On Jun 15, 12:26*pm, Mizter T wrote:
On Jun 15, 8:01*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:





On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:10:36 +0100, "Paul Scott"
wrote:
...during his visit to Canary Wharf station site.

Hammond said: "The Government is committed to this project."
He added: "We have no plans to reduce its scope. We want this project to be
delivered in its entirety," he said. But he added that the Government wanted
to ensure that Crossrail was delivered "with maximum value for the
taxpayer".

Worth watching the whole of the BBC video included on the webpage, the
interviewer seems to cover most of the obvious questions ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/10323035.stm

Thanks for posting that. On the face of it it is fairly positive and
completely at odds with some scandalous rumour I heard today
(and no I'm not sharing it). [...]

Bozza has been digging his pencils and protractor out, in a bid to
'assist' the Crossrail team?

[...] However there is the nasty politicians' phrase of "we
have no plans". This can, of course, change at the drop of a hat and the
sudden presentation of a plan that changes everything!

Given the 'emergency' budget is coming up next Tuesday, it does seem
unlikely that the SoS would be mouthing off about Crossrail without
being fairly certain that the project was still on.

This is starting to sound like good news for Crossrail. This is the
correct thing to do. Crossrail and Thameslink n000 are the two
projects that should survive IMHO.

I'm minded to
think that some of the earlier chit chat about de-scoping / cutting
back Crossrail may have emanated from the Crossrail team themselves,
or those close to them - present the new team at the DfT (and indeed
the Treasury) with a whole menu of possible substantive cuts to the
project, then gently explain the consequences of said cuts, the
inference being that actually opting for any such cut would seriously
curtail significant benefits derived from the project and hence would
be a daft thing to do. Plus of course there's the whole complex
funding structure which is now in place which is based on the full
project (rather than a cut back version which isn't what was agreed
to).

I wonder if Hammond's reticence about the timetable might possibly
point to something that 'Bruce' suggested recently as a potential
money saver - that of slower tunnelling and fewer TBMs ((or indeed
just one of them)...

Two might make sense. Crossrail would not come into its own until
there is a complete economic recovery. That is likely to be some
years away. OTOH using one TBM would just be plain silly. Two is the
minimum sensible IMHO.