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CIVIL ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION


Even in those days society was dedicated to the sanctity of private property and will probably have had its own version of the NIMBYs. Market rates for the purchase of land was expected and had to be negotiated by the railway companies, but powers of entry were still required and as it is today an Act of Parliament was required.


Whilst it took two attempts, GWR’s Act of Parliament received Royal Assent on 31 August 1835, 18 months after inception. Again Brunel was instrumental in driving the Bill through Parliament, responding to concerns, explaining design, infl uencing the decision makers and being the com- pany’s main witness.


Brunel created an engineering team to build the railway, and overseeing every aspect of the work from the time it started construction in 1835, until the line was opened throughout in 1841: the fi rst step in fulfi lling his vision of a high-speed trans- port service that led the world. There were challenges in delivering the railway, poli- tics and fi nance being every bit as complex and demanding as the engineering, with Brunel being drawn into the former as well as being responsible for the latter.


Cost escalation was an issue, which Brunel addressed not only through scope change but also by building bridges in timber to keep capital costs down – in hindsight at the expense of whole life costs.


Roll the clock forward almost 200 years and the challenges do not appear to be too different in planning and delivering new in- frastructure, i.e. the politics of getting infra- structure moving, fi nance and affordability. However, environmental impact does not appear to have been too high on Brunel’s list of challenges or considerations, whereas this is certainly a key factor with the pro- posed route of HS2 and now fi guring signifi - cantly in project requirements.


Interestingly, the main commercial driver for the GWR came from Bristol which is similar to the current support for HS2 from the West Midlands and the North to improve links to London.


Over two decades ago, Parliament consid- ered the original Bill for the construction of Crossrail, promoted by Transport for London and developed following the 1989 Central London Rail Study. It was present- ed as a private Bill to the House of Com- mons in January 1991. However, the Bill was blocked at several of its Parliamentary stages. This Bill was fi nally rejected by that Committee in May 1994 on the basis that the case had not been made and the Bill was therefore not passed by the House.


At a similar time in the early 1990s, Brit- ish Rail proposed to expand and upgrade the original Thameslink network but due to privatisation and possibly a lack of focus it was not until November 1997 that Rail- track applied for Transport and Works Act powers with a Supplementary Order being submitted in September 1999.


As with Crossrail, the proposals were con- sidered to be fl awed and, following the Public Inquiry in 2000/2001, the Inspec- tor recommended against approving the project on three counts, relating to the quality of proposals for London Bridge, Blackfriars and Borough Market.


In 2001, Cross London Rail Links was es- tablished jointly by the DfT and TfL to take forward both the east-west Crossrail route and also the associated development of the Hackney-South West scheme (Crossrail 2). The route was agreed in principle in sum- mer 2004 and the Crossrail Act received Royal Assent on 22 July 2008.


Similarly, Network Rail revised the origi- nal proposals for Thameslink which were submitted in June 2005 and, following a


second public inquiry, the planning per- mission and legal powers required to ex- ecute the project were granted to Network Rail, and the Order (offi cially described as The Network Rail (Thameslink 2000) Or- der 2006) came into force on 13 December 2006.


Both these schemes are due for opening in 2017/2018, almost 30 years since signifi - cant investment was made into developing and obtaining the necessary approvals for the schemes. Once these decisions were made, the pressure has been on the engi- neering industry to complete complex de- signs, balancing costs against stakeholder aspirations and undertaking major con- struction whilst minimising disruption to the public.


During this period, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act was passed and London & Continental Railways (LCR) delivered HS1 within budget, at a cost of £5.8bn, becom- ing operational on 14 November 2007. It took nine years, thousands of people and millions of man-hours to build, delivering over 109km of new high-speed railway, the world’s longest span concrete high-speed rail bridge, 47km of cutting edge tunnels, and in St Pancras International, a truly world class station.


These three projects were initiated at simi- lar times in the 1990s, but that is where the similarities end. HS1 became fully opera- tional almost four years ago but for Cross- rail and Thameslink this will not happen for at least another six years.


Lessons can be learnt from not only these three most recent major projects, but also the delivery of the GWR by Brunel in de- livering similar future projects (HS2, Northern Hub, electrifi cation schemes and Crossrail 2) within budget whilst satisfying the requirements established and agreed at the planning approval stage. Cont overleaf >


rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 11 | 35


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