Archive for February, 2011

At the moment, all plans for the Hudson River tunnel project have been put on hold for the foreseeable future because of fears about the cost of the scheme. However, new plans have now been put forward, which might help to resurrect the project and help put an end to public transport misery in the local area.

The new plan will cost less money, as it is a scaled down version of the Gateway project that was put forward last month as a replacement to the original ARC tunnel project. The ARC tunnel project was shelved late last year after concerns were raised about taxpayers being forced to pick up the bill when costs on the scheme threatened to spiral out of control. In an effort to reinstate the project, the Gateway scheme was put forward last month at a cost of $13.5 billion, but as this was even more than the original cost of $8.7 billion for the ARC Tunnel project, it has yet to be approved.

Revised plans for the Hudson River tunnel project have been put forward by the Regional Rail Working Group: they believe that their ideas are far more affordable than the Gateway scheme as their scheme proposes to construct the tunnels plus a minimum section of new track in the first phase to save money, while allowing for future additions to be made to the project with greater ease.

By completing the Hudson River tunnel construction work in stages, the more expensive sections of the project, including the proposed Penn Station South, would be included in subsequent phases in order to save money. The first stage of the project would include a two tube tunnel and a new bridge. This would be built beside the existing Portal Bridge.

Following the announcement of the shortlist of contractors for Paddington Crossrail station earlier on this year, Crossrail have now announced the shortlist of contractors for the Farringdon Crossrail station contract. There are four consortiums invited to bid on the lucrative C435 contract for Farringdon station:

Laing O’Rourke and Strabag JV
BAM Nuttal, Ferrovial Agroman and Kier Construction
Costain Skanska JV
Balfour Beatty, Alpine BeMo, Morgan Sindall and Vinci JV

The six remaining central London Crossrail station contracts will be announced later on this year, and by the end of 2011 Crossrail will have awarded a total of £1.5 billion in contracts.

The Farringdon Crossrail station is seen as one of the most important of the central Crossrail stations as it will provide a major transport interchange between three tube lines as well as the Thameslink rail network and Crossrail and Network Rail and Crossrail will be working together on the development of Farringdon station.

The winning contractor for the Farringdon Crossrail station will be expected to undertake a variety of different work as part of the construction of the station. This includes integrated ticket halls to allow future access to the London underground and Thameslink rail line. Farringdon Station will also be the central point for two major Crossrail tunnelling drives.

Once construction work has been completed, the Farringdon Crossrail interchange will become one of the busiest transport interchanges in Central London and at peak times an anticipated 140 trains per hour will pass through. The Farringdon transport interchange will be expected to cope with an estimated 140,000 passengers travelling passing through its doors on a daily basis, and travelling from Farringdon, passengers will be able to reach Canary Wharf in less than fifteen minutes and Heathrow Airport in less than thirty minutes.

In the current climate of biting austerity measures being imposed by the government in an attempt to alleviate the massive budget deficit, Crossrail has laid to rest fears that the taxpayers could end up funding the Crossrail project if costs spiralled out of control.

In an announcement to the press, Terry Morgan, chairman of Crossrail, has made it very clear that he believes Crossrail has more than enough funding in place to meet the demands of the future work scope. Although other transport infrastructure projects have gone massively over budget in the past, most notably the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Morgan is adamant that Crossrail will not be asking for any more money from the government coffers. He says that the funding already in place from the government, Transport for London, and the private sector will be more than sufficient.

With bidding on the Crossrail contracts thus far coming in at extremely competitive levels, plus lower than anticipated costs, Crossrail is in an excellent position to be able to deliver the project as economically as possible. But despite the emphasis being placed on costs savings, Morgan was keen to point out that technical expertise is still very much a factor during the decision making process prior to awarding the Crossrail contracts.

The cost of the Crossrail project is currently set at £14.9 billion, but it is thought that once the transport scheme reaches completion on 2018, it will add at least £42 billion to the UK economy, as well as enhancing the prosperity of southeast.

Work on the Crossrail project has already begun and several of the main Crossrail station contracts have been awarded. Other Crossrail station contracts will be awarded in the next few months and by 2012, almost £4 billion in contracts will have been handed out to contactors.

Rocksy, Australia’s largest tunnel boring machine, has achieved the first breakthrough on the 6.7 kilometre Airport Link in Brisbane. There are two 12.45 meter diameter Herrenknecht EPBMs working on the tunnelling project and the breakthrough marks the all-important half way point of the 2.5 kilometre tunnel that will end in Lutwyche.

The two TBMs working tirelessly on the tunnelling project, Rocksy and Sandy, have been operating around the clock, seven days per week. On average, they have made progress at a rate of 110 metres per week. So far, more than 9 kilometres of tunnel has been dug across the entire project, of which 2.2 kilometres is attributable to Rocksy and Sandy.

Since it was only in February last year that Rocksy and Sandy were in bits and in transit from Germany, the progress made by the tunnelling team has been astounding and the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Stirling Hinchcliffe, congratulated the tunnelling team on their sterling efforts.

Pre-cast concrete segments have been used to make up the tunnel lining rings as the TBMs advanced forward, each one weighing in at a hefty seven tonnes, and already backup work has commenced in the wake of Rocksy and Sandy, including the construction of smoke ducts and tunnel cross passages. The next stage will be the installation of ventilation fans, tunnel safety systems and traffic management devices.

Sandy, the other TBM working on the project is expected to break through next month and both TBMs are on track to complete the 2.5 kilometre journey by July. Once completion has been reached, the massive cutterheads used by each TBM will be left buried underground to avoid the problem of removing them.

The Brisbane Airport Link is scheduled to open in 2012 and will provide a motorway connection from Brisbane city to the airport and suburbs to the north.

In order to ensure that there are no massive cost overruns on the Crossrail high speed rail scheme, Crossrail has introduced contracts for Tier 1 contractors that include big financial penalties in the event of cost overruns. These tough clauses are part of the NEC 3 target price contracts and have already been very successfully used on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Olympic site, although the cost overrun clauses were not quite so stringent at only 20% instead of 50%.

If any contractor fails to stick to their budget, they will be penalised by a hefty 50% of the cost overrun, which could amount to a great deal of money. But if the contractor brings the work in below budget, they will benefit from a 50% incentive of any cost savings made, which will be a great encouragement for contractors to complete the project on time and within budget.

Head of Crossrail Procurement, Mark Rowark, commented in the press this morning that, “We are using the same approach [as the Olympic site and CTRL] with a 50:50 pain and gain split, which we believe is a good incentive to control costs and deliver within the target price.”

To keep the supply chain running smoothly as the Crossrail scheme moves forward, Crossrail have stated their commitment to making sure that all contractors working on the project are paid on time. Banks will be releasing payments promptly and any signs of payment abuse will be stopped immediately. Crossrail have also introduced a 2.5% retention bond in place of retention payments.

Instead of an in-house contract form, Crossrail contractors will be using a standard form subcontract published by Crossrail. This will help to avoid the possibility of any contentious clauses being inserted.

A news report in this morning’s Financial Times has revealed that after months of speculation, the Crossrail Woolwich station will finally be going ahead as planned. Problems between the developer, Berkley Homes, and the Department of Transport, caused a delay in the Department of Transport giving permission for work to commence, but thankfully these issues have now been resolved and work will shortly begin.

The contract for Woolwich station was awarded to Berkley Homes, a private developer, back in 2006. The developer agreed to build the station shell with Greenwich local authority footing the bill for the fitting out works of the station platform and waiting rooms, but the project ran into difficulties when the Department of Transport requested that the building work was finished faster than originally planned.

The Woolwich Crossrail station is one of only two Crossrail stations planned for south of the River Thames, which makes it very important for the people living and working in the local community. Local residents will gain considerably once the £16 billion Crossrail scheme has reached completion in 2018 and many were concerned that if plans for the Crossrail station were scrapped, the area would lose out.

The developer will also be building a 4,500 housing development on the land adjacent to the planned Crossrail Woolwich station, including 25% affordable housing. There will also be 1,000 extra units built on the site, including several retail and commercial units above the station itself.

Since the announcement that Woolwich Crossrail station will now go ahead, local officials have expressed their delight at the news and the Labour MP for Greenwich, Nick Raynsford, commented: “The Crossrail scheme as a whole is hugely important for London’s future and this station is vital to secure the regeneration of one of the more disadvantaged town centres in the capital.”

Engineers are currently carrying out the last finishing touches on the new Tyne Tunnel near Gateshead. It has been two and half years since construction work on the Tyne Tunnel first started and with opening scheduled for the end of February, final checks and tests are essential before the tunnel is fully operational and open to traffic.

Much of the testing carried out over the weekend was safety related. A whole series of emergency exercises were completed to test the current safety procedures and overall response of emergency responses. These tests included one full-scale emergency exercise designed to replicate what might happen if a major disaster took place inside the Tyne Tunnel. The purpose of the extensive testing procedures was to see if the in-built safety systems integrated with the emergency services as intended.

A fixed fire suppression system is amongst the many safety systems installed inside the new Tyne Tunnel. Should a fire occur for any reason inside the tunnel, the fire suppression system will release a mist of water droplets into the air that should help drivers escape a fire as well as minimise the damage to the tunnel.

As a result of such safety measures, Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue have fully endorsed the safety systems in place and the new Tyne Tunnel is now believed to be the safest road tunnel in the UK.

Construction on the new Tyne Tunnel has been carried out as part of the Tyne Crossing Project and includes an upgrade of the original tunnel across the River Tyne. Completion is planned on the project by the end of 2011. The new Tyne Tunnel will be open for traffic at the end of this month and the old tunnel is expected to close for planned refurbishment works very soon.

Big Becky, the famous Niagara Falls tunnel boring machine, is due to break ground in the next two months. The huge tunnel boring machine, christened Big Becky, has been labouring away underground for four years now, but at present, it is only 570 metres from the surface, a distance that equates to the length of around six football fields.

The 10 kilometre tunnel currently being excavated by Big Becky will be a companion tunnel to the existing two tunnels that already supply the Beck hydroelectric power station with water, and Austrian tunnelling experts, Strabag AG, are in charge of the tunnelling project. Once the tunnel has been completed, the extra water powering the generators will help to supply enough electricity to power a further 160,000 homes in the Ontario area.

Tunnelling work first began beneath the Beck hydroelectric power station. The tunnel then follows a route beneath Stanley Avenue before passing below Dufferin islands and finally ending up beneath the Upper Niagara River. At present, Big Becky and the tunnel boring team are near to the old Toronto Power Company gatehouse and once the tunnel has reached completion, the intake will be visible from the Niagara Parkway.

Once the tunnelling section of the project is over, there will be further works on site, including concrete tunnel lining along the 10 kilometre tunnel, and the planned completion date for the Niagara Falls tunnelling project is December 2013, which is when water will be allowed to flow along the new tunnel.

Due to geological issues in the early stages of the tunnelling phase, the original budget of C$985 million was revised to a new figure of C$1.6 billion. Since then, work on the Niagara Falls tunnelling project has progressed without further incident and ministers are now confident that the final cost will be lower than anticipated.

Commuters look set to experience months of delay and disruption as work begins on the various central London Crossrail station upgrades, and in particular, those in the West End of the city.

Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road are facing a huge overhaul and several key Tube lines and bus routes will be affected as a result of the construction work. Some sections of the Tube lines will be closed for several months and many bus routes in the vicinity of the stations will be diverted.

Passengers using Tottenham Court Road station will be unable to connect with the Northern line from April through to November. However, the Central line will continue to serve the station. Oxford Street station will also be affected by Crossrail station construction work and all eastbound services between Vere Street and Duke Street will be suspended for nine months as of 14th February.

Bus routes using the eastbound lane outside Oxford Street station will either be re-routed or terminated early due to road closures and in total, fourteen bus routes in the central London area will be affected by the planned Crossrail construction work.

Although there is going to be a great deal of disruption over the next few months, Transport for London are keen to point out that the transport issues are unavoidable given the large scope of work necessary for the development of the Crossrail network across London and, where possible, information on suggested route changes will be made available.

There will be a great deal of construction work taking place at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, and several other Crossrail stations over the next few months. Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road will be enlarged and rebuilt to incorporate many new changes, including bigger ticket halls and more entrances.

Although there has been a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the Crossrail Woolwich Station box, it looks likely that there will finally be a decision made this week on whether the station box will go ahead as originally planned.

The contractor, Berkley Homes, made a commitment to provide £186 million in funding to construct the Crossrail Woolwich Station box and develop the land in the immediate area. The contractor spent £5 million on designs for the station box, but hit problems once the economic downturn began to affect business over a year ago. In the intervening time, Crossrail has made attempts to renegotiate the funding arrangements it originally made with the contractor in the hope that construction work would be able to go ahead as planned.

A meeting between Crossrail and the London Assembly Transport Committee last week has now revealed that Berkeley Homes and Crossrail sponsors have been working to try and come to an agreement over financial arrangements so that work on the Woolwich station box will be able to go ahead shortly. Rob Holden, Crossrail chief executive, has said that papers are due to be signed over a financial deal by tomorrow, Tuesday 8th February.

The delays caused by the problems with Woolwich Station box have led to some changes being made in the main Crossrail schedule. However, previous changes made following the government’s spending review last year had already caused a delay in the confirmation of the schedule relating to the branches of Crossrail leading off the central section.

Should the construction of the Crossrail Woolwich Station box go ahead, a deep box will be constructed to provide capability for a Crossrail station on the line if required. The contractor is also planning to construct 2500 new homes on the land adjacent to the site.