Crosstown traffic

As projects go, running a new rail link right through the heart of London is as big as they come. Crossrail Chairman Terry Morgan explains why all the hard work is worth it.

“Infrastructure investment, the jobs and the regeneration opportunities that come with it are all part of a recovery programme. They are more than just a project”
-Terry Morgan

The city is a living organism. The way humanity flows through its roads and tunnels mirrors the circulation of the human body and, just as within our own bodies, clogs and congestion can have a serious impact. As anyone who has had reason to cross London during rush hour can attest, sometimes the UK capital's overloaded transport arteries closely resemble those of a fast-food addicted couch potato. This is an image at odds with London's status as a modern, fast-paced and internationally significant place to live and work. It is also one of the key reasons why Crossrail Chairman Terry Morgan sees the project he leads as so important. "London is the global city," he says. "In the last ten years it's just been a fantastic period of growth. There's obviously been an economic challenge over the past 18 months, but I'm still very confident that London is still going to remain a powerhouse in the world economy, but London has to improve its infrastructure and its transportation. Previous to Crossrail, I worked on the underground, so I know what the pressures were on there. It's carrying record numbers of passengers. It's been going through a huge amount of additional investment, but when you look at the forward projections that take you out to 2015, 2020, there is insufficient capacity to meet the demand."

London just keeps on growing. Already home to 7.5 million people, population is forecast to rise by a further 600,000 by 2016. Existing infrastructure, stretched to breaking point by current inhabitants and visitors, simply cannot cope with this new influx. If traversing the city becomes ever slower and less efficient, its economic development will be stifled. London needs a transport system that can match its ambitions. "What Crossrail brings is ten percent more capacity," says Morgan. "It deals with one of the constraints of moving across the centre of the city to the east, and as we develop the southeastern route that's obviously got huge potential. Going to the west, Heathrow to Canary Wharf is often used as an example. Travel time will be cut quite extensively from around 70 minutes to around 40 minutes. It's a big efficiency driver, which makes London more attractive to international business."

There is a huge amount of work to be done before Crossrail opens its doors to passengers in 2017. The biggest civil engineering project in the UK, it is going to have to bring in some concrete benefits if it is to justify its £15.9 billion price tag. Morgan is confident that this investment in the city's transport infrastructure will ultimately provide these benefits. "This is a huge project, and whilst the need for the railway is the primary need in terms of justification, it also brings with it huge opportunities in terms of regeneration," he says. "It's a well known fact that railways in themselves bring regeneration with them. It's also true to say that with the huge amount of money we have to invest on the central stations, that this also creates opportunities to redevelop those areas too. There's a combination of meeting a transport need and regeneration opportunities that is something Crossrail brings to London."

Quite aside from its huge costs, the project poses some major logistical and organizational challenges. Running a new rail route directly through the centre of a city as densely populated and heavily developed as London is an extremely complicated process. "There are a lot of stakeholders and I don't think anybody should be surprised, given the scale of this project," Morgan continues. "Part of my role, is to try and understand the different needs of each of the stakeholders and to best serve the interest of the project by engaging with those stakeholders in a positive way. Have we had challenges?  I think there's a common purpose within London that this is a project we need to do, and a lot of people making very positive comments about the criticality of Crossrail. It's less easy sometimes to explain to people who perhaps are not close to the railway itself what benefits it brings but it does, and the reality would be that Crossrail will employ a lot of people, bring economic wellbeing to lots and lots of different parts of London. I've heard the mayor of London talk many times about the sense of opportunity that exists for London and those that really touch the edges of the city."

Building support and enthusiasm about Crossrail among the people of London is almost as importance as the actual engineering work. In the current climate, an expensive undertaking such as this could quickly lose the local backing which is so important to it, especially as it will be the best part of a decade before many of its biggest benefits will be demonstrated. Morgan acknowledges the difficulty: "There is the pressure of trying to create some excitement around the program to get some understanding of what we're doing," he confirms. "It's very difficult when you're in 2009 to try and get people excited about the prospect of a program that's going to get delivered in 2017."  Recognizing that this is a long-term process, the organization has set up Young Crossrail. This initiative engages local schools with curriculum approved learning materials and design-based contests related to the project. In addition to building an immediate sense of community engagement, Young Crossrail is designed to have other, more long term effects. "We just think that by actually reaching out to young people, first of all, it creates a level of interest and understanding," says Morgan. " In many regards, we're hoping that by increasing the knowledge of what Crossrail represents, it might also influence people in what they're thinking about in terms of their career, where they live, and how they can make a contribution to Crossrail."

It's a bold move that demonstrates the multi-year planning at the heart of the project, but it is not the only one. Space above ground in London is extremely limited, so for Crossrail, the only way is down. All in all, the project will carve out 42km of tunnels below the capital's streets. Such a feat of engineering requires an extremely skilled workforce, one that doesn't necessarily exist right now in sufficient numbers. To counter this, Crossrail is setting up a Tunnelling Academy that will not only provide skilled employees for the project but also serve as a centre of excellence for the global tunnelling industry. "In a market environment of the sort we operate, skill shortages frequently will resolve themselves but maybe not quite with the levels of solutions that you're looking for," says Morgan. "Crossrail brings economic regeneration. It brings job prospects to areas that have not had those advantages, so whilst I'm confident we could get the skills; I'd like to make sure we get as much from London as we can because that for me is a double whammy. You've got the skills and people development opportunities bringing economic regeneration to the difficult areas."  In his previous role as Chief Executive of Tube Lines, Morgan oversaw a similar initiative centred around signalling, so he is confident such programmes are worth the effort. "I just know the value it brings, both from the point of view of giving young people opportunities, and from helping people have the opportunities to grow their skill set. It's very important. If you do it in the proper way, you improve retention. You get a higher quality of individual. Retention rates are better. It just makes sense that we're going to invest in people."

In addition to providing opportunities for the people of London in the short-term, the Academy will offer an invaluable pool of talent for future tunnelling projects, both in the city and elsewhere. "I think the need for infrastructure investment continues to be a high priority," Morgan continues. "In terms of our tunnel academy, we want to develop it as a standalone business that is able not just to depend on Crossrail, so when you talk to the likes of Thames Water or you talk to EDF or BAA, there are opportunities to broaden this into an industrial capability and there will be programs. Who knows what London's needs will be in the future because I think that what's available above ground is very limited, but there are still solutions to be found underground."

Preliminary work on Crossrail is already underway, but the project will really kick into gear in 2011 when the tunnelling begins in earnest. Morgan explains that there is still plenty of work to be done before the tunnelling machinery moves is fired up. "In terms of tunnelling, we're doing an awful lot of work," he says. "As you would expect in a project of this nature, there were a number of assumptions made with regard to how the tunnelling would be done. What we're trying to do right now is to put a lot more meat on the bone in terms of actually understanding in detail the conditions that we're going to have to deal with. There will be surprises, but what we're trying to do right now is to take away as many of the unknown factors with regard to the tunnels as possible."

But as well as the project is progressing, there remains one threat that has the power to derail things. The coming general election is widely expected to put a new government in power within the next year. Speaking of the project, likely future Prime Minister David Cameron said "I back Crossrail. I want Crossrail to go ahead. I think Crossrail has that transformational capability to make London a more effective and economically successful city." However, he also offered the qualification that; "Everything has to pass the value-for-money test. But we want it to go ahead." This is a slightly lukewarm endorsement from the leader of a party not known for its deep commitment to the funding of public transport. Morgan remains bullish that, come 2017, Crossrail will be rolling through the city, but understands that it is vital that the project keeps making a case for itself. "I think the importance of ensuring that the arguments for Crossrail are prosecuted as hard as they can be is critically important," he says. "It's very easy with a long term program of this nature to assume that you can delay things. We've started the program and we have to make sure that we put this project in the best possible light to those who will have to make some difficult decisions in the future. My viewpoint is that infrastructure investment, the jobs and the regeneration opportunities that come with it are all part of a recovery program. They are more than just a project."

For the birds

A key spoke of Crossrail's sustainability strategy centres around a collaboration with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to create a wildlife sanctuary at Wallasea Island in Essex using excavated spoil from the construction. Five million tons of chalk, clay, sand and gravel will be transported by boat to help transform an area of arable land back into coastal marshland. When finished, the reserve will cover nearly 6.5 km2 and provide an invaluable habitat for threatened species of birds and animals, as well as mitigating the effects of anticipated rises in sea level. Speaking of the project, Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB said: "Wallasea will be the RSPB's most ambitious and innovative habitat recreation scheme. It will create a huge new area for birds and other wildlife whose existing habitats are being damaged and lost because of climate change. This is a ground-breaking deal between one of the UK's leading enterprises and an environmental charity. It is absolutely wonderful news for wildlife." It's an excellent example of how the business of construction and sustainability can actually work together, with both getting something out of the deal. Simon Phillips, Crossrail's Construction Liaison Manager echoed the RSPB's enthusiasm, saying: "We have been looking for a good way to reuse the excavated material from Crossrail for some time and we believe that we could not have found a better home for it than the RSPB scheme at Wallasea Island. Crossrail is the largest civil engineering project in Europe and we believe that by contributing towards Europe's largest new coastal wetland we will leave an appropriate and fitting legacy."