Questions to
Crossrail – and Crossrail’s answers
This will be a growing list of questions and answers.
The questions come from the BA and its Crossrail subcommittee and the answers
(in blue) are from Jack Day, Crossrail’s community liaison officer for the City
and Islington.
March 2010
1) Are we right
in thinking that Crossrail is no longer going to do any works (including
enabling works and utility diversion works) in:
On the Farringdon
side:
- Aldersgate
Street,
- Carthusian
Street (east of Charterhouse Square )
- Long Lane east
of Hayne Street
On the
If you are still going to do works in these places can you tell us what and
when?
Correct. It is not
the current intention to do any works here. Previously there was a proposal to
locate a concrete batching plant on
2) On the map you
handed out (dated July 2009) there is land reserved for Crossrail use at the
following points. Again, are you still reserving this land, and if so what do
you plan to do on it?
- junction of
Moor Lane and Silk Street.
- junction of
Ropemaker Street and Finsbury Street
As
far as I'm aware there are no works proposed here for Crossrail. In some places
'limits of land' that the Crossrail Act has defined for the Crossrail project
are now out of date. I will check.
Also, a couple of
comments
3) As you know,
residents are very keen to maintain escalator access at the east end of the
estate.
Noted. I will make
sure that our design development takes proper account of this (bearing in mind
that we will also be in consultation with the City of
4) We are less
bothered where exactly that access is, but having looked at the proposed path to
the highwalk behind 17-31 Moorfields, I and others do think there is a narrow
pinch point between the part of the Highwalk immediately above your proposed new
access route with lifts, staircase, and escalator(!) and the existing part of
the highwalk where the Boots escalators currently arrive.
To address your
concerns we would look at opening up that corridor between the existing building
and the new parapet that will be formed over the new ticket hall. We would in
affect use some of the ticket hall roof area at the NW corner to open up the
passageway leading to the stairs and lift. As you can see from the enclosed
sketch we can improve on the width of the passageway, increasing it to 4.5m wide
as well as providing and improving the sightlines too and from the stairs and
lifts.
On approaching the stairs and lift from the Barbican and cutting across the
highwalk deck going NE, you will see the stairs and lifts much earlier and the
opening of the passageway will improve the crossover flow of users going back
and forth.
We will look at this in greater detail as we develop the design to see if we can
further increase the passageway width and improve the junction off the highwalk
deck. We will develop the design going forward on the enclosed, taking on board
your concerns.
5) We’d be
interested in learning more about the TBM that will make the platform tunnels at
Farringdon. At the meeting it was said that this would emerge at the
I'd think
that it would certainly be a period of intensified activity. The 'pilot' TBMs
would be extracted from the ground via construction shafts that will be dug at
east and west Farringdon, on the footprint of the worksite (i.e.. not in a
different location nearby). I'll pass this to Martine as the potential
subject for the next meeting or maybe a future meeting, I'm aware that we'll
have a lot to discuss at our next meeting on more immediate construction
activity. Perhaps we can do a brief explanation and then come back at a later
meeting with more detail?