Lord Berkeley
Main Page: Lord Berkeley (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Berkeley's debates with the Department for Transport
(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am grateful for the support of my noble friend for the SMEs and other businesses supporting the Crossrail project. A lot of them are involved, and, in addition, many of them are based far outside London and the south-east. Transport for London will be responsible for Crossrail services. It is procuring a private sector Crossrail train operator concession, using a model similar to London Overground. Operations will start in May 2015.
The current opening strategy is split into five phases, beginning with Liverpool Street to Shenfield in May 2015. In December 2018, services will start through the main Crossrail tunnel between Paddington and Abbey Wood. Full services will open in December 2019.
Lord Berkeley
Will the Minister explain whether there are still plans to have two different signalling systems on this tunnel, one in the tunnel and one on Network Rail on either side? What assurances can he give that the trains will not have to stop at the changeover point? That would not be very good when a two-minute headway frequency is planned for the trains. Is the matter resolved yet?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, it is not resolved yet. The noble Lord is quite right that there are two signalling systems. One is needed in the central portion in order to meet the productivity requirements. Engineers are working through the issues of transitioning from one system to another, but the trains will not need to stop in order to transition the system.