Appendix 3

Transport Committee

Crossrail Liverpool Street Site Visit

Date: 11 August 2017 Time: 9:30 –12:15 Location: Site Offices, 1-14 Liverpool St, EC2M 7NH

Attendees: Caroline Pidgeon AM Keith Prince AM Shaun Bailey AM Tom Copley AM

Officers David Ellard James Potts Katie Smith Samira Islam

Meeting with: Andrew Wolstenholme OBE, Crossrail CEO Dylan Taylor, Lead Field Engineer Nick Mann, Public Affairs Manager Wendy Franks, Community Relations Officer

Background

The committee was invited to visit the Crossrail Liverpool Street site to get an overview of the progress of the project and to go on a tour of the .

The Elizabeth line is a new railway for and the South East, running from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through 26 miles of new tunnels under central London to and Abbey Wood in the east. The Elizabeth line is being delivered by Crossrail Limited. New state-of-the-art trains will carry an estimated 200 million passengers a year. The new service will reduce journey times, increase the capital’s rail capacity by 10 per cent and bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London. The service will be run by .

Construction began in 2009 at , and is now 85 per cent complete. The project is on time and within budget to deliver the Elizabeth line in December 2018. Tunnelling finished in 2015 and the project is now focussed on fitting out the stations and tunnels with the equipment and systems needed to operate the railway. This includes the installation of track, signalling, escalators and architectural finishes in the station ticket halls and platforms.

Record of discussion topics

 Liverpool Street Site The Liverpool Street site is one of 44 Crossrail sites. It is 80 per cent complete and progress is on target to hit the scheduled opening dates.

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Transport Committee

Tunnelling under the historic listed buildings at the Liverpool Street site was complicated. One of the buildings did not have foundations which meant they needed to inject grout under the building for a year to stabilise it. Though this was an unexpected cost for the Liverpool Street site, the overall budget for the project includes money for contingencies.

The western ticket hall for the Elizabeth Line station will be near and the eastern ticket hall will be near Liverpool Street. The track along the station platform is raised. This means that trains will have to travel up an incline when entering the station, which will help with braking.

There will be eight months of dynamic testing, both on the tracks and in digital testing laboratories. Testing of trains at Liverpool Street will begin in 2018. The signalling system, which will be in the train carriage, must be compatible with three different external signalling systems for different parts of the Elizabeth Line track. The CCTV system for driver- only operation will be tested rigorously.

Figure 1: Photo of platform at Liverpool Street Figure 2: Photo of completed track

 Jobs, skills, innovation Crossrail is creating jobs and business opportunities across the UK. More than three in five companies winning work in Crossrail’s supply chain are based outside London. Work such as off-site construction of the platforms spreads the economic benefit of the project beyond London.

25 to 45 per cent of Crossrail workers are highly skilled and qualified EU nationals. The project has trained over 15,000 workers at the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA), and has 700 apprentices learning on the project. Crossrail is in conversation with TfL about retaining a core group of people with the skills and experience required for future projects, such as . As workers near the end of their contracts they will be thinking of their next job and TfL/Crossrail will want to be in a position to offer workers job security.

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Crossrail wants to share its learnings and innovation with the construction sector, in the UK and worldwide.

 The “funding envelope” Unexpected expenditure is inevitable on projects of this scale and Crossrail has money set aside for contingencies in the overall budget. The cost of the work done at some sites has been above the estimated figure but this has been due to exceptional circumstances, such as the grout injections at Moorgate. Money put aside for contingencies was used to cover the additional costs. Crossrail scrutinises any additional costs and discusses them with the contractors. The project is on track to be delivered within the “funding envelope”.

Oversite development has potential to recover some costs. In London, there is potential to recover 6 to 7 per cent of costs as there is a limit on the height of the buildings. In Japan, cost recovery can be up to 70 per cent because they can build tall towers.

delays Network Rail are conducting £2.3 billion of work. They are behind schedule. A number of stations due to be completed in 2018 will not be ready until 2019. Crossrail is working with Network Rail to explain the delays to the communities who will be disadvantaged.

 Capacity The platforms are 250m long so extra carriages can be added to trains and the number of trains per hour can be increased to deal with future growth in passenger numbers. TfL & Network Rail will work out the timetables.

 Accessibility The trains will be close enough to platforms to be wheelchair friendly.

 Wayfinding The destination of trains must be communicated clearly, particularly for where the train lines split. Platforms are very long and will need clear signage and wayfinding. Many people will rely on real-time information from handheld devices. Google Maps have been to the Liverpool Street site to map the station.

 London’s infrastructure needs Crossrail is only looking at transport infrastructure needs. Shaun Bailey AM raised concerns that this was a lost opportunity for collaboration to meet London’s other infrastructure needs, such as improvement of sewerage and broadband infrastructure. This should be a learning point for future large-scale projects.

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