good idea in terms of the national network, but for the purposes of this argument we want to look at how the railway comes into Euston and one or two other issues, slightly outwards of Euston, in the O ld Oak Common area, which are very pertinent to the impact within Euston.
87. CHAIR: Well you have to relate them to HS2 but we are constrained by what we can do anyway, essentially we’ve been given a Writ by Parliament, and we can twiddle around with it a little bit, but not very much, so we can’t redesign the rail network.
88. MR ELLIFF: Yes, indeed. I would also add to that that HS2 Ltd, in their consultation exercise, were actually informed of various alternatives, which the documents which they rely upon to say they were properly considered, do not hold any water whatsoever. But for the purposes of argument I will continue with Euston.
18 89. CHAIR: Whether they were or they were not, we have been instructed by Parliament on what’s in the Bill, so we have to stick to that.
90. MR ELLIFF: Okay right, now Euston’s existing rail lands, we have the station in its locale and it’s essentially the slide before you shows the Euston incline from Parkway, in the north, running down all the way to the Euston Road. Now, this is the Euston incline, it’s an historical, one in 80 ramp, with the compliments of the one in 300 of the rest of the London Birmingham railway. It was a big deal at the time, it embodies a huge amount of heritage structures, fortunately, HS2 and HS UK indeed would miss all of those.
91. Now, the key features of this are Park Village East, which is where HS2 is undercutting a lot of property. We have Hampstead Road Bridge, which is crossing the station at the throat of the station, and we have the – we have 18 platforms within Euston, which are servicing 25 trains per hour. Now, the first point I would make, this is not actually a station under significant pressure as it stands. Waterloo Station takes twice the number of trains in pretty much the same platform area.
92. Now, what I want to talk about the – next slide please, the HS2 proposals within Euston. There are – the station is first of all going to expand on the west side and six new platforms are going to come together to a throat, just beyond Granby Street Bridge, where the cursors are now. There will be, in a second phase, another group, I apologise, I have implies six extra platforms, that will be five platforms there, also coming to another throat there.
93. Beyond that point, going northwards, this – and this is absolutely essential under the HS2 scheme, and I fully acknowledge that, for a series of flyover structures to get the red tracks I think, are the outbound tracks. The blue tracks are the inbound tracks, and these two, these pairs of tracks have to cross each other to create on a varied flyover structure, to create the capacity required, the 18 trains per hour of HS2. And that is all subsumed within a very – that has to be within a fairly narrow band of width. And of course, the amounts of space actually present there is not enough to accommodate this, hence the proposal to undercut Park Village East, and cause major disruption and potential ground movements for a lot of properties in that area.
94. Ultimately, all of these tracks come together about almost at the pathway bridge, and then continue to the rest of the nation as two tracks, carrying onwards. Then the existing railway is shown in the grey green on the right hand side, where 13 platforms will be there
19 remaining with no rebuild proposed at present. Now, this – Professor McNaughton as explained quite well how the two sides of the station will work in harmony.
95. But beyond all of that, you still have a complete architectural mish-mash of a station, whic h is a half that has been rebuilt and a half that hasn’t been rebuilt. Because they want to keep the 12 platforms, and I don’t actually dispute this for the amount of services that they have to handle at Euston, they have to keep this number of platforms in – going all the while. There is actually very little alternative, in HS2’s eyes, but to expand the station to the west.
96. But, when it comes, and I am sure it will come, in the next few years, Network Rail will want to rebuild their existing Euston Station, or there will be a call from whoever, for a co mp le te rebuild, those –. There is actually nowhere to handle all that traffic in those existing twelve or thirteen platforms, and there will be another huge round of disruption afterwards, beyond the programme that Professor McNaughton has described. Overall, we’re looking at at least 20 years of disruption for the locality.
97. The other major issue, and I acknowledge all of the desirability of permeability across a site, but to achieve that it’s necessary to drop the tracks into a large hole and indeed, to dig basements underneath it apparently. And that is going to create a massive amount of spoil, which under current programmes, it looks like is all going to have to go up by road, and HS2 have advanced arguments that it’s not practicable to run seven trains of spoil per day up the line out of Euston. I would argue that the 250 vehicle movements are even less practicable, next slide please.
98. Now, this slide attempts to define the HS2 – the progress of platform and train requirements throughout the station. Currently the station is working on 19 trains an hour off- peak, and 25 trains per hour at the peak, of which you have 10 long distance Virgin trains, 12 regional London Midland, and three local trains run by overground. Now, during the rebuild phase all of that operation is going to remain, so we have 25 -
99. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Is that trains in and out?
100. MR ELLIFF : No, those are train journeys coming in, because there will be the same number of journeys coming out. So that’s 25 trains an hour into 12 platforms; that’s perfectly feasible. I’ve got no – or 13 platforms, no dispute about that. But, it’s when the high-speed platforms come into use, and the number of Euston platforms sort of in city services go down,
20 we have the 36 trains per hour. But this is a programme, it is quite a reasonable one in terms of train occupancy on platforms, it can only be achieved with expansion. And there hasn’t really been a concerted effort to look at whether all of those trains need to be there. Crossrail has provided the obvious opportunity for all the time it’s been around, and HS2 haven’t grasped that, next slide please.
101. Now, an alternative way of doing this would be to look at Euston Station as it is, say we’ve got a really major rebuild job to do, how could we do it most easily with the needs of the local community satisfied. And I would say that that is principally by doing the job quickly, as least disruption as possible, and more importantly than anything else, not expanding into the surrounding area. It would be great if we could get materials in and spoil out by rail but of course, it does demand a diversion strategy of some of the trains.
102. Now, I will come to that in a minute, but the High Speed UK plans are to keep eight platforms in use, and 10 closed, And the 10 closed on the west side, will be a long work site all the way from Euston Road, right up to under Hampstead Road Bridge, right up into the Park Village East area. That’s a large work site into which we can bring the new tunnels, and we can service, and I believe with the amount of space that we have got, we could service this site easily with spoil trains coming out, material trains coming in, next slide please.
103. Now, this shows the second phase of construction. After you have had the worksites for a year or two and have built upwards of eight high-speed platforms on the new sites, you can divert the existing services coming into Euston on to the new platforms. The remaining platform area, now a 10-platform area, is subject to the second phase reconstruction. This does give you something of a severed worksite with the working on the east side of Euston station, and something of a worksite on the west side, but that site is now serviceable by the tunnels that will have been dug from a different place, whether it be West Hampstead, Old Oak Common, or wherever you want it to be. Again, we can maintain the evacuation of spoil by rail and the delivery of materials by rail.
104. Next slide, please. How do you achieve the train diversions to do that? Intercity trains, as represented by the current Virgin operation – all 10 trains per hour at peak – we will maintain coming into Euston during the rebuild phase. We will also maintain all the Euston Overground services coming from Watford Junction and such like, but the key to it is the regional trains. That is 12 London Midland trains an hour at the peak. We will probably retain
21 about three of those trains in Euston, or some of the longer-distance ones. The remainder – nine trains an hour – we would divert to Crossrail.
105. For the future, we maintain that same diversion of London Midland services to Crossrail. We could expand to some extent the amount of terminating trains at Euston – maybe up to seven trains an hour – and that would give extra commuter services and keep the local services, but we would have the Virgin services, which naturally transmute into high- speed services, and up to 26 trains an hour could run. That is an opportunity for a high-speed service to serve the rest of the country.
106. Next slide, please. What we have achieved in this rebuilding operation is four tracks approaching the station. This is achieved by splitting the station into three groups. We have the six classics platforms still feeding four tracks going up the west coast main line, and we have 12 high-speed platforms arranged in two groups of four. These groups of six each feed two tracks, so this allows a four-track approach into the station. Because we have four tracks we do not have to have the extra length of throat that HS2 has to pull their 11 platforms down to two tracks. We can take 12 tracks down to four, get them all into tunnel sooner than HS2 can manage 11 tracks into two and create far less disruption in the process.
107. As to the operation of the platforms, we do not need the flyovers HS2 have proposed for conflict resolution because we are operating the platforms at a lower intensity. Twenty six trains an hour on four tracks is a far easier ask than 18 trains an hour on two tracks.
108. Overall, we have a station we can progressively reconstruct from west to east, and we can do it quicker, cheaper and easier than HS2 propose, and at the end of the day we have a major legacy for Camden. It is a single harmonious station.
109. If permeability is an absolute requirement, all this could be constructed at a lower level. My advice would be to keep things at a higher level and try to resolve what are essentially secondary issues of permeability in other ways.
110. I want to turn to our next slide showing our intercity gateway to the north. We have to re me mb er what Euston is for. It was built in the 1830s by London Birmingham Railway not just as a home for that railway but also for the Great Western. The plaques on the 1870s structure for the London and North Western Railways reflect the destinations for which it was built. These are long-distance destinations. What you will not see there are references to
22 places like Watford Junction, Tring and Berkhamsted. Those communities could be served much better by not coming into Euston in the first place. You have to remember that all the commuters who come into Euston have to transfer to the tube, and that is a very bad journey for them. They would be far better if they were on, say, Crossrail.
111. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Just Watford?
112. MR ELLIFF: Any particular west coast main line commuter destinations could easily be transferred to Crossrail, in the same way that Thameslink –
113. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: From Watford?
114. MR ELLIFF: Watford is one place, yes.
115. MS GRANGER-TAYLOR: Perhaps it is easier to think of it as west coast main line being diverted on to Crossrail. It is easier to understand if we say that Crossrail trains are extended on to the west coast main line.
116. MR ELLIFF: I will try to keep to London issues as much as I can. Next slide, please. To put everything in context, an alternative approach coming in via midland main line does allow a direct link through to St Pancras and avoid all the problems of the HS2-HS1 link. It also allows direct services all the way to Heathrow Airport and services to spread down to terminals at Old Oak Common – to that extent we are compliant with HS2 Bill – with the possible use of Paddington Station.
117. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: How long would it take you to get back to Euston? You have gone back on to the midland main line?
118. MR ELLIFF : One o f the ma in reasons we have the problems at Euston is that there is no diversion strategy for the existing services. All the current services are programmed to remain at Euston under Network Rail. This is inevitably causing a requirement to expand. If you want to avoid that requirement to expand Euston, you have to look at means of diverting existing train services to other places and take a holistic view of why all the services currently in Euston need to be there. Could the people on the west coast main line be better served by connection to Crossrail, and therefore have a better commuter journey themselves and better access to Canary Wharf and the City? If that cannot be solved in Euston, we have to look at other areas like Old Oak Common. We are looking here at a railway system, not just
23 individual locations.
119. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I will pay more attention when you get back to Euston.
120. MR ELLIFF: Certainly.
121. MR HENDRICK: Can I start by declaring an interest? I am a Camden council taxpayer. I also use the west coast main line. Part of the reason I was late today is that invariably there is delay on the line, or it is overcrowded, and that causes its own problems. Your earlier question about capacity is a very important one, which I am sure HS2 will deal with. On the ques tio n of services, apart from using the west coast main line to come to Euston every week as an MP, I also use the line from South Hampstead, where I live – I am very close to the line – to come here on a regular basis. That is the Watford train Sir Peter referred.
122. MR ELLIFF: I am sorry. I understand the confusion. We would keep the Watford direct current lines; those local services would continue to operate into Euston.
123. MR HENDRICK : You did say you were going to reduce from 18 services to four.
124. MR ELLIFF: No. The figures I used were for the London Midland services, which currently operate on the west coast main line into Euston.
125. Can we return to slide 16, please? The local services would remain the same; they are the ones serving Queens Park, South Kilburn, Stonebridge Park and such like. Some of the regional services which currently stop at Milton Keynes, Leighton Buzzard, Berkhamsted and such like would be retained coming into Euston but the majority would go on to Crossrail.
126. MR HENDRICK : What about the Watford line? Is that classed as regional?
127. MR ELLIFF: The local line is the yellow one, so that would continue to operate into Euston.
128. MR HENDRICK: Though not some of the lines in blue which are reasonably local and serve people in the London area as well?
129. MR ELLIFF: Those regional trains serve only the London area, I believe: Watford Junction and Harrow and Wealdstone. Those services could, instead of serving Euston, serve Old Oak Common, Paddington and Bond Street.
24 130. MR HENDRICK: What I am saying is that that Watford train, which you class as regional, is one of those that is in regular use – it runs every 20 minutes – from somewhere e lse.
131. MR ELLIFF: No. The service every 20 minutes is the local train, but there is a whole host of regional trains coming from destinations further north of Watford.
132. MR HENDRICK : Where do you say those should go?
133. MR ELLIFF : I am saying they should run all the way through Crossrail ultimately to Shenfield and Abbey Wood, just like the services from Reading will do.
134. MR HENDRICK: So not through Euston?
135. MR ELLIFF: Not through Euston. There is huge congestion caused by all these commuters being forced to de-train at Euston and pack on to the tube, which detracts from Euston’s function as an intercity railway station. Euston is much better occupied in the local and national interest as an intercity terminus, or as London’s gateway to the north. Crossrail is a regional railway system which has the capacity to offer these extra train paths up the west coast main line which, for a reason I do not fully understand, are not being used for that.
136. CHAIR: Can we go to slides 20 and 21?
137. MR ELLIFF: Next slide, please. This shows how an alternative path into Euston could very easily be created along the midland main line without the requirement for all the tunnelling of HS2. If that is outwith the Committee’s interest, I will move on to the next one. Also, an alternative London Airport strategy is facilitated effectively by cracking the nut of high-speed rail into Heathrow. You could continue to Gatwick and create a fully connected multi-hub airport.
138. Next slide, please. I want to look now at the Crossrail opportunity in the London area. We have the west coast main line with the regional services coming down it, which passes within about 500 metres of the Great Western main line in the area of Old Oak Common. The reason for this was, I think, the hope that they would both be integrated at Euston. The lack of railway integration in the 19th century and the different gauges between the Great Western and the London Birmingham Railways – indeed, the rest of UK railways – stopped that from ever happening, but it did leave the legacy of two main lines within 500 metres of each other.
25 139. This creates the opportunity of a link between two systems between the west coast main line and Old Oak Common, taking about 2 kilometres to do it. It is a hugely advantageous opportunity. With that, all these regional trains coming down the west coast main line, which currently have to terminate at Euston, with passengers transferring to the tube, could continue through the Crossrail tunnels ultimately to the C ity of London, Canary Wharf and beyond, all the way to east London.
140. Next slide, please. How easy is this to do? Using the slide, we have the Crossrail services on the slow lines, which is the northerly pair of Great Western main line tracks; we have the west coast main line with three pairs of tracks, and it is the middle northerly pair coming through that are of interest. These are the west coast main line slows which are taken up by the regional London Midland services.
141. To get to these there is a great boon here in the form of the freight connection from the west London line coming through Willesden yard, ultimately crossing underneath the west coast main line and joining the slow lines in the Stonebridge Park area.
142. Next slide, please. What we want to do is build a short link – less than 2 kilometres long – mostly on railway land through the Old Oak Common sites, underneath the existing north London lines and O ld Oak Common Lane, rising to pass over the Grand Union Canal and join the west coast main line freight tracks, and then passing underneath and ultimately on to the west coast main line at Stonebridge Park.
143. We would have to build some grade-separated junctions to integrate this branch of Crossrail with the other branch of Crossrail, but that is a relatively easy ask. All of that is surface construction of about 2 kilometres. If this scheme were varied to comply with the Old Oak Common box as proposed by HS2, it would require a longer, more circuitous route with a 300-metre radius curve, which is perfectly acceptable for modern rolling stock, and the same rising alignment to pass over the Grand Union Canal at Willesden yard. This proposal has been repeatedly offered to HS2.
144. Next slide, please. Unfortunately, HS2 have not really grasped it. You will appreciate the impacts of HS2 at Euston and the anticipated expansion which has been there from the beginning of the HS2 scheme. I would have expected HS2 at least to have looked seriously at this proposal to divert enough services away from Euston to avoid the need to reconstruct or expand outside the existing station. It did not receive any consideration in the 2010 schemes,
26 and only through the full weight of public responses to the 2011 consultation was there any acknowledgement.
145. You can read the January 2012 review of route selection and speed report. That reported purported to address these points. Frankly, none of the reasons offered stands up to any sort of technical or rigorous examination. I can take members through those reasons, if they are interested. Effectively, seven reasons were offered: first, that it would require about 4 kilometres of tunnelled railway. The surface alignments that we have designed show clearly that it can be done in about 2 kilometres on the surface. That has a radical impact on cost, the programme and the gamut of the difficulties that might surround building the railway, which HS2 have said cannot be done in a reasonable time scale and cost. We think it can be. We cannot understand why this opportunity has not been grasped to reduce the impacts of HS2 at Camde n.
146. Strangely enough, provision for this link has been included in the AP2 scheme announced by Patrick McLoughlin in 2014.
147. Next slide, please. As far as we can tell, this is a picture of a building alongside the Grand Union Canal on Old Oak Common Lane. This is effectively a 10 or 12-storey building into which somebody has left a hole to put a railway through it. Therefore, it appears that the link, which HS2 have refused to consider, is even in official plans. It just leaves us more and more mystified as to why a very sensible means of reducing traffic congestion at Euston and avoiding the need to expand has been ignored. That is the end of our slides.
148. Can I deal finally with train path availability on Crossrail? This is also germane to the issue. Crossrail is currently being planned to cater for 12 trains an hour from Shenfield in the north east and 12 trains an hour from Abbey Wood in the south east. All these trains come together at Whitechapel and continue as 24 trains an hour through the central section of old Crossrail. It is currently proposed to terminate 10 of these 24 trains an hour at Paddington, although HS2 want to vary that termination point to Old Oak Common. Those 10 trains an hour provide an opportunity for trains to continue on to the west coast main line. This has not been considered. It does not appear to be in TfL’s plans; it is not in HS2 Ltd’s plans. It seems to be a classic example o f s ilo-thinking within the railway industry. With proper integration and planning, somebody would take the opportunity provided by Crossrail to provide a beneficial service up the west coast main line and not expand at Euston. Currently, we do not
27 have that level of integrated thinking.
149. MS GRANGER-TAYLOR: To wind up, what Mr Elliff is proposing is a scheme which has four tracks coming into Euston, which makes it a much simpler scheme to deal with in the Euston throat and avoids most of the complexities of the HS2 scheme. They can come either at Old Oak Common, as HS2’s plans do, or, on High Speed UK’s scheme, down the midland main line, and space can be created at Euston by diverting some of the middle-distance trains on to Crossrail, as has just been explained. By diverting some trains away from Euston you create space at Euston to have a much simpler reconstruction of the station, and you are not faced with the requirement to take extra space.
150. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present this alternative to the Committee. Our ask in relation to it is that this scheme and High Speed UK’s alternative for Euston, along with the Euston Express and double-deck down schemes, which you are about to hear about, be the subject of an independent technical assessment, and, at the same time, are assessed against the scheme of HS2 Ltd.
151. CHAIR: Mr Mould?
152. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Perhaps I might ask Mr Elliff a couple of questions to see whether I can understand precisely what is being proposed here. If we turn to A1668(14), this is the first of three phases which you postulate for the construction of a redeveloped Euston Station to accommodate both the existing services and the HS2 line coming in, subject to the changes you have mentioned to the regional services. As it says on the slide, you postulate that from day one of construction a diversion strategy is essential, do you not?
153. MR ELLIFF: Yes.
154. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The diversion strategy that you have put forward to the Committee for that purpose is a link between the west coast main line and Crossrail which is being constructed at the moment. That link does not exist, does it?
155. MR ELLIFF: No.
156. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So it would be necessary to construct that link in order to enable the first day of construction of your High Speed UK Euston station to begin. It would need to be in place on your own approach to enable the first phase to begin, would it not?
28 157. MR ELLIFF: We could still take up a smaller portion of Euston Station at first while that link was created, but my contention is that, it being a surface link and not having a great impact on the existing railway, it could be constructed fairly quickly and that within a year or two years it could easily be built. I also contend that it should have been within HS2 Ltd’s pla ns fro m the start because it was so obvious, and HS2 Ltd should have been planning for this from the very start.
158. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Mr Elliff, at the moment I am asking you only about your own proposals.
159. MR ELLIFF: Indeed.
160. MR MOULD QC (DfT): In order to construct Euston Station on your phased approach you require the west coast main line Crossrail link to be in operation, do you not? That is your diversion strategy.
161. MR ELLIFF: It would require that to be in operation while we have constructed maybe the first four platforms on the west side before founding my construction site.
162. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Our estimate is that it would take us up to 2026 to construct the west coast main line to Crossrail link.
163. MR ELLIFF: I am very puzzled by that. It is a very simple link to create.
164. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That is what you say. Your premise that we have not bothered to look at this is, I am afraid, false. We have looked at it and that is what I am told. On that basis, whether it is 2026, 2022 or 2021, the inescapable consequence of your proposal is that we delay the construction of HS2 under this Bill until, at the earliest, the early 2020s, does it not?
165. MR ELLIFF : Can I come in here?
166. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Do you agree with that?
167. MR ELLIFF: I do not believe that Mr Mould is correctly representing the situation.
168. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Mr Elliff, can you answer my question, please?
169. MR ELLIFF : What is the question?
29 170. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The question is: the inescapable consequence of your proposal, based as it is on a diversion strategy that is limited to the operation of the west coast main line link yet to be constructed, is that the construction of HS2 at Euston would be delayed until, at the earliest, the early 2020s.
171. MR ELLIFF: I do not accept the premise of your question. I think you have to look at a fully integrated strategy, and it is not too late to implement such a strategy now. If we did have such a strategy we would have a far better HS2 proposal. It is an inevitable consequence of HS2 Ltd’s delay that we do not have this link under consideration now. It should have been, and it was eminently practicable from the very start. I am sorry; I cannot agree with your question at all.
172. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That being the premise of Mr Elliff’s proposition, I am not going to take time in response to his evidence to deal with the unacceptable nature of the impact of bringing west coast main line trains on to Crossrail. As for the Crossrail railway, I will leave that to be dealt with later because I think it will arise during the presentation of a later petition. You have our response to this particular petition.
173. MR ELLIFF: It is Crossrail trains going on to London Midland. We would use the Crossrail trains that can be built to go on to that. Again, nobody has given an adequate explanation for that.
174. CHAIR: Are there any brief final comments?
175. MS GRANGER-TAYLOR: It remains the fact that within the Bill you have a passive provision for this link, so somebody along the line has taken it seriously. We did have quite a positive announcement by Mr McLoughlin in July last year saying this would happen.
176. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I do not think that the Secretary of State in any way inferred or indicated that any contemplation he may have of the future creation of the west coast main line link to Crossrail and the reverse was a sensible or feasible strategy for the construction of HS2’s station at Euston.
177. MS GRANGER-TAYLOR: He definitely mentioned freeing up space at Euston Station when he made this announcement, so there was a definite connection between Euston and the passive provision we now have.
30 178. CHAIR: We will take that as the final word. We thank all three of you very much. You have pretty much kept to time as well. We now move on to 1686: AP3.53 and HS2 Euston Action Group, with Robert Latham.
HS2 Euston Action Gro up
179. CHAIR: Welcome. We are particularly pleased to see you back, Frank, in what I am sure are unfamiliar circumstances.
180. MR LATHAM: Even though S ir Peter is not here, we will keep our eyes very closely on the clock. We are anticipating an hour’s presentation. You have our paper, slides and a video. In appendix 2 of the paper you have the names of those who appear in the video, some of whom I think you met on your visit and some of whom you will meet as petitioners in due course. What we are proposing is that Keir should speak for 15 to 20 minutes. We will then move to the video, which I hope has been arranged. I will then speak for about 20 minutes on the unacceptable impact of AP3 on Camden, and Frank will sum up for the final 10 minutes.
181. CHAIR: Can I start by thanking you for the organisation of the visit? It seemed to work well. Within the time scale we met a lot of people and groups which you organised. Well done.
182. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Can I thank the Committee for this opportunity to make further submissions? I was formerly introduced as a witness last time, and I was proposing to continue in the same form, if that is acceptable to the Committee.
183. You have our written submissions as A1670, and I am assuming that they are in the record, as it were, without the need to go through them in any great detail as we did last time.
184. The introductory paragraphs 1.1 to 1.3 simply introduce the position of HS2 Euston Action Group. Can I go briefly to two slides, first slide A1671(2) and then (3)? Slide 1671(2) just reminds the Committee that you were kind enough to let us come in July. We made a short presentation then in support of this proposition about the main terminus being at Old Oak Common, with the possibility of some classic compatible HS2 trains coming through to Euston using existing tracks.
185. On slide (3), this was one we put up then to demonstrate the connectivity of Old Oak Common. I do not propose to take the Committee through the slide. Again, we did it in some
31 detail last time. It is relevant because it supports the main proposition of the group; and it is also relevant because the third submission that we make today is about Old Oak Common as a temporary terminus and therefore it has that additional relevance.
186. Can I go to the three main submissions that we want to make this afternoon? I refer to slide 1671(4). First, the current Euston Station proposal in AP3 is not fit for purpose. It is in truth half a station to be constructed at twice the cost and time, and the impact on local communities in Euston and elsewhere is unacceptable. Secondly, the HS2 station could and should be built within the existing footprint of the station. You have already heard one presentation and there is one to come in relation to Euston Express and Euston design. The third proposition is that Old Oak Common should be used as the temporary terminus until HS2 Ltd can devise an acceptable proposal for Euston.
187. Can I develop the first of those submissions, namely that the proposal in AP3 is not fit for purpose? I start with two broad submissions. The first is that these petitioners have consistently argued that HS2 Ltd have underestimated the cost and practical difficulties of bringing HS2 into a densely-populated, high-value area such as Euston. In particular, today we place emphasis on the need to redevelop Euston as a single unified package.
188. Secondly, the promoters suggest that AP3 is no more than, as it were, a minor amendment to the Bill at an additional cost of some £98 million. We say the reality is quite different. The original environmental statement is now redundant; it has been replaced by a supplementary environmental statement extending to 4,294 pages, but it is really the provision of half a station at twice the cost and twice the time on which we want to focus initially.
189. Can I bring up slide 5? The Committee saw this before it visited the area, but I know that members have now walked round much of the area depicted in the slide. Stage A, as is shaded, is the first stage which is intended to take up until 2026. Stage B1 is the stage which is intended to take us up to 2033, and stage B2 is the stage which has no date on it at all, because there are no viable plans in relation to it. As members of the Committee will know from the visit, this is of central concern to many people living in the locality.
190. Although it is at this stage perhaps an open question, there has been an announcement today in relation to Crewe. That appears to us to open the opportunity for more trains coming into Euston in the post-2026 period than was originally anticipated. It is not entirely clear to us how that fits even with this supposed phased stage, unless it has already been changed
32 again today.
191. Members of the Committee will understand the central concern. When we were on the visit we went into the station and on to the package deck and stood on the point that divides B1 and B2. Looking to the left or west, in that exercise was the part of the station to be redeveloped under AP3. Looking to the right or east was that part of the station that had no plans attached to it at all. Just standing there looking at either side, I hope members of the Committee got a sense of how unsatisfactory it would be if this proposal went through in this way.
192. An additional point needs to be made about the integration of Crossrail 2. I think that towards the end of the Select Committee’s visit we went to the east of the station, crossing over to Eversholt Street. As members of the Committee will appreciate, land, flats, housing and so on is all at risk in that area if Crossrail is not integrated into the main station; in other words, this is a very real problem for people who live in this area. They face the prospect of additional destruction to the east of the station if an integrated plan is not arrived at, which would be completely unacceptable to anybody living in the locality.
193. Just to put some figures around that, the consultation in relation to Crossrail 2, if it is not included in the footprint of Euston, proposes that 45 homes at Wellesley House owned by the council, 37 homes owned by Origin Housing and various businesses along Eversholt Street should be replaced by construction sites, vent shafts and station entrance work. That is at very material risk if no unified plan is put forward.
194. The other particular impact I would like to draw to the attention of the Committee is both the cost and time. Can I go to slide A1671(6), please? These are the costings over the five years. Starting with £1 billion in March 2010, it increases to £1.2 billion within about two years. The cost then goes up to £2 billion, and then there is a suggestion that this was ambitious enough and it should be more ambitious. Various proposals were put forward, but the result was that in October 2014 HS2 said the ambitious scheme was simply not fundable. Here we are back in September 2015 with AP3 at £2.25 billion, so it is over twice the original cost and also twice the time.
195. I just want to nail an issue at the outset. Any suggestion that extending the time is of assistance or benefit to the local community – in other words, that it is to their benefit that they have works going on from some time in the next year or two through to 2033 and beyond
33 – is not well received in Euston or surrounding areas. It beggars belief as far as they are concerned. They feel very strongly that other interests have clearly been taken into account in the consultation exercise but not theirs.
196. Slide 7 tries to make the point that, given this period of time, children in the area now aged 10 – some of those who met members of the Select Committee at Netley School – will be 28 before this construction is completed, or a pensioner aged 65 or so will be 83 before the exercise is completed.
197. I need to emphasise the impact on two neighbourhoods, first Ampthill Square tenants. Those members of the Select Committee who visited went to the top of Ampthill Square and looked down from that very high vantage point and saw that everybody living in that area would be right in the middle of the construction site for the entire period. Next, the area in and around Drummond Street is to be surrounded by a construction site for the next 18 years, so we have very directly impacted communities. That is why we say that at twice the cost and twice the time, with the prospect of only half a station, AP3 is not fit for purpose.
198. With that, can I put up slide 1671(8)? These are the minimum requirements for a new station at Euston: first, a unified station that serves both high-speed and classic services and is fit for the 21st century; secondly, a new station that is fully integrated with Crossrail 2 so that that project is within the footprint of the station and is integrated, rather than taking further land and houses from local people; and, thirdly, that the station is constructed within an acceptable period. For example, there is a huge difference between seven to 10 years and 17 years. Our fourth requirement is that the plan must be consistent with Camden’s Euston area plan, the No.1 objective of which is, “Prioritising local people’s needs to ensure that new developments meet local needs by ensuring homes, jobs, businesses, schools, community facilities and open space lost or affected by HS2, should it go ahead, are re-provided to the Euston area.”
199. The fifth minimum requirement deals with Hampstead road bridge. While it may be appropriate to raise the height of the road bridge marginally, this must not be raised to an extent that blights the community and those currently living in the area. Again, I think the Committee will recall seeing that road as it now is. With the assistance of a black balloon – until it was liberated – you got a sense of just how high the proposed bridge would have to be.
200. The sixth point is that the taxi drop-off point should be incorporated within the footprint
34 of the new station. It is not acceptable for drop-off points on the fringes of the station to bring noise, congestion and pollution to what is a quiet residential area.
201. The seventh requirement is that the scheme must include effective mitigation measures for those who live and work in the area.
202. The next stage of our presentation deals with the impact of AP3 on the Euston area, and for that I pass over to Mr Latham.
203. MR LATHAM: And I will pass over to the video. May I preface it by saying it was filmed on one day in somewhat windy, almost gale, conditions. There is a bit of background noise, but I think it makes its point.
204. To go to slide 10, may I say that our young star Shazad was one of the children at Netley School? I think he spoke to Mr Crausby, if I can remind him, and the video very much follows the route the Select Committee took. I hope that helps you to remember some of those locations.
205. The promoters claim that in AP3, by concentrating construction on certain locations at a time, disruption to the area as a whole at any one time would be reduced and easier to mitigate. Construction of the original hybrid Bill proposal would have meant a far more intensive period of disruption for the community.
206. I am glad to say that that statement was not repeated by Professor McNaughton this afternoon, because, if we go to the next slide, as far as the local community is concerned, AP3 results in two quite unacceptable consequences: more intense disruption over different periods of time and an unacceptable extension of the period from 2026 to 2033.
207. What Professor McNaughton did mention were issues of cost and keeping HS2 within budget. By that I understand that, in order to reduce compensation payable by Network Rail to the rail operating companies, HS2 have had to shift the pain away from rail users and on to the local community. We say that that is totally unacceptable.
208. In November 2013 when we received the original environmental statement we were assured that that specified the worst possible scenario. Two years later we have another environmental statement which simply heaps extra pain on to the local community. As Keir has indicated, we know that that is not the worst of it. Last week we had the comprehensive
35 expenditure review in which the Chancellor made the commitment to fund Crossrail 2. It seems absolutely certain that Crossrail 2 will be coming. If it is not integrated into the hybrid Bill the local community will have not only the additional disruption of Crossrail 2 but, because it cannot be integrated into the station, all of it will be shifted to the east and the Eversholt Street area.
209. You may recall that in the video you heard C llr Robinson complaining about an open site which will be used as a construction site. With Crossrail 2, Wellesley House, the housing association properties and the other 200-odd properties will be demolished to make way for Crossrail 2, which we understand from Transport for London would not be necessary if it were integrated into Euston Station.
210. Further, we know that we will get additional pain from the final stage of the development, B2. I do not think anyone would consider that you are justified in investing £60 billion in a new rail network and then at Euston you end up with only half a station.
211. We have had the announcement on Crewe today. As Keir said, we are not quite sure about the implications of that for additional passengers who will come into Euston. As I understand it, it is envisaged that from 2027 passengers will be able to travel from Manchester and Glasgow, picking up the high-speed rail track at Crewe, and then come into Euston, presumably into the additional platforms being developed in phase A. We are not clear about the implications. That was foreshadowed in the comprehensive expenditure review last week. There was no commitment last week by the Chancellor to any funding for the residual part of Euston. It has to be considered as a unified concept with both the Network Rail station and with Crossrail.
212. If I may move on to my next slide, we say that the reality of AP3 is that it is worse not only because of the extended time but also the intensity of the impact. More homes are going to be affected by excessive noise. In our paper we highlight that the number of properties forecast to experience the high urban noise insulation trigger has gone from 880 to 1,025, which is a 16.5% increase.
213. Camden suggests that an additional 850 properties may be at risk. When you hear the community petitions it will be argued that the HS2 threshold set for noise insulation is too high and should be lowered; and in the video and on your visit a word which several members of the community mentioned was “habitability”. We argue that the cumulative impact of
36 noise, dust, vibration, ventilation, air pollution, loss of safe access routes, loss of amenity and daylight, construction traffic, bridge closures, congestion and work being executed outside normal workings hours will have a much greater impact on any individual than simply looking at the noise in isolation. All that HS2 do in the environmental statement is look at noise in isolation.
214. We are told in the slides that HS2 served last week that discussions are continuing with Camden. All we can say as a community is that two months ago we were told by Camden that HS2 had told them they were not interested in a habitability test, and it would be a matter for this Select Committee. Even though we all raised it in our petitions 18 months ago, the community has had no dialogue with HS2 at all about any habitability test.
215. Our second concern is that homes will be affected by excessive noise for a longer period. Again, in our paper we indicate how the longer periods are throughout the area: in the Drummond Street area it is 60 rather than 33 months; in the Regents Park estate, Langdale and Coniston, it is 56 rather than 40 months; in Cubitt Court Park Village East, it is 36 rather than 24 months; in Mornington Terrace, it is 30 rather than the original four months; but at Ampthill Square, the estate that is particularly affected, we compute that 85% of the dwellings are now affected, there being a 48% increase taking into account the number of dwellings affected and the length of time over which that will occur. The increase in night time noise is 58% higher. We say that the pain is much greater.
216. Utility works will take longer. They now take up four years in Park Village East and Mornington Street. That is 15% longer. You may say that that is not particularly significant. In Cobourg Street, where you saw Mrs Uller, the 73 year-old who will have a Berlin wall constructed along the pavement directly in front of her property, the construction works are now going to take 45% longer, a total of four years. Again, it will be 45% longer in Hampstead Road; 57% longer in Eversholt Street; and 55% longer in Ampthill Square. Even though in Ampthill Square it is only 18 months, there is trenching right through the core of the estate along those green areas, which Cllr Shah pointed out in the video.
217. It seems that the longer periods of utility diversions has got nothing to do with AP3; it has to do only with HS2 not having recognised the practical difficulties of bringing HS2 into a densely-populated area such as Euston.
218. The fourth point is that there is more spoil is to be removed. The amount of waste has
37 increased from 2.8 to 3.5 million tonnes, a 22% increase. As we say in our paper, it is the equivalent of waste removed in the construction of 26 miles of tunnelling for Crossrail 1. All of that is coming out of a Euston throat. In the Environmental Statement it is envisaged that it will all be removed by road, construction sites going through the heart of a number of residential areas. AP3 increases the forecasted number of high goods vehicle movements during the busy period from 740 to 80 per day, so again, a significant increase. Again, in the slides and at the back of your pack, HS2 on Thursday served P11301, and there is an acceptance that there may be opportunities for a limited volume of excavated material to be transported by rail. Our response is this: HS2 have had plenty of time to get their plans right; they’ve only just published a Supplementary Environmental Statement. The purpose of that statement is not merely to identify the worst-envisaged impact but to come up with mitigation measures. Removing spoil by rail is an obvious mitigation measure and it ought to have been addressed in the Supplementary Environmental Statement, and quite frankly, to say now, ‘We ll, we ’ll think about it. We think we can move more by rail’, it is an obvious given which should have been addressed.
219. More construction compounds. The main compounds are going to be larger: the Podium by 37% larger; the National Temperance site 45% larger; the number of construction sites increased from 14 to 19. That is all the impact getting worse, not making it lighter by extending it over time. More pollution for a longer period: the number of locations in Euston where there will be significant residual adverse effects from NO2 between 2016 and 2026 has increased from four to 23 streets. A number of locations now also face those adverse effects from 2026 to 2033. So worse in intensity, worse for a longer period.
220. Loss of open spaces for a longer period. On your walk and in the video we’ve highlighted the loss of St James’ Gardens where you saw the Reverend Anne S tevens, Euston Square Gardens which is to the south of the station, the Hampstead Road open space; all of these are going to be lost for an extra seven years. All the community say is that open space is essential to the quality of life in a dense open area and mature trees are essential to our absorbing pollution.
221. If I can go on to the next slide please. This simply illustrates what I said earlier. The construction sites are highlighted. In mauve you have the new compounds and you’ll see the new construction compound in Park Village East in the top left-hand corner. If you then work down you see the National Temperance construction site, which is now going to be used for
38 an extra seven years, the Podium for an extra seven years, then in the bottom left-hand corner you’ve got the new construction compounds which are going to be used in the period 2026 to 2033, all in the Drummond Street area. Again, half way up you’ll see the longer time that these construction sites are going to be used along the cutting which is going to affect those living on the Regent’s Park Estate, Park Village East, Mornington Terrance, and in particular on the Ampthill Square Estate.
222. If I could go on to the next slide please. This is a slide which is adapted from our July presentation and it has sought to break down the large number of residents and households who are going to be impacted. I recall on the last occasion Sir Peter said, ‘O f course, if you live in Somers Town to the east the impact is going to be less.’ They are going to be impacted by utility diversions but of course they are now going to be impacted by Crossrail 2 which is going to shift into Somers Town because it cannot be incorporated into the station, and they’re going to face the disruption when the east side of the station comes to be developed as everyone accepts that it must be. You have got the Ampthill Square Estate, a dense estate which looks directly down onto the throat, which is now going to be living above a construction site for an extra seven years. Then you have got all the households along Park Village East on one side of the cutting and Camden Cuttings east on the other side, and then below that the Regent’s Park Estate where you saw some of the tenants who talked about the problems of habitability who are going to have the blocks next door to them demolished and are then going to look directly onto a construction site. The worst period is going to be up to 2026 but the impact will now extend for another seven years.
223. The next slide please. This, again, is a slide which we referred to in July which we have adapted. It shows the number of households and residents within 60 metres of the construction works, 120 metres, and the yellow is 300 metres. The reason we have done this is that you’ll be aware that for rural areas there are a number of additional compensation schemes. The Express Purchase Scheme would cover any property up to 60 metres. As we said in the video, we understand that the only properties which are in the Express Purchase Scheme which are not going to be demolished are those at 117 to 125 Park Village East, which is at the top there just along the cutting, and you will have seen a number of other residents who are actually going to have construction works taking place within 5 metres, 10 metres, of their house. In Cobourg Street, looking out directly onto the street, there’s going to be this ‘Berlin Wall’ along the pavement.
39 224. MR DOBSON: Can I interrupt you? As I understand it, the hoarding will be taller than the Berlin Wall.
225. MR LATHAM: And it may take longer to demolish it as well. As I think you know, the desired outcome of the action group is to enable all these residents to survive 18 years of unprecedented construction work, but you are going to hear a number of Petitioners who are going to say, ‘Our houses are rendered uninhabitable and you’ve got to extend the compensation schemes so that we can actually sell our properties.’ Mr Syms, I think you received a letter from Keir on the 11th of November. The only scheme which covers us at present is the Need to Sell Scheme, which is a discretionary scheme and which is not working. As we explained on the visit, and perhaps I can go on to the next slide, the only area which seems to be affected by blight at present is at the top-end of the market. In the top right-hand corner you have a property in Park Village East, and also in Primrose Hill we understand you have some properties in Darwin Court, but we understand that there have already been two applications under the Need to Sell Scheme in Park Village East. You will hear on Wednesday residents who say, ‘Our houses are going to be rendered uninhabitable and unsellable.’
226. I would simply say this: I think you have got something like 17 of these grade-II Nash properties. You will see that you don’t get a great deal of change for £10 million if you want to buy one of these properties. We estimate that if HS2 did have to buy out all those properties the cost would be in excess of £100 million and I suspect that that is not something which has been factored into the cost of the scheme. But what this slide does demonstrate is how high a value area Camden is at present. I think the Select Committee were surprised on their visit. If you look in the bottom right-hand corner you are not going to get much change for £0.5 million for a one-bedroom flat on the Regent’s Park Estate. If you then go to the bottom left-hand corner, not a great deal of change from a £1 million for just a two-bedroom flat in Mornington Terrace. You’re probably talking of something closer to £1.5-2 million if you’re talking about the whole of those properties, and as I’ve just said, at the top of the market you’re not going to get much change for £10 million if you buy a five-bedroom Nash grade-II listed property in Park Village East.
227. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can I just check, these are current prices, are they?
228. MR LATHAM: They were taken from Zoopla in July. The Park Village East property
40 was certainly a property which was on the market because I suspect that there was no purchaser, and I suspect that you’ll find that the purchaser (sic) has then had to put the property on the Need to Sell Scheme.
229. MR MOULD QC (DfT): We’ll no doubt hear in due course if that person comes along to the Committee.
230. MR LATHAM: Yes. What I would say is in the paper we do do an analysis of the average price in Camden from the Land Registry statistics, which I think, for Mr Mould, for September is actual sales, and the average price of a property in Camden is £827,000.
231. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I can’t see why they still vote Labour.
232. MR LATHAM: I could equally pause to joke, but the opposition tend to be in such a small majority that we tend to put Preservation Orders on them.
233. MR DOBSON: I think I should explain. The first Mayor of Camden, Alderman Sammy Fisher, was a socialist millionaire diamond merchant.
234. MR LATHAM: Let me move on before we deal with the political jokes. The next slide please. This simply demonstrates how close the properties are to the construction works. In the bottom left-hand corner you’ll remember Coburg Street. You may just be able to pick out someone on a mobility scooter. They will just about be able to get down that pavement. Then you’ve got Frank’s ‘Berlin Wall plus’ immediately to the right of that. You’ve then got Coniston, and you saw the tenant from Coniston on the video, and that’s next door to Cartmel which you visited, and this is very much the type of property where we say there needs to be a habitability test to sort out what properties in this position are going to be habitable as a result of the composite effect of all the different features. I’ve highlighted in the centre Tintern House, which I don’t think you did see. It’s an early 20th-century property. It’s owned by the Peabody Trust now; it used to be the Crown Estate Commissioners. That’s going to look directly out onto the Granby Terrace construction site. Then to the right you have got the four blocks at Ampthill Square, but there are also five low-rise blocks just behind it, all of which are going to hit the trigger for noise insulation.
235. On my next slide could I go to CT05001, which is one of the Environmental Statement plans? What I would like to highlight here, and I think it was quite apparent to you on your
41 visit, hatched in green is the construction traffic routes, and you’ll see how they go right through the heart of the Regent’s Park Estate. You’ll see Stanhope Street, which you walked down; a street which is the street that Shazad walked back from school up to his property at the top of the estate. As he said, it’s one that is currently scheduled for demolition. If you go just to the north you’ll see all round the Camden Cuttings’ area are these residential streets which are being used for construction traffic, and then down in the bottom around Drummond Street. My understanding, and I’m not quite sure, it’s not clearly visible from this slide and it’s certainly visible from... Is this for the Supplementary Environmental Statement?
236. MR MOULD QC (DfT): No. Which level do you want?
237. MR LATHAM: I’d like the one for the Supplementary Environmental Statement. Thank you very much indeed. Perhaps it’s made my point: you’ll see how many more construction sites there are now going through residential areas. If you compare the two plans you’ll see that they’re more on the Regent’s Park Estate, round the Camden Cuttings’ area, and Mornington Crescent area here. What I wanted to highlighted, and what I couldn’t see on the earlier plan, are all these new construction sites round the Drummond Street area, and at the end there just along the edge of the station you’ve got Coburg Street, then just coming down there you’ve got Starcross Street, which is where you saw the Euston Mosque where they’re very concerned about the impact, and then of course the Drummond Street traders.
238. If I can then move on to the next slide, which is, I hope, the slide from the Environmental Statement. It’s the map number Utility Work C251ETM. Can we drop it down a bit? Thank you. And a bit more. Can you just take it up slightly? Again, this just highlights the large number of construction sites that there are going to be throughout the Euston area. The ones which are particularly relevant, and again the colour schemes are quite difficult to pick up, the slightly mauvey colour is where the trenches are more than 3 metres wide. All I would highlight is to the bottom right there, that is Charlton Street where you saw Councillor Robinson and his concern about the Charlton Street market. Then if we go right up here you have got the Park Village East area where you’ve got a 42-inch main that needs to be removed to Albany Street. We’re told that those works are due to start next year. All we would say is that we are told also that those works are going to trigger acoustic insulation packages but, to date, there has been no discussion with the private residents, the lessees, about that. Having regard to the age, character, and locality of the properties in the area, we simply say that if there are going to be these mitigation measures there should have been
42 dialogue and there has been absolutely no dialogue to date, but that is something which we’ll pick up in the further petitions.
239. The final slide simply shows the loss of open space all highlighted in that hatched area. Again, you’ll remember seeing them on your visit. I highlight particularly St J a mes ’s Gardens where we saw the Reverend Anne Stevens, the Hampstead Road open space directly in front of Coniston, the Eskdale play area where you saw Shazad playing, the Ampthill Square Estate where the green space is so essential to quality of life. Just below the station you’ve got the Euston Square Gardens which are now going to be out of use up to 2033, and then Lancing Street where you saw Councillor Robinson, and it’s that area where the homes are now going to be demolished to make way for Crossrail 2 because it can’t be integrated into the station.
240. So, in conclusion, and giving Frank his 10 minutes to sum up, we simply say that the impact on AP3 is unacceptable. It could be avoided if one of the courses which we have mentioned in our introduction were to be accepted. We certainly believe that it is possible to construct a high-speed station at Euston within the footprint of the existing station. But just to anticipate the petitions you’ll hear over the next two to three weeks, if HS2 are minded to bring the high-speed rail link into this high-value, densely populated area, there have got to be very effective mitigation measures if 1,000 properties or more are going to be habitable. Over to Frank.
241. MR DOBSON: Mr Syms, I should start off by saying I don’t underestimate the task which faces you and your colleagues on the committee, even the task of actually staying awake during the proceedings, which everyone seems to have done so far. You face a most difficult task of considering the merits of conflicting cases put forward by HS2 and the community petitioners, the local objectors. I’ve been asked by local people and businesses to draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that when it comes to assessing proposed railway developments and costings at all the stations along the Euston Road the track record of the locals is far superior to that of successive officials and experts, including the present ones. This certainly applies to the plans to bring HS2 into Euston.
242. The first proposal in 2010 was to extend the existing station to the west, comprehensively redevelop the existing station, and provide a rail link to the Channel Tunnel line behind St Pancras. The local people immediately said that the proposed link wouldn’t
43 work and that the estimated cost of the rest of the scheme at £1.2 billion was far too low. HS2 eventually admitted they’d grossly underestimated the costs, which had gone up to £2 billion. They came up with a much reduced and revised proposal known as Option 8, which abandoned the redevelopment of the existing station but still cost £1.4 billion. That is more than their original estimate for the full-scale project. They also at that point continued to assert that the idea of the link was sound. After the Bill before the Committee had been deposited in the House they then announced they’d abandoned the link. They had previously admitted that they hadn’t understood the proposal sufficiently well to notice that they would have to widen the route in order for HS2 trains to proceed upon it to and fro from St Pancras. We now understand that the Institution of Civil Engineers had shared the concerns of the locals and made them quite clear at the time the proposals were put forward. Not long after this the then new boss of HS2 Limited called for a scheme entitled Euston Plus which essentially reverted to the original proposal for the expansion to the west plus redevelopment of the existing station. Back to the drawing board. After a lot of design assessments, which were originally due to be published in October last year, this proposal was announced to be unfundable, so they’ve now come forward with the current revised project, AP3, with a first phase which is essentially Option 8 yet again with a bit more building development above the HS2 platforms. Even this is to be in two stages, not to be completed until 2033. The original proposition was that the whole thing could be completed by 2026, and there is then mention of a possible further phase at present uncosted and unfunded, and we know nothing of the details of that.
243. In every one of these stages each official plan has been portrayed as the last word prepared by experts in railway and civil engineering and infrastructure finance. Any of our criticisms have been treated with disdain on the basis that the man or woman in Whitehall or their professional advisers know best. Yet every proposal – every proposal – has had to be revised, and I have to warn the Committee there’s no reason to believe that the current proposals will indeed be the last word. Such experiences as these are nothing new to local people and their representatives. When the first Eurostar station was proposed for Waterloo its promoters claimed that King’s Cross had been rejected as a location because its Tube and road connections would not be able to cope with the extra passengers. Not long after that, the self-same experts came up with a proposal to locate a Eurostar station in a giant concrete box not at but actually under King’s Cross Station. Apparently the road and Tube links were no longer inadequate.
44 244. As explained in the appendix to the presentation by the Euston Action Group, campaigners including Chris Smith, then the Islington South MP, and me, fought long and hard and eventually successfully against this ludicrous project, which I should say in an unprecedented way was savaged by the Select Committee inquiry into that Bill. When asked, ‘What was the alternative to King’s Cross?’, I suggested St Pancras, which at that time was underused. Predictably, this was dismissed as quite unsuitable, but following the failure of the King’s Cross proposal was eventually accepted and we now have the magnificent St Pancras International which has been followed by dramatic improvements at King’s Cross both with the support of local people and their representatives, partly because both were suggested by them and not by officialdom.
245. One of the arguments that’s been made in favour of HS2 is that it would provide through trains to and from the Channel Tunnel. Now, I’ve always supported a proper link or links between both the West Coast and East Coast Mainlines and the Channel Tunnel, but that proposal has been dropped. The Bill before the Committee provides no such link, yet HS2 is still being promoted in the Midlands and the North with vague references to the advantages of such a link. The original proposal for the King’s Cross Eurostar station came with the same misleading sales pitch, so in 1989 I moved an instruction to the Select Committee who were to consider the Bill that required them to examine and report on the provision of, and I quote, ‘fast, frequent and reliable passenger and freight connections between the Channel Tunnel, the Midlands, the North, and Scotland.’ At the urging of Michael Portillo, then the Transport Minister, this proposal was duly voted down. References were made then to the idea of a travelator between the two stations either running along the Euston Road, one of the most heavily polluted in London, or under the British Library which just happens to go five storeys deep. It never got built, it was never even planned. Once again, similar off-the-cuff references to travelators are being made now, yet once again there are actually no plans and no funding, and in any case having to get off and walk from one station to another is not a through train which is what people would really want. At the time the HS2 project was first around there was no proposal for Crossrail to be excavated and built in the Euston area. If it is to be built, it should surely be integrated into the rebuilding of Euston Station, but it’s proposed instead to be located to the east of the station. This reveals the total absence of any strategic approach to the transport issues around Euston and St Pancras. As a result, more homes are to be destroyed, businesses ruined, and living conditions rendered intolerable for a job which is knowingly being botched, known in advance that it’s a mess, and that is
45 ridiculous.
246. So I hope the Committee, and I think it is within its terms of reference, will recommend that HS2 Limited, Network Rail, Transport for London, and the Department for Transport, look again and in open consultation with local people and Camden Council develop an integrated approach to the opportunities and problems around Euston. They should come forward with a scheme which benefits both users and local people and businesses. If the Promoters say that that is not within the scope of consideration by this Select Committee, then presumably the Euston Plus proposition was outside the scope of this Committee as well. So I hope that that will be considered and I believe that in the meantime Old Oak Common should be developed as at least a temporary terminus for HS2. It was after all decided to build a station at Old Oak Common because Euston was not on the Heathrow Express and was not on Crossrail 1, so it was designed basically as a parkway station to make up for the stupidities of what’s proposed at Euston. Thank you very much.
247. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Yes, Henry.
248. MR BELLINGHAM: Very helpful, Frank. Can you tell me, you mentioned the need to develop an integrated approach to Euston’s problems and you elaborated on that a bit, how long in your estimation would that take? It seems what you are saying does make a lot of sense, but of course some of these problems are fairly wide-ranging and it could take a long time. What’s your timescale on that?
249. MR DOBSON: I think the timescale would depend to some extent as to whether officialdom has examined any of these possibilities in the development of the current proposals. If they have done some work on those it ought to be possible to do things quicker. But I don’t really know. It clearly would cause some sort of delay, but God knows Promoters who come up with a proposition that everything will be done by 2026 and are now saying about half of it will be done by 2033, unlike members of the Committee they are in no position to criticise anybody for bringing about delays.
250. CHAIR: Mark Hendrick.
251. MR HENDRICK: Frank, from your description you made it sound as if officialdom has gone out of its way to make all of the rail schemes not fit in with each other, not integrate in any way. I find it difficult to believe that they’ve done that by design. What do you think, in
46 hindsight, went wrong?
252. MR DO BSON: Oh, stupidity. I never accuse anyone of malignance and I very, very seldom doubt anyone’s motives. They just haven’t done the job properly. Maybe Ministers had never asked them to do the job properly.
253. MR HENDRICK : And if you were the Secretary of State for Transport now –
254. MR DO BSON: Perish the thought.
255. MR HENDRICK: - what would you do to make sure that a Crossrail, HS2, Channel Tunnel link and all the rest of it that would be required in order to fully integrate the transport network, would happen?
256. MR DOBSON: First of all, I’d say you should start again, and secondly, I would say that any discussions should be conducted in public. I know that there’s pressure now to say we should get rid of the Freedom of Information Act, but I was always strongly in favour of it even if it embarrassed me from time to time when I was a Minister. But I think if they were to say, ‘Okay, we come clean, this isn’t working. What’s proposed is ridiculous as it is.’ It’s very difficult, I suppose, for people who have committed themselves to it to admit that they’ve got things wrong and what they’re proposing is inferior. But I think you should say, ‘Well, we can’t start with a blank slate’, and that’s of course one of the problems, that clearly some of the people who originally came up with the outline designs for Euston were just drawing lines on a blank slate without any consideration of what the problems were. I should also say members of the Committee are obviously very rightly concerned about possible delays, but to the best of my knowledge no engineering examinations have been made, the last time I asked anyway, no trial bores had been conducted, no examination of what may lie below some of the existing railway provisions. Some of the approaches have not shown really very much common-sense because I recall saying, ‘S urely, if you’re going to dig several metres below the current level of the track’, and you will be familiar with the railway cutting into Euston, ‘surely at least the western retaining wall will have to be demolished and replaced.’ ‘Oh, no, no, no, that certainly won’t be necessary’, and lo and behold it turns out of course that it is. So we need to get away from the people who themselves have brought about all sorts of delays.
257. MR HENDRICK : So are you saying it’s not too late?
47 258. MR DOBSON: No, it’s not too late. I strongly believe, I’ve always believed, that the Channel Tunnel could only be justified if it was going to be properly linked to the rest of the country. That’s been left out. Nobody’s asking what the timescale for that is now because they’ve given it up altogether. I think we should say, ‘What does this country really need?’, ‘How can that be reconciled with the interests of the businesses and the people who live around Euston?’, if Euston is to be chosen, or ‘Would it be better, for instance, to bring high- speed into two or three of the stations?’ I have, for instance, advocated that instead of having this Y shape which is the overall shape proposed by HS2, there should be an X shape so that some of the lines from the east side of the country came into Stratford which will be on Crossrail or into King’s Cross. And I have to say, and I’ve said right from the start, I think to have a Y-shaped network dependent for its success in linking with London on one line makes it vulnerable to all sorts of natural disasters, rail crashes and God knows what closing it down for ages, or for that matter these days might makes it vulnerable to terrorist outrages. We need to get it right.
259. CHAIR: Do you want to add anything here?
260. MR STARMER QC: Chair, can I just briefly comment on these last two questions because they are really central? For local people the current position is incapable of being defended. To most rational people it simply doesn’t make sense to go about it in this way with half a station by 2023 and twice the time, twice the cost whichever way you look at it. It’s a vision of a sort of slow-motion car crash that’s about to happen over the next 20 years. They feel strongly that the appropriate response is not for them to say, ‘Well, what would you do?’ It must be possible to do something better for local people than for everybody to sit back and say, ‘Technically it’s not my responsibility’, and therefore, ‘Although it is going to be a real mess it really shouldn’t be done this way. We’re going to carry on and do it because nobody will get people together.’ In the end I think it’s right to say, the Committee will know better than I do, that all of these projects and schemes answer in some way or another to the same Secretary of State and it must be possible within the remit of this Committee, within the scheme as a whole, to come up with something which is better and fairer for local people rather than everybody simply washing their hands of it and saying, ‘Well, there it is. It is a mess. It’s going to take 20 years and it won’t be satisfactory.’ I think there’s a very, very deep frustration, and members of the Committee will have heard it from people on the visit, but it is clear that this is the worst of all the plans.
48 261. CHAIR: Have you finished Mr Latham?
262. MR LATHAM: I don’t know if there are any questions for Keir.
263. CHAIR: Okay.
264. MR BELLINGHAM: Keir, just on that, you and Frank Dobson have focused a lot on what you describe as being really quite unacceptable disruption and disruption of quality of life during the construction phase. If it is built, the level of ongoing nuisance and disturbance to nearby residents, how big is that going to be, do you think? I know you don’t want to get to that stage necessarily but part of the submission was that if it does go ahead you want the following. I absolutely understand the description of the extreme disruption during construction, but once it’s completed how many of the houses... Obviously some houses are going to be destroyed, but there are going to be others very near.
265. MR STARMER QC: Those that have their properties destroyed, well then the answer for them is as it is, but I think in fairness it’s right to say that the real anxiety is about the prolonged stage of construction rather than focusing on what the situation is going to be like afterwards. So it’s that very prolonged period, arguably one of the longest I think I know of across Europe. In direct contrast, I think there’s certainly less concern about the position afterwards.
266. MR LATHAM: Yes, I was going to add there’s probably a small number of properties, particularly along Hampstead Road, where it’s currently proposed to raise a bridge by 4.8 metres and the sides even higher, and if you’re looking out over that it is going to be pretty terrible, but that is a small number. If you look at the Camden Cutting, I think the general view, and we’ve had it for years, is even though you’re living next to a railway line you’ve got an immense sense of space and it’s felt that when it’s all completed the adverse effect will be probably negligible. But I would add this: it is also said that you ought to think you’re very lucky because the value of your property is going to go up when it is finished. It is certainly true that on Crossrail properties are being marketed in Hong Kong and in Shanghai with a map of Crossrail and foreign investors are being told, ‘Buy these properties on Crossrail because the value is going to go up.’ But as far as the Euston area is concerned, we do not see there being any increase in value to compensate for the disruption because it’s already a high-value area of excellent transport links.
49 267. MR BELLINGHAM: Yes. I’ve just got one very small other point to make and that is that during the evidence you’ve given you obviously have focused partly on the disruption to the adjacent houses, flats, areas of open space, businesses, and you focused a bit on the construction traffic flows through other streets, not ones that are necessarily very near the works that will take place. Certainly it’s going to be very difficult to mitigate the latter without moving one problem from one place to somewhere else.
268. MR LATHAM: I think the answer here is how the spoil is moved. At the moment, although ‘best endeavours’ words are being used, there is no concrete proposal for getting the majority of this out by rail. I don’t want us to underestimate the anxiety in the wider area of up to 800 lorries a day moving the spoil on a regular basis, which in the middle of a highly densely populated part of London again beggars belief that it can’t be done in some other way in the 21st century. There’s real anxiety about that. I think the mitigation probably varies and a hard guarantee about the way in which the spoil is to be removed would make a material difference.
269. MR DOBSON: I think also at least some of the digging out and removal of the utilities to other roads is the product of extending beyond the present station boundary; not all of it but a substantial part of it.
270. MR LATHAM: Can I just say two things finally? Firstly, as I understand it, HS2 was re-costed at 2015 prices last week at £55.7 billion and, as I understand it, you have £7.5 billion on top for trains. If you were to apply ‘Mrs Thatcher economics’ of her grocers shop and you’re asked, ‘Are you getting value for money with what is being offered in Euston?’, I’ve absolutely no doubt at all what Mrs Thatcher would have said. S he would have said that she would have waited until something better came into stock.
271. Finally, I understand there are a small number of Petitioners who are saying that much more spoil can be removed by rail, and that’s the freight industry, and for a bit of continuity I’m passing over to Lord Barclay. I think he’s probably the person to ask what he thinks could be removed by rail, and I think it’s a very substantial majority.
272. CHAIR: We can’t go that way because he’s off camera for starters. Mr Mould.
273. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, I’m relieved at least to know that it’s stupidity rather than malignancy. So, as the mouthpiece for the confederacy of dunces that have come up
50 with what is before you, can I at least say this? The postulate for this group’s strategic alternative, and I’m conscious that today’s presentation is actually about strategic alternatives to Euston Station, is that HS2 should be brought into Euston in a station that is designed to accommodate not only HS2 but also the classic services within the existing footprint of the station. That’s the postulate for their case as Mr Latham made clear. Equally, as I understand it, the postulate is necessarily implicit in what has been said by Sir Ke ir and by Mr Dobson that that should be done as a single phase construction because they deprecate the fact that we have deployed a phased approach to construction of the HS2 station under the Bill because they say that leads to prolonged and unnecessary disruption to local people. So the postulate is a station that is constructed within the existing footprint to accommodate both HS2 Phases 1 and 2 because we are future-proofing to both phases of the railway, accommodates the existing services of the West Coast Mainline, suburban, and others, and in a single phase of construction.
274. We also understand it to be their postulate that that station should be created and able to operate following its construction and completion without any widening of the existing Euston throat, so no works are acceptable to widen the Euston throat to the west, which as you know is an essential component of the Bill scheme.
275. It is true to say that to achieve a solution which is buildable within a sensible budget and delivers on those objectives is a challenging prospect. Indeed, so challenging is it that we have, notwithstanding all the work that we have done over the past few years, been unable to find a solution that delivers on that because as far as we are concerned it is simply not realistic to achieve it. The reasons why that is the case are summarised in paragraph 5.7 in the Supplementary Environmental Statement at pages 129 to 140, and behind that sits a good deal of detailed investigation and reporting which is available to the public if they wish to see it. So that is where we’ve got to. Now, you can call that stupidity or you can call it whatever you like, but to suggest that we have got to that situation without the most careful and comprehensive consideration of that as an alternative... Had it been possible realistically to promote a station at Euston for this railway which meets those challenging criteria we would have done it. The reason why we have not proposed it is because it is not possible to do it, and Professor McNaughton will explain that in more detail when he comes to respond to those two cases that you’ve yet to hear today which develop that proposition in a little more detail. Having said that, I wonder if I might just call him briefly to deal with two or three
51 points that have been raised during the course of this presentation and then I’ll have responded as I need to to this Petition.
276. CHAIR: Twice in one day.
277. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can we put up please A16714? Professor McNaughton, the three issues raised of a strategic nature by this Petitioner, the first of those is ‘Current Euston Station proposal in AP3 is not fit for purpose.’ I don’t think that assertion has been developed in the evidence you’ve heard, and you’ve explained in your opening presentation why in summary it is a workable and operable scheme, I think.
278. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes, I think so.
279. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So unless there’s anything you want to add to that I’ll leave that over for the later Petitioners.
280. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: No, sir, I’d be repeating what I said earlier.
281. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Secondly, ‘The HS2 station could and should be built within the footprint of the existing station.’ Unless you want to respond to that now, because there’s been nothing more than assertion in relation to that, I’ll leave it until we hear from the two later Petitioners who deal with that in a little more detail. Are you happy with that?
282. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
283. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The third of those, ‘Old Oak Common should be used as a temporary terminus until HS2 Limited can devise an acceptable proposal for Euston’, can we just bring the Committee up to date on our response to that proposition?
284. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes. This is specifically about it being a temporary terminus.
285. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes.
286. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: So I’ll give this answer in the context of the first phase of High Speed Two which would mean it would be an alternative to the stage A for the Euston scheme only. There are, I think, two things that I would want to focus on. The first, and to some respects I hark back to my opening words, the majority of people want to come
52 to central London itself. I used the term 90%. The studies that we, the Government, Network Rail, and TfL have done together show that if the only show on the road on day one was turning back at an Old Oak Common Station around a quarter of the passengers, 23%, would choose not to use High Speed Two. Some of them would choose not to use it because they want to go to Euston and therefore they will revert to the very services which we are seeking to take people away from in order to build capacity on the West Coast for the demand that’s growing. Some would just not travel at all. But the point there is that a station at Old Oak Common would have a lot less people using it than would otherwise be the case, and that would go to the heart of ‘Was it worth building the Phase 1 of HS2 at all to take less numbers of people to places they don’t want to go?’, and it would not reduce capacity on West Coast which was part of the strategic purpose of HS2 in the first place.
287. The second point, which is a point made most strongly by TfL, is that Crossrail is the single way of getting high capacity. There are two issues that arise from that. The first I’ve described as the single-mode failure: a problem on the Great Western or a problem out at Liverpool Street or a problem in the centre of London, Crossrail stops and HS2 has to be stopped too because there is nowhere for people to go, so essentially it is completely fragile. The second is the loading on Crossrail, albeit reduced, means that if everybody who wanted to use HS2 were to go by Crossrail, in one direction coming into London in the morning there would be some overcrowding, but more permanently in the evening HS2 passengers, and their luggage (because we’re a long-distance service, we’re not commuters primarily) will be taking the space used by commuters to Slough, Reading, etc. So TfL does not support its exclusive use for HS2 passengers.
288. I think those are the three factors: one is not taking people to where they don’t want to go – if that’s not too many negatives; the second is it’s utterly fragile to any failure on Crossrail; and the third is it would lead to Crossrail overcrowding. That is in Phase 1. I’ve not in this response covered Phase 2 because that would be another matter. I can do.
289. MR HENDRICK: Can I ask you then if it was ever considered to just have an interchange between Crossrail and HS2 at Euston?
290. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Crossrail doesn’t go to Euston.
291. MR HENDRICK: It doesn’t now, but what I’m saying is, my question earlier when I spoke to Mr Dobson was in the modern age when we’re looking at integration and into the
53 Channel Tunnel from Euston, a link to Crossrail as well as having the London Underground using Euston as a hub, what is wrong with that as a concept and why wasn’t it seriously considered?
292. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: When in 2009 the Secretary of State formed HS2 to develop thinking on high-speed rail, Crossrail was already underway through Parliament and into construction, so the Crossrail that you see today, Crossrail 1 as it’s often called now, was intended to relieve the pressure between Paddington and Liverpool Street along the Central Line. But in any respect that scheme had already been through Parliament and was already into build and is now very near completion and will be operating in 2017, 2018. What I’d say to you, sir, is if you could start 20 years ago you might do a lot of different things but I don’t actually get a lot of value out of speculating what might have been different if we knew what we know now 20 years ago.
293. MR CRAUS BY: So it was stupidity then. But are you saying it’s not fixable?
294. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: You can’t say that people in the past did things stupidly. You can say they did things within the terms of the time, which might include Government policy, it might include economic environment. You could come back to where I started my presentation at the start of this afternoon that 30 years ago there was surplus land around every major station in London called the goods yards which are now Paddington Basin, King’s Cross lands, Broadgate Station, etc, etc. That’s history. We can only plan on what we have now.
295. CHAIR: I’ll come back to you in a second.
296. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I know because I promoted the Crossrail Bill before this House that one of the strategic alternatives that was proposed for Crossrail at the time of that Bill’s gestation was that Crossrail should be routed not through, as Professor McNaughton has shown it, the centre in order to relieve the Central Line but rather it should be routed so that it went around the more northerly route precisely to serve capacity issues at Euston and into King’s Cross. The strategic choice was made that the principal requirement for relief at that time was relief to the Central Line corridor, so that is why Crossrail was promoted as it was. But, Professor, just to be clear the suggestion that our Bill, the HS2 Bill, ‘fails to integrate with Crossrail’, let’s just bear in mind the facts. This Bill provides for integration with Crossrail 1 at Old Oak Common. Yes?
54 297. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Correct.
298. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And this Bill facilitates integration with Crossrail 2 in the event that that scheme comes forward, as indeed we heard earlier is a strategic objective of the strategic transport authority, TfL. This Bill provides for the integration of our railway with Crossrail 2 through passive provision for the future integration of Crossrail 2 in the future stage of development of Euston Station. That’s right, isn’t it?
299. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: That’s right. For the avoidance of doubt, as we have developed with the new proposal under AP3 we have worked in a joint team with Network Rail and we’ve worked extremely closely with the TfL team developing their ideas for Crossrail 2 to ensure that what some people might call lack of foresight, others stupidity, whatever, is not on this. The way that we have developed particularly the connections into the Underground, the new concourses, I believe I said we will expand the TfL concourses by a factor of nearly six times in order partly to ensure that when and if Crossrail 2 comes into its own Bill and powers you will see that we have integrated passenger flows and we are ready to integrate with Crossrail 2 when that comes forward.
300. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The word ‘integration’ can mean all sorts of things. What we were hearing, and I’m not trying to provoke them into saying it again, from the witnesses would have liked the Crossrail 2 passive provision to be integrated within the present footprint of Euston Station rather than moving it over into Eversholt Street. Just so we’re clear about what has been said.
301. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can we have a response on that? I think it’s a key point. Professor, are we promoting a passive provision remote from the AP3 station or within the AP3 station design?
302. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: In the AP3 station in the new TfL concourse that is passive provision to connect through into any future Crossrail 2 set of concourses. Crossrail 2 has also got to consider access to its new station from the street and that’s a matter for them not for us.
303. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can I go then to 16718 please? We’ve dealt with integration with Crossrail 2. ‘A unified station constructed within a reasonable time.’ Do you want to comment on those postulated essentials in the context of one of the busiest stations in the
55 country which needs to continue to function to an acceptable level of performance whilst we’re carrying out this major building scheme?
304. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Okay. I shall try not to repeat myself from earlier, but bring out, I think, a couple of points. If I may, the ‘constructed within a reasonable time’ is, to some degree, intention with consistency with the EAP and the overall unified station.
305. Now, at the risk of repeating myself, we’ve developed AP3 in a joint team with Network Rail and I know that they all coming, as I think one of your colleagues said, under the same Secretary of State, are developing potential through the normal Network Rail regulated funding mechanism, for future proposals for their side of the station. But any development they come forward with, again, we have ensured by working in a joint team, they will be unified with the HS2 station.
306. But I think one of the points that were brought out a moment ago, which is an entirely legitimate point, was that the AP3 has greater effects, in some respects, one of them being greater excavation. The greater excavation was because the previous Bill scheme had, in order to minimise excavation, put all the servicing of the station over the top of it. The servicing of the platforms, the mechanical and electrical plant, the heating ventilating, etc, etc, the fire schemes, the emergency egress in terms of fire evacuation. In order to free above the high speed platforms, for it to realise the EAP, we have put all those things into a new basement, and it’s the construction of that basement that has increased the amount of excavation.
307. So, there is a tension between greater scope of work now in order to achieve a better permanent result, and when the Secretary of State accepted the original Higgins report, saying that the station needed to be more ambitious, the station is more ambitious, but the construction of that station is therefore more substantial, and therefore, those impacts are more substantial. And in seeking to avoid a peaking of those impacts, the time scale has been drawn out.
308. We would contend that we have sought to achieve the right balance between construction, wanting to get to the end result as quickly as possible, because the end result represents the benefits of the whole scheme, and the very real impacts around the station on the community and on those who use the station every day, and so doing, we have sought to create the best balance.
56 309. And in the sense that the station development – the station scheme has developed, is a result of us listening, not just out of – the word stupidity.
310. CHAIR: Can I ask about spoil? If there’s more spoil, the petitioners have raised the issue, can some of it go out on rail, if not all of it? Is something that the project is considering looking at, feasible, or –?
311. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: We are looking at it very actively, in conjunction with, again Network Rail and the rail freight industry. And we believe there is potential to remove up to half the lorries from the most sensitive streets through removal of a proportion of the spoil by rail.
312. MR BELLINGHAM: By road?
313. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: By rail. This is not straightforward, it if was straightforward, we would have made it our base case, and as you know, with – we have made the worst case in the Environmental Statement, which we are now seeking to improve on.
314. It entails, and I am sure there will be more detail from my colleagues who are closer to this, it is not about creating some central marshalling yard, where all the lorries move the spoil to, it’s about creating small sidings at various stages along the site, so that when, for example, we are doing the work in Camden C utting, we can remove some of that spoil by rail, but that’s a different rail solution to removing the spoil from the basements, or in due course, from Phase 2.
315. So, I’m probably answering your question in too much detail for this stage. The answer is, yes, we are looking at it very closely, yes we are making progress, but there are a lot of factors to consider and that is being worked through by a joint team as well.
316. MR HENDRICK: When we were on top of that tower block and looked down at those sheds, you were suggesting that those – the rails next to those sheds should be used to get rid of the spoil, is that still a possible option?
317. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON : That’s one of the sites that’s under very serious consideration for spoil in that area. What we don’t want to do is create whole new set of lorry movements to get to a centralised rail facility. We are looking to create small sidings in a number of places along the site, and that is one.
57 318. MR HENDRICK : Indeed several, you said?
319. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes. If we are to minimise lorry movements, which is – would be the main purpose for adopting this approach.
320. CHAIR: Mr Mould?
321. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Short one on cost, if we can just go to slide 6 of this series, and then that’s me done on this one. Just clarify for us the change between a billion pounds, March 2010, £2.25 billion, September 2015.
322. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: If I may, I will give the short answers. The £1 billion originally was notional and it’s been taken out of the – that’s the flat construction cost, witho ut – or the flat civils cost, without the project management, contractors’ overheads, indirect costs, contingency and risk. Which in 2010, was held as a global figure. Later, the £1.6 billion, which you’ll see in April 2013 includes Euston’s proportion of project management, contractors’ overheads, profit, etc, etc, contingency and risk.
323. So, the £1 billion is actually compatible with £1.6. So that’s that. Because that’s just where on the scheme – and you will see that in the original published documents from 2010, where we held all those project costs on a separate budget line. And now we’ve allocated them to various elements on the scheme. So that’s just about moving the money around.
324. From £1.6 to £2.25, you go, ‘Ah ha’. Well, the main differences are that – come from, and I’ll refer back to the Higgins statement of building more ambitiously; £1.6 did not include more than the absolute minimum needed to the TfL concourses and connections onto the various underground. The £2.25 includes several hundred million pounds worth of concourse work. That was back to building a sustainable scheme that lasts for the long term. TfL will not to come back to expand, we’ve not built something that’s just big enough for 2026, or just big enough for 2033. We’re building big enough for the long term. So the whole of Euston is now consistent that is being built as a long term solution to a long term problem.
325. There is some element of that £2.25, which is the additional cost of the basement, getting on about a hundred million, in order to facilitate the Euston area plan. So, that is a genuine increase. The rest of it is down to inflation. I should probably make the point; someone mentioned that the autumn spending statement put HS2 at £55 billion rather than
58 £50 billion. That is because that is purely inflation, that is a change between 2011 prices and 2015 prices. There is no real increase in the cost of HS2, and that £55 billion, as the £50 billion before it did, includes the cost of rolling stock. There is no price escalation on Phase 2 e ither.
326. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you.
327. CHAIR: Mr Dobson?
328. MR DOBSON: Several things, moving in reverse order. The £1 billion estimate was for the HS2 lines and the total comprehensive redevelopment of Euston station.
329. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Are you asking this or telling us?
330. MR DOBSON: No, I’m asking, how did it get up to £1.6 just for the High Speed 2 part of the station?
331. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I thought we’d heard.
332. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: The difference between them is that we decided to leave the track and signalling of the classification that didn’t need to be replaced alone, because it’s in perfectly good condition, there seemed little point in dealing with it. But we still intended, at that stage to do everything else around the station to make it a unified station, but it was not a station that facilitated the Camden EAP and it was a station that, to build it, impacted on travellers on the existing rail network, so were the two reasons why that was different.
333. MR DOBSON: On the relationship with Old Oak Common, Professor McNaughton confirmed that all the figures that he’s quoted are totally hypothetical, and that last time there was a major hypothetical about passengers was when the Channel tunnel link was being built, and those figures proved to be widely wrong, and a wild over estimate, but also earlier, Professor McNaughton, unless I misheard, was saying that most passengers would usually opt to come into Euston rather than getting off at O ld Oak Common if they wanted to go the C ity. I think the last time I appeared here, and I had the quotation in front of me, Lord Adonis, who’s the progenitor of this whole scheme, went on record saying, roughly speaking, most sensible people would get off at Old Oak Common, rather than go through the terrible tangle at Euston, Kings Cross and St Pancras. Was Professor McNaughton aware of Lord Adonis’
59 views on this matter?
334. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Over the years, sir, I have been very aware of Lord Adonis, having had the privilege of working for him, up until 2010. Those two statements are completely in line with each other. Most people want to travel through Central London. Given the choice, most people will use Euston. As I think I said in my opening statement, the complementary nature of Old Oak Common in terms of relieving passage through Central London is that it’s more convenient for passengers whose destination is around Crossrail stations in the C ity of London and indeed, Docklands.
335. So, a proportion of the passengers will get off at Old Oak Common; we believe at the moment, in global terms, it’s 25%, and all the modelling shows that…
336. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: What percentage?
337. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Twenty five percent. Of that 25%, some are going to Heathrow, some are going to Thames Valley, some are staying put, and some are going to the City of London. That’s Phase 1, and Phase 2 is a bit more dramatic because the numbers are bigger, but that’s the philosophy.
338. So, it entirely depends on what your destination is, which way is more convenient. And in working the two station scheme, we believe we got to a place where we are giving people the best choice, depending on where they eventually go to. In other words, it’s a passenger centric scheme.
339. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I put these two slides up because you mentioned the modelling and both this and the previous slide show that, broadly speaking, three out of every four passengers, through the model, given the choice, want to go onto Euston and the fourth wants to get off.
340. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes, I feel I probably didn’t answer the question about forecasting or modelling. I don’t want to make a long diatribe about the High Speed 1 international passenger forecasts, but what I do understand is the very developed model for domestic travel, which are very closely linked to GDP, they are very closely linked to planning policy and a number of other factors. All I would say is a slight – that I always have a slight worry about is that modellers, these days, are on the conservative side. We forecast in
60 2010 that long distance travel would rise by 2.3% a year. And there have been people, including petitioners to you, sir, and colleagues, who said that that was a ridiculously high number. In reality since 2009, 10, the annual growth in long-distance travel has been over 5%. So, if anything, the modelling is slightly conservative, and there has been, I know, similar discussions about the forecasts of Crossrail patronage too. But we’re not in a place where this is forecasting by three people looking round a bowl, and wondering what’s going on.
341. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: So instead of traffic doubling in 32 years, it doubles in about 14 years?
342. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: That is –
343. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Where it’s continued, it’s –
344. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Where it’s – ad infinitum. So, to come back to it, Old Oak Common and Euston are complimentary, and between them, they service people’s needs into Central London and needs out of Central London, depending on whether they’re travelling east west, north and south.
345. The last comment I’ll make is that the studies we’ve done here have been taken into the accepted best practice by the International Railway Union, for developing high speed rail elsewhere in the world, but that’s another matter.
346. MR DO BSON: Can I just have one more question?
347. CHAIR: Yes.
348. MR DOBSON: If I were a passenger on HS2, how would I get most quickly to Tottenham Court Road station? By going to Euston and going on public transport, or getting off at Old Oak Common and joining Crossrail?
349. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: The answer is, depending, and what you model is the precise interchange time – the difference is absolutely marginal for Tottenham Court Road.
350. CHAIR: Okay.
351. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: People have a choice.
61 352. CHAIR: Mr Latham?
353. MR LATHAM: Could we put up slide 16702, please?
354. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I’ll Just show this, whilst Mr Latham before that, because the question was put. You can see from this document, the answer to the question is that in re lation to Tottenham Court Road, as I understand this table, Professor McNaughton, tell me if I’ve got this wrong, Tottenham Court Road – the choice is almost neutral.
355. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: I did say it was marginal, it’s one minute. But I think I’ll call that marginal.
356. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s common ground that – if one person in four gains by getting off at – if one’s coming into Central London, getting off at Old Oak Common makes sense and three times as many coming into Euston, makes sense.
357. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Correct.
358. MR DO BSON: But we don’t know.
359. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: What we do is we model passenger behaviour which has been referenced to what actual passenger behaviour is, and it is dependent on a number of factors, one of which is time, one of which is convenience, one of which is crowding, and all those things together make individual choices.
360. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Latham?
361. MR LATHAM: Professor McNaughton, could you look at paragraph 2.3 of the paper in front of you and half station? Does that accurately describe the scheme in the hybrid Bill?
362. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes, because the existing station is expanded and remodelled, to accommodate high speed train services and…
363. MR LATHAM: As well as existing?
364. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: And leads the capacity needed to operate West Coast Main Line to the full and, as I’ve said, I think twice now, creates the concourses, creates the transfers to the other public transport systems, the two buses etc, to create a complete journey through for all the people that will be using it when High Speed 2 station is finished.
62 365. MR LATHAM: Well, it also included the remodelling as the existing West Coast Main Line and local classic services, did it not? And the combined station would become a centre piece and catalyst for regeneration development of the Euston area.
366. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: The original Bill scheme, which is the scheme before AP3 was deposited, did not touch the tracks of platforms of the classic railway site.
367. MR LATHAM: So that was not an accurate description in the Environmental Statement?
368. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: I don’t understand your assertion.
369. MR LATHAM: This is a reference from the Environmental Statement, which does refer to, ‘Our remodelling, expanding and remodelling to accommodate high speed train services, as well as existing West Coast Main Line and local classic rail services’.
370. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes it does. I’ve just said that. We expand location, so that it can accommodate high speed train services, as well as the full capacity of the existing West Coast Main Line, so that it can be used to the full, the West Coast Main Line, local and other regional services.
371. MR LATHAM: Can we also put up P11297, please? You have prayed Transport for London in aid. Would you accept that Transport for London’s position is that the logical approach at Euston is to have an integrated station for both High Speed Rail and Network Rail and Crossrail too?
372. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
373. MR LATHAM: Would you agree with that approach?
374. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: He just said yes.
375. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Yes.
376. MR LATHAM: If you were a local resident, would you not be concerned if these were not integrated…
377. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You aren’t allowed to have double negatives in any question; we ruled that first week of our hearings, a year and a half ago.
63 378. MR LATHAM: As a local resident, you would desire, surely, an Environmental Statement which considered the impact of all three elements; the high speed rail station, the Network Rail station and Crossrail 2?
379. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: I’m sorry, that’s a question to me; I’m not a local resident, there are a number of schemes – possible transport schemes, of which these are three, and so some degree, they never all turn up at the same time. Which is why we have worked very, very closely with TfL, Crossrail 2, and Network Rail to ensure that what we put forward is a building block which is utterly compatible with any scheme they bring forward.
380. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And, if I may say so – I’m so sorry.
381. CHAIR: Can I therefore ask, that if there’s a further Bill promoted for Crossrail 2, is there any particular reason why that shouldn’t include rebuilding the other half of Euston? It’s part of a Network Rail – I mean, I know you can’t speak for them, but there’s no inherent reason why –?
382. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: I am not an expert on Hybrid Bill matters, sir. I have to leave that to others to say.
383. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Well, Mr Mould can probably tell us what his guess is.
384. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The Chairman has anticipated my point, if I may say so, which was that it would surely be far more sensible for local residents to hear and to read the environmental effects of a scheme of that kind, when it was put forward, rather than to read a document that was necessarily wholly speculative, because we do not promote a scheme for the redevelopment of the classic station. I know that’s a source of frustration for people, but at least, the logic of our position leads inexorably to the view that if one doesn’t promote that project, one shouldn’t, in any shape or form, seek to assess the environmental impacts of it. What we do do, of course in this Environmental Statement, is we do, as we are required to do, touch upon the potential cumulative effects, insofar as it is possible to do so.
385. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Latham, any more questions?
386. MR LATHAM: Simply this; Professor McNaughton, would you confirm that on 29 October of this year, Transport for London launched their consultation on Crossrail 2 and because it cannot be integrated with the Network Rail station, we have this demolition of
64 properties in Somers Town.
387. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: The way – sir, the way that Crossrail have surface access that serve the area around the east side of Euston, is for their public consultation, which I’ m s ure people we are responding to with precisely the point that you make.
388. MR LATHAM: And do you not agree that an integrated transport system is desirable, particularly when you’re spending billions of pounds?
389. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: I intended here that in working in a joint team with Network Rail and the rail industry, closely with Crossrail 2 that we have brought forward an AP3 which will be compatible with any reasonable development that either Network Rail, through its development rights, or Crossrail through a hybrid Bill, will bring forward.
390. MR LATHAM: If we just run down this letter which is a letter which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Mayor of London last week, on 23 November, if we can just to the second page of the letter, this is proposing a strategic board to consider a comprehensive development of the station. Why was the establishment of the board conditional upon Transport for London withdrawing their petition?
391. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: You’ll have to ask, I’m afraid, somebody else; I have no idea.
392. MR LATHAM: Thank you.
393. PROFESSOR MCNAUGHTON: Perhaps you ought to ask the Secretary of State.
394. CHAIR: Thank you very much, gentlemen. Any final comments, Mr Mould?
395. MR MOULD QC (DfT): No thank you.
396. CHAIR: Alright. I think what we’re going to do now is break for one hour, and then we’ll have the final two petitioners. Order, order.
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