CONSTRUCTION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Euston and King’s Cross is obviously diffi cult. It is an area of London where there’s already an awful lot of stuff underground: Tube lines, rail lines, sewers, all sorts.
“TfL have got Mott McDonald doing some work specifi cally on the engineering issues and challenges there. That is all suggesting that it is feasible.
“We have to make the decision now,” Baroness Valentine (pictured, far right) said. “We cannot afford the decades of indecision that delayed getting started on Crossrail 1.”
Feasibility
With transport schemes of this magnitude, it is not as simple as getting political backing, securing the funding and getting on with it – as HS2 has shown. We asked Leam for a candid take on the feasibility issues around Crossrail 2, and he said: “There’s obviously a long tunnel, though much of the central tunnel is essentially the same as the safeguarded route, so it is to some extent a known quantity. The area around
“A station interchanging with HS2 will be a challenge, but not un-doable. Of course, now’s the right time to be looking at this, as the HS2 station at Euston is being planned.
“Andrew [Adonis] in particular, when he was transport secretary, was grappling with HS2 and how you can make it interchange better. He was very attracted by a station between [Euston and St Pancras] that would also help to improve some of the below-ground connections.”
Network Rail involvement
Leam went on: “In the south west, we were also struck by how much Network Rail has been
involved in this.
“They’ve not just been involved in this for fun, or paid it lip service: they really see this as a potential solution.
“For this bit of the clock face, they just don’t have any other answers, either: they’ve done all the incremental stuff
hope they’d do, signalling, trying to iron
out the
little pinch points, longer trains, longer platforms, newer trains.
“The low- hanging fruit has gone.
“They were looking anyway at a major-scale intervention
like a fi fth track, which of
course starts to get quite diffi cult and expensive with a fraction of the benefi t.”
that you’d
‘Massive congestion relief’
Launching the report, Lord Adonis said: “Today’s report sets out a compelling plan with strong business support. Crossrail 2 is an integrated tube and rail service connecting south-west, central, and north-east London, benefi ting millions of passengers and jobs. Crossrail 1 provides a new east to west London line; Crossrail 2 is equally important for south-west to north- east London routes, where congestion on rail and tube lines will be unbearable by the late 2020s.
“Without Crossrail 2 by 2030, Euston and other tube stations at mainline termini will be so congested they might have to be closed for parts of each weekday because of the danger to passengers.
“Crossrail 2…is essential to keep London moving as its population rises by another 1.5m over the next 20 years and the number of rail journeys into London termini increase dramatically.”
56 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 13
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