On 4 Nov, 04:37, Mizter T wrote:
[originally posted to uk.railway - x-posted to uk.transport.london]

On 4 Nov, 07:16, " wrote:

Heathrow Airport operator BAA has announced a £230m funding package
for the £16bn Crossrail project.

The scheme will connect Maidenhead in Berkshire to Shenfield in Essex
via Heathrow and central London.

The project received the Parliamentary go-ahead in July with the first
trains expected to start running from 2017.

More athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7707338.stm

Is this anything more than an announcement of what had already been
agreed last year in order for Crossrail to get the go-ahead whereby
various parties including BAA agreed to contribute towards it? i.e. Is
this just the BAA PR-orchestrated cheque handing over ceremony, as it
were? (Indeed has BAA actually handed over the money yet - reading the
article there's nothing to suggest they have!)

I'd be tempted to think that it was, but there is this one line in the
BBC news story that says:
"Transport minister Lord Adonis and BAA's strategy director Mike
Forster agreed on the deal."

But Andrew Adonis has only been a transport minister since the
beginning of October '08, and Crossrail was announced as going ahead
back in October '07. But perhaps one shouldn't really read too much
into this wording - it could be interpreted as meaning 'final'
agreement, or (perhaps more likely) it could simply just be
pleasantries - after all, Adonis is hardly going to suddenly disagree
on the deal and thus single-handedly vandalise the whole project.
(Well, I suppose he could!)

Are we now to be treated to a series of announcements over the coming
months from the various organisations and businesses who have already
agreed to contribute to Crossrail.

Is it remotely possible that this announcement has been made with the
connivance of a pliant BAA in order for the DfT to place pressure on
those organisations and business who had previously agreed to stump up
cash for Crossrail and are now wavering in their support? Indeed, had
any kind of legally binding commitment been extracted from those
entities who had previously agreed to contribute to Crossrail, or was
it all just a series of gentleman's agreements?

(And if BAA is now dancing to the DfT's tune, what price this co-
operation - third runway at Heathrow?)

There was no legally binding agreement. This appears to be a real
announcement, whereas the ones a year ago were pointless kerfuffle.

U