Crossrail lorry movement 'stitch up'
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Lorries will be streaming night and day through West London delivering thousands of concrete tunnel lining
sections to the canalside Crossrail tunnel portal at Westbourne Park near Paddington.
The linings are being cast at the Old Oak Common Railway Depot next to the Grand Union Canal only 2 miles away
near Willesden Junction, reports Del Brenner.
Thousands of tunnel sections are already being stockpiled at the rail depot beside the canal as this recent photo taken from the canal towpath shows. |
London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi, who is chair of the GLA London Waterways Commission, makes it clear in his blog The Qureshi Report that he strongly disapproves of the use of lorries to transport the tunnel linings , when using the canal would clearly be of great advantage and most practical.
Busy lorry routes
The blog reveals that on 1st March a planning application for an alternative lorry route for transporting the tunnel linings to the Crossrail tunnel portal was withdrawn at the last minute from the Westminster planning meeting.
The route was for hundreds of lorries to travel down Chepstow Road, and as it has been withdrawn by Crossrail the residents of Notting Hill Gate and Bayswater will have a reprise. But all the lorries will now travel along the seriously congested Harrow Road. This includes the articulated lorries being allowed to cut across the heavy traffic at a no-right-turn junction which will cause serious disruption.
An empty canal
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The photo shows Murad Qureshi AM on Carlton Bridge over the empty and forlorn Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal
in West London. The canal is ready and waiting to carry the Crossrail tunnel segments into the Westbourne Park site
beside the canal where the huge boring machine will soon be working day and night tunnelling across London.
The tunnel portal site can be seen in the distance on the canal bend below the A40 Westway.
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Something afoot
Murad Qureshi AM complains that with the lorry movement application being withdrawn, "this can be seen for what it always was - a stitch-up against the canal option to move the tunnel linings from Old Oak Common to Paddington".
"It was clear something was afoot right from the outsight," Murad continues, "as the application was only validated by the City of Westminster on the last working day before Christmas Eve in 2011 when it had been with them a few months by then".
Murad Qureshi also reveals that in any case the planning officers "were going to recommend refusal" which is why, he says, that Crossrail decided that they might as well withdraw the application as they had got what they wanted. "Furthermore," he adds that at a previous meeting on 23rd January when he questioned Crossrail, "the contractor BFK confirmed that no effort had been made to cost and entertain other options like canal and rail, other than lorries along the Harrow Road".
Crossrail working at cross purposes
Looking at the Crossrail contractor’s environmental statement and contrasting this with the reality, Murad Qureshi says that it gives some comical lines about what contractors will say to get big public contracts. For example, the contractors are committed to maximising benefits and minimising adverse impacts to the environment and neighbouring communities in delivering Crossrail projects. Also they pledge to assess the potential environmental impacts of all operations, and remove or mitigate these risks throughout the design and construction phases (some of the Government requirements in the Crossrail Act 2008).
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"None of this was done or achieved by the contractor in this instance" Murad remarks, "as they doggedly pushed the lorry option as the only way to move the tunnel segments to the Westbourne Park tunnel portal". The tunnel construction site could hardly be more accessible to the canal, as it only yards away from the canal on the other side of the Westway as shown in the photo. |
Missing the point?
Each ring of the tunnel lining weighs over 25 tonnes, and it will need a large articulated lorry to carry that sort of weight. However, a barge could transport four of the rings in one go as weight is the least of the problems when transporting by water. It is estimated that at least 30 rings of lining will be required each day which will amount to about 70 lorry movements rumbling through the traffic on the Harrow Road day after day for years, whereas 8 barges could smoothly do that amount of work daily with no disturbance and no noise, and with less emissions as pusher tug engines are smaller than those in lorries.
The air pollution in this busy area of London is dire, and the Marylebone Road not far away has been named Britain’s ‘hotspot’ of dangerous diesel pollution (and increasing), and around twice the national average for urban areas. It is also way above EU specification with the government risking a multimillion EU fine.
It is not only concerns about the pollutants that Londoners are exposed to and the obvious environmental advantages of using the canal, it makes such good sense to take advantage of the substantial canal highway that runs right through the centre of some of the busiest areas of the Capital. Considering all the policies and guidance promoting modal shift from road use, this Crossrail project seems to have been planned very ineptly.
More answers needed
It has not been satisfactorily explained why the canal option was not properly explored earlier. Indeed Crossrail have had decades to prepare for this project and could have easily specified the use of London’s canals as part of the tunnel contract.
"And no-one has been able to give us any straight answers" adds Murad Qureshi, "on how they think these lorries aren’t going to add congestion to an already busy trunk road, adversely affecting all local residents and businesses".
Although a victory has been scored recently with Crossrail’s climb down on compulsory purchase and demolition of a popular local building, the Big Table, the harsh reality, Murad Qureshi regrets, is that the neighbourhood, particularly along the Harrow Road, is going to live with a lot of unnecessary lorry movements for a number of years to come.
What has gone wrong?
Why is there such little attention paid to our canals throughout the country. They have far more potential than use as a backdrop, and a destination to enhance people’s well-being, to quote an undefined and much over-used word trotted out by BW and Defra who are in denial about navigation on the canals, as well as freight.
There has been a huge amount of work and reams of reports and studies produced by canal operators and supporters to promote an active use of our canals where suitable, and there are certainly huge opportunities in the London area, but it has all gone unnoticed.
Does it need an inquiry, or at least a high level debate, to find out what has gone wrong.
Note: The removal of the thousands of tons of spoil being dug out of the Westbourne Park tunnel portal is being transported by train, which is supported as an environmentally sound alternative to road. It was not for the want of trying on the part of the canal lobby, and a very detailed and viable bid was put together for using the canal which is close by, but again this failed to get the support it needed.
Future prospects
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Only a quarter of the huge canalside tunnel lining site at Old Oak Common can be seen in the photo. The vast site is earmarked as an extensive station terminal and interchange for the proposed HS2 rail project.
Will the canal be involved with the HS2 construction and tunneling through London (if it comes off), or will it be yet another bungled canal project? |
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We will need more than a few blogs.