Dave Arquati wrote:
Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:

Crossrail has been approved, with a Hybrid Bill to deposited in
parliament as soon as possible

Do we know anything more about the details of the route, or will
we have to wait for the bill for that? Or is it pretty much
decided now?

No route confirmation yet; I've just posted about the Montague
Report which seems to prefer Heathrow & Maidenhead to Shenfield &
Ebbsfleet (i.e. getting rid of Kingston and having Maidenhead
instead).

Darling latched on to this in his statement today: "On the basis of the
Review's work, it is clear that the case for a limb to Richmond/Kingston
is relatively weakly developed, and that an extension on the western
side to Maidenhead might provide a better solution. This would be a key
change, and would align directly with key Review concerns about the
scale and deliverability of the project and number of interfaces it has
with the national railway."

Incidentally, I don't think it's a case of Maidenhead instead of
Kingston. The difficulties of getting BAA to give up HEx and of sharing
tracks with FGWL's slower diesel trains have led CLRL to develop the
Maidenhead proposal, using trains that would otherwise have reversed at
Paddington.

I personally doubt the Kingston branch will survive; it's
expensive and appears to be unpopular - in fact it appears to be
producing the only true opposition to Crossrail.

There is some opposition to it, mainly in Richmond and to some extent in
Chiswick, but I wouldn't say it was "unpopular" in general. Also,
Montague shows that it has an excellent benefit/cost ratio. But I agree
that it may well not survive (like it's main supporter, the SRA).

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)