Crossrail 2: true norrth or going south?
At this fragile, embryonic stage, nobody dares breathe a word about Crossrail 2. And money is, as ever, a little too tight to mention. ANDREW MOURANT talks to C2 Managing Director MICHÈLE DIX
There’s been a prolonged radio silence about the future direction of Crossrail 2, London’s next great infrastructure project. Finally, Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling spoke to the nation last month ( July). But few were any the wiser about its details.
With the Government ditching its promises to electrify, among others, the line from Cardiff to Swansea, people could be forgiven for wondering what might be next to bite the dust. Scrapping C2 would have stunned almost everyone, yet it’s hard to tell what a new government and a new man running the railways might do, given the prevailing neurosis about expenditure.
Different rules, however, apply to London: it’s almost a city state, growing ever more complex and congested. It’s where people in power live and work. If the capital is throttled by congested tubes, trains and roads, it will suffer economically. Everyone can see that.
Crossrail ( The Elizabeth Line), running from Reading to Shenfield, is expected to deal with the west to east problem. But the commuter belt south of London is crying out for an increase in capacity, and welcomes the ambition shown in Crossrail 2 - of running up to 30 trains hourly once fully operational after 2033.
Yet the route, conceived to run from Cheshunt and - possibly - New Southgate through Alexandra Palace in the north to Wimbledon in the south (and maybe to one or more of Chessington, Shepperton and/or Epsom) currently comes at a price of £ 31.2 billion. Or so we’re told.
With the plans as they stand, C2 would feature a twin 24-mile tunnelled section between Wimbledon and Tottenham Hale and New Southgate, connecting to existing National Rail routes in Surrey and Hertfordshire, and connecting with the Elizabeth Line at Tottenham Court Road interchange.
One of C2’s great selling points is that it would bypass terminal stations, relieving, for instance, pressure on Waterloo from the south-west. C2 would greatly improve connectivity in the Upper Lea Valley “creating the right conditions for new opportunities and thousands of new homes.”
Space would be freed up on the South Western Main Line for around 20 more trains at morning peak hours, and there’d be a similar benefit on the West Anglia Main Line. There’d also be scope to run extra trains to Cambridge, Stansted Airport, Portsmouth, Southampton and Basingstoke.
It’s long been agreed that construction costs should be split equally between London and the private sector, with developers given scope to build around new stations. Yet there’s been unease about how all this might actually work.
Last month’s joint statement from Grayling and C2’s co-sponsor, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, told us little because the Department for Transport (DfT) is still evaluating the revised business case. If the communique had any purpose, it was to remind the public that C2 remains alive.
“Given its price tag, we have to ensure that we get this right,” Grayling said. “The Mayor and I have agreed… to develop plans that are as strong as possible, so the public gets an affordable scheme that is fair to the UK taxpayer.
“Following a successful outcome… I’m keen to launch a fresh public consultation to help… improve the scheme and clarify the position around the safeguarded route.”
So what does that mean? ‘Affordable’ appears to mean striving to save £4bn - that much was signalled by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in March last year. As for the latest pricing, the £ 32.6bn of March 2016 has shrunk to £ 31.2bn. According to Transport for London (TfL), more than £10bn of that is an allowance for risk.
NIC suggested a delay in building the north western branch running beyond Alexandra Palace to New Southgate. “This would also provide the opportunity to consider an eastern branch from Hackney as
How can we make it more affordable for the UK government, given other challenges in Wales and the North? How can London contribute more? Michèle Dix, Managing Director, Crossrail 2
an alternative,” said NIC. “More work should also be done on the costs and benefits of individual central London stations.”
Might one or more be sacrificed? By chance, the day after Grayling’s intervention,
RAIL was booked in to interview Transport for London’s Michèle Dix, managing director of Crossrail 2. Dix attended the meeting between Grayling and Khan, after which the Secretary of State issued his statement. But she declined to share details of the revised business case for C2 with RAIL because the DfT is still chewing them over.
Dix insists that Grayling still thinks C2 is a good project, and right for London’s housing and transport needs. “With commitment to other schemes there’s pressure to get this under way,” she says. “London has said we can fund half, but most of that money will only come on stream after we’ve built it - through fares and the business rates supplement, which we can’t use until 2033.” (after it’s finished contributing to the Elizabeth Line).
Last March Dix told RAIL that the supplement could run another 30 years. Meanwhile, she adds, money should start to trickle in after 2019, via the mayor’s Community Infrastructure Levy - “about 16% [of London’s share]. We do need help contributing to the cost.”
The project is being jointly developed by TfL and Network Rail. It has a Programme Board, chaired by former NIC chairman Lord Adonis, whose job is to make recommendations to Grayling and Khan. There have already been three consultations since 2013 on C2’s design and development, but none since 2015. “The Secretary of State didn’t want us to undertake another until he’d seen the revised business case,” said Dix.
Political upheaval has held things up. The Government didn’t start its review process sooner because of the general election, Dix points out. “We won’t now get a decision this side of the summer recess.”
The project will require passing a Parliamentary hybrid bill to kick-start things. “Originally, we made plans based on having that bill by 2019. Because of the election, our plan now is that we want it in 2020.
“A hybrid bill is about getting the balance between a railway - building it - and acknowledging that local areas want to have a role. The Secretary of State and the Mayor will decide [its contents] as a result of
Following a successful outcome… I’m keen to launch a fresh public consultation to help… improve the scheme and clarify the position around the safeguarded route Chris Grayling, Transport Secretary
output from the Programme Board. It’s about balance - what do you want these powers for? The more you put into a bill, the harder it is to get it through.”
Dix appears unfazed by the delay. Theoretically, this parliament could run until 2022, which will give more time. By then she hopes the bill will have advanced to a second reading and be on the home straight. She doesn’t think recent events will affect the timetable: construction to start in the early 2020s; the first C2 services running in 2033. But, given the political landscape, few people would bet on this parliament running its full five years.
In TfL’s revised business case for C2, there is, says Dix, a section about paring down costs … “how can we make it more affordable for the UK government, given other challenges in Wales and the North? How can London contribute more?”
The stream of private money depends heavily on developers paying to exploit prime sites en route, especially near central London. Unsurprisingly, given London’s top-end prices, home builders and property industry leaders are champing at the bit - more than 60 have written a joint letter to the Government, claiming that Crossrail 2 is “vital to fix the housing crisis”.
The revised business case describes how C2 will deliver 200,000 new homes along the route - a lot of them at its northern end, in the Lea Valley. Work has been done to ensure the route aligns with the availability of strategic housing land.
A Parliamentary briefing report in April, shortly before Theresa May’s ill-fated dash for the polls, suggested setting up ‘one or more’ development corporations to lead the master planning.
“For housing provision to be a success across the whole route, the deal for Crossrail 2 will need buy-in from the Greater London Authority (GLA) and boroughs along the route,” it said. That suggests a lot complex negotiation.
Also in April, a report by property companies suggested London could fund half of C2’s cost simply through more commercial development in the West End - “the creation of great, much-needed new places in the country’s most economically productive district… [can] help pay for Crossrail 2 through development taxes or local retention.”
But isn’t the West End already developed to the hilt?
“You must be joking!” says Dix. OK, but
might not C2 spawn grotesque tower blocks, of which the capital already has a surfeit? Dix does appear mindful of that - she recalls a recent trip to Japan, staying almost 30 floors up in a skyscraper hotel so surrounded with similar buildings “that there was no horizon.”
Yet she sees no reason why the West End should suffer that fate.
“The London borough with the most density of population is Kensington and Chelsea, but so much of the housing is mansion blocks of five or six storeys.”
‘Densification’ need not mean the borough losing its character, she adds. She’s keen to avoid the prospect of housing going up “on greenfield sites elsewhere.”
So much relies on projections that show the capital’s housing soaring in value. Given that the eager lobbying of the Government by developers is very recent, one assumes they’re taking a long-term view, unmoved by what the next few years may hold economically and the great unknown of Brexit.
Nobody expects an everlasting ice age when (or if) the UK finally withdraws from Europe, least of all in London.
But some fear that a downturn could be approaching. As RAIL emerged from Dix’s office above St James’ Park Tube station, the London Evening Standard contained a cautionary story. It was that Virgin Money had become wary about making new loans in the capital for fear of borrowers overstretching and ending up in negative equity. Estate agents report that in some boroughs, prices are dropping for the first time in years, the LES added.
Stephen Hammond, MP for Wimbledon, C2’s south-western outpost, believes the DfT wants to test London’s funding commitment “to obliteration.” Hammond favours the scheme - with reservations, but doubts there’ll be any consultation on the revised business case until early 2018. “The fact that the department is taking such a long time suggests to me there’s a problem,” he told RAIL.
SURFACE TENSION
Most of the battles about new stations, and where they might be built, are being fought south of the river.
As RAIL reported last year, the choice of King’s Road, Chelsea, has been especially divisive. But there’s also anxiety at Wimbledon, where the proposed C2 tunnel would begin, and the tension between expense and practicality surrounding options at Tooting and Balham.
Here we take a closer look at some of those disputes and discussions.
WIMBLEDON
The prospect of a tunnel entrance at Wimbledon has mobilised residents. MP Stephen Hammond has been campaigning for a rethink. He welcomes the business and employment opportunities C2 could bring but says the only option consulted on in 2015 would be “immensely damaging.”
Hammond was also concerned about the impact in and around Raynes Park. “C2 didn’t make clear how much Raynes Park station would need to change, or how building a large site near Dundonald Road enabling trains to reverse might affect residential property,” he said. There
would, he added, be “huge disruption” in Wimbledon Park, caused by the construction of a tunnel portal at Gap Road.
“What wouldn’t be acceptable is seven years of disruption in Wimbledon town centre,” he told RAIL.
“Some of the original plans had unrealistic elements - they were looking at knocking down two office blocks and a listed public house. I suggested they consider tunnelling between Raynes Park and Wimbledon. A box station could go beneath the existing station.
“Originally, C2 said a tunnel couldn’t be put in place because of a gradient problem, but engineers have since conceded they could do it.” Yet that solution would come at a price, as Hammond admits. “Last time C2 was asked, the extra cost of this was about £1bn.”
“I understand they’re looking at other possibilities. One is a refinement of the existing town centre scheme, but much more phased. Another is building a few more District Line platforms pushed to the north side of the station, freeing up lines for C2. That could work but it brings other problems - it would involve taking out residential property and also extra land, including the site of the magistrates’ court.”
Residents are worried that overbearing new buildings will be the price they must pay for C2. “We’ve seen a surge in developers wanting to replace existing buildings with taller ones, which residents don’t support,” Hammond said. “They want higher quality designs. There’s a strong preference for the Victorian style.”
TOOTING VERSUS BALHAM
Last year, when speaking with C2 Managing Director Michèle Dix, RAIL came away with the impression that C2’s preference had swung towards a new station at Balham, despite the stronger case to be made for Tooting, further south down the Northern Line. Now, it would appear, things have changed.
The well-documented problem with Tooting is geological. Lying on the Wimbledon fault line (Balham doesn’t), far below ground lies, as Dix describes it, ‘wet pebbly muck.’ “Tooting is the major problem in the whole project… building would take longer… it would be more like open heart surgery as opposed (in Balham’s case) to keyhole surgery. Balham would give us most of the benefits… but be less disruptive; so we’ve planned to build there instead.”
There are hints of a shift 16 months later. “Tooting will be more costly but the potential benefits will outweigh the costs,” Dix tells
RAIL. “We’ve done more boreholes to get a better understanding of the soil conditions. We identified Tooting Broadway as the best place because of the relief it would give to the Northern Line. Everyone seems to want Tooting… it would help regeneration and serve St George’s Hospital better.”
But caveats remain, chiefly that construction will be far more disruptive and costly because of all that muck and the high water levels.
“Also, there are concerns around Tooting Market - people there think [building a station] will have an [adverse] effect,” she adds. “The market is doing much better than in 2013 (when the first C2 consultations took place). We’ll have to hear what they say. With new stations we don’t just say ‘plonk it there, end of’.”
So consultation is a serious exercise that can change things? Not, says Dix, if it simply amounts to people saying “we don’t like it here, put it somewhere else - that isn’t a reason to move it. But if someone says ‘go somewhere else’ and there’s proper input… then we’d consider it.”
With NIC urging savings, is it realistic to expect backing for Tooting, estimated last year to cost £ 500m more than Balham and take two to three years longer to build? One thing’s clear – there seems very little appetite for it in Balham. None, in fact, according to Siobhain McDonagh, MP for Mitcham and Morden, who’s long campaigned for a station at Tooting Broadway.
“People fear a Crossrail station at Balham could destroy much of the high street, including Waitrose. And people living around Wandsworth Common don’t like the idea of having air vent shafts there,” she said.
A Tooting Broadway station would relieve the huge overcrowding that’s worst between Tooting Bec and Stockwell. The ‘Clapham Squeeze’ means this stretch of line is practically unusable between 08.00 and 09.00 each weekday morning. Trains heading north are now usually full at Colliers Wood, the third station up.
“This would be hugely eased by giving commuters a choice of travelling on Crossrail 2 to Victoria, Euston or other central destinations,” says McDonagh. “Balham is already well connected - via Southern, people can get to London Victoria directly, besides the rest of South London.”
She says that the better access offered by a C2 station at Tooting would also pull in investment to Mitcham and Morden because transport links are much better than to Balham. Once at Tooting, commuters could reach Clapham Junction in four minutes and Euston/King’s Cross St Pancras in 20.
Yet cost and Tooting’s tricky terrain could be a sticking point.
“You can’t do mechanical extraction there - it’s all gravel and water,” says McDonagh. “And they don’t know how deep it goes, or where it starts.”
KING’S ROAD, CHELSEA
Some local residents think it’s all over - that the idea for a station at King’s Road Chelsea is a dead duck, given the pressure on C2 to save money. As RAIL reported last year, the campaign against has been vociferous and high-profile.
The fact that the department is taking such a long time suggests to me there’s a problem Stephen Hammond, MP for Wimbledon
According to the Chelsea Society, TfL’s updated business case ‘gives due consideration’ to removing King’s Road station. It’s been condemned by the pressure group nocrossrailchelsea.com as “a complete waste of more than £1bn of public money, lacking any transport justification or financial basis, and fails to meet the criteria upon which Crossrail 2 is based.”
Last November the society was told by the then leader of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, Nicholas Paget-Brown, that there wouldn’t be any large buildings either around or above the station entrance. “That served to make any funding for the project even less viable,” the society says. Paget-Brown also said that KCBC wouldn’t provide any funding for the project.
The Chelsea Society has an armoury of objections: overcrowding; the threat of subsidence; that the locality’s ‘village character’ will be spoilt. They also argued that Chelsea is well enough connected already, with most of it already within 800m of a station.
Regeneration arguments don’t apply to Chelsea, they say. Moreover, locals share the fears of protesters in Wimbledon - that their council might lose powers to control the height and scale of new buildings under a hybrid Act of Parliament “which could overrule everybody.”
The voices have been loud and many. Jason Pearson, a spokesman for nocrossrailchelsea. com, told RAIL, “Our sense is that the station is dead. There have been reports about costcutting, and that the current proposal is for the Victoria to Clapham stage to go direct. People we’ve spoken to at City Hall have all said privately that King’s Road isn’t going to happen.”
Dix, however, wouldn’t be drawn on the matter. Moreover, she points out, opposition to King’s Road isn’t universal. “There’s also a quieter ‘yes’ from people living to the West, who feel that public transport in the area isn’t as good as it could be - and also, increasingly, a business lobby,” she said.
Hammond agrees that the station should be kept. In Chelsea there is, he thinks, an element of nimbyism. “In 20 years’ time, people might wonder why on earth we didn’t put a station in there.”