It's time to expand the Crossrail dream

Sir Peter Hall, Regeneration & Renewal, 4 May 2007

For dream-building has been all too evident over the long years of Crossrail's gestation. The basic problem is: everyone wants it, but no one knows how to pay for it. Big business interests, who clamour for it most loudly of all, have been unwilling to put their money where their mouths are - at least, to put enough into the kitty to make the numbers stack up.

Maybe, this time, it will happen. The Lyons review of local government finance last month proposed a supplementary London-wide business rate of up to 4p, which could raise more than £3 billion to fund the project. But, as pointed out here (R&R, 30 March, p18), two-thirds of London's boroughs would get no direct benefit, and so would not want to contribute. True, the minority includes major business boroughs like Westminster and the City. But would their payments be enough?

Extending the line might help. Reading - third office centre of southern England, after Central London and Croydon - would bring enough extra revenue to more than pay for electrifying existing tracks from Maidenhead. Likewise at the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link station at Ebbsfleet in Kent, where developer Land Securities plans major new offices that could make it Reading's east-side equivalent. Crossrail should have originally gone there - but the line was cut back.

The key question here, going beyond money. is what kind of railway should Crossrail be? The project has come perilously close to becoming just another London tube line, albeit faster. It needs to become a regional metro, extending 30 or 40 miles out to Reading, Guildford, Chatham and Southend. That way, it would widen the commuting range to the City and Canary Wharf - and serve the Thames Gateway strategy to build new commuterland homes out in Essex and Kent.

The success of the existing Thameslink model lies in a technological fix: trains switch from overhead electric lines north of London, to third-rail electricity south of the Thames. It's critically important that Crossrail has the same capacity, giving flexibility for future extensions. But who is asking that critical question? Sir Peter Hall is (Bartlett) Professor of Planning and Regeneration, University College London. Email: sir.peter.hall@haymarket.com.