onward connections, across the rest of the UK as a whole. Mark Bostock of Arup Economics was a key agent in this process. His study and presentations to the House of Commons Transport Committee helped make the case: in 1991 a decision was made to proceed with a new route. By 1994 – the year of the inaugural Eurostar service through the channel tunnel between London's Waterloo and Gare du Nord in Paris – St Pancras had already been confirmed as the terminus of a future high-speed easterly route and a competition was launched to find a private-sector promoter to design, build, finance and operate the Channel Tunnel Rail Link line. One of the strongest arguments in favour of Stratford becoming a node within the high-speed rail network was that a new station would not sit in isolation, but would be located in close proximity to a tightly bundled set of existing systems, with yet more planned to follow. Even before the arrival of high- speed rail, Stratford station was served by the Central Line and Jubilee Line underground services, had an overground rail service to Liverpool Street, and Docklands Light Rail connections serving the growing eastern spread of developments in Canary Wharf and beyond. Planned future connections to Crossrail were projected to extend this connectivity further.


Land


The other advantage the Stratford site offered was the availability of significant areas of land in the control of the railway industry and under the ownership of the Secretary of State for Transport. The relationship between land availability, consolidation of ownership and the opportunity for critical mass of development is a key ingredient in the long-term strategy for the site. In many ways, comparisons with the Great Estates model of London’s evolution are relevant. The model informed the early plans for the site and remains embedded in recent thinking about wider strategies for development across Lea Valley. The reference is to significant areas in the control of a single, historically aristocratic, body. The long- term thinking of the Crown Estate, the Grosvenor Estate and the Cadogan Estate – to name but three – suggests an approach to managing land, planning development and establishing leases upon it to retain control in the long term, not to pass it on to others and dissipate its power. In 1996, LCR (a consortium of Bechtel, Arup,


Systra, Halcrow, National Express, SNCF, EDF and UBS) won the contract to build the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. With that appointment came a decision


3. The last Eurostar


service leaves Waterloo, 2007 4. A Stratford- bound Docklands Light Railway train, 1988 – a year before the service opened 5. Strategic links into and out of London


17


3, 4, 5


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