I’ve jotted down some bullet point notes from last night’s Crosssrail briefing. There were two main speakers with Matthew White, Surface Director of Crossrail and Nick O’Donnell, Assistant Director of Strategic Transport for Ealing Council.
1. Matthew White:
Some background on Crossrail:
– Crossrail will have a new fleet of 66 trains
– Crossrail will bring about a 10% increase in London’s rail capacity
– Its trains will have 7 or 9 carriages
– Trains will have a 1500 seated and standing capacity
– The Paddington to Heathrow service should start in May 2018
– Full Crossrail service will run from December 2019
– The new trains will be much quieter than current trains
– The journey to Heathrow will take 11 minutes
West Ealing station
– New station will be in Manor Road about 50 paces from corner with Drayton Green Road. It is to be sited here because it needs to be close to the middle of the new trains in order to allow passengers to get on and off safely and quickly and avoid walking the length of the platform which would happen if the station remained where it is now.
– The design of the new station has been revised following feedback and is now larger and more modern and spacious looking
– New station will be completed by the end of 2016 and will then be operational and the old ticket office will be closed
– The station will always be staffed when trains are running
– There will be a Sunday service stopping at West Ealing – frequency of trains not yet decided
– Oyster cards can be used and the hope is that the Freedom pass will also be valid for the full length of the service
Later: I forgot to add that the station will have lifts for DDA compliance to enable step-free access
2. Nick O’Donnell
Ealing Council has secured £7.3m to spend on its five Crossrail station which is the most for any London borough on the routes . West Ealing has a budget of £1.46m.
The Council wants to look at:
– Possible sound barriers/baffling along Manor Road
– Improving pedestrian routes at junction of Alexandria Road and Drayton Green Road
– How to secure an upgrade to the Jacob’s Ladder footbridge
– Talking to developers about how to improve the area around the station
– Talking to TfL about bus stops and routes. Tfl tends to look at changes to bus routes two years ahead ie 2016. There may be scope for a bus pull in on the site of the current station which will be closed late 2016
– Possible plans to add Old Oak Common as an extra stop (after 2019) and make it an interchange with HS2 and other overland services
The meeting at the Drayton Court Hotel was well attended and my impression was that most people definitely welcomed Crossrail. However, those living very close to the station, say on Alexandria Road, Manor Road and in the Draytons have valid concerns about noise, traffic congestion and the nature of any development of the area around the new station.
It’s clear the site of the station is fixed but there will be a formal consultation about the plans around February 2015. This will be followed by the Council’s own process of consultation/discussion about the issues listed above. The Council won’t itself be devloping the area around the station but is talking to developers about this, so there is a lot to play for over the next few years and Gerald Power of the Draytons Community Assn made a strong plea for more and earlier consultation with residents about all these plans.