East London’s Brick Lane and the surrounding area are to be spared the massive disruption that would have been caused by Crossrail tunnel works in Tower Hamlets.
The council and London’s mayor, ~Ken Livingstone~ last week hailed a change of strategy by the project’s promoter, dropping plans to launch two tunnel-boring machines in the borough. Local Respect MP, ~George Galloway~ had vowed to unseat the Labour council by campaigning on the East End’s ‘ground zero’.
Cross London Rail Links’s decision followed 18 months’ strong opposition from Tower Hamlets, which commisisoned consultant Arup’s advice that end-to-end tunnelling offered a feasible and far less disruptive alternative (Surveyor, 30 June 2005 ). Recent work by CLRL had endorsed the council’s stance, avoiding the need for a major tunnelling site in Spitalfieds, said ~Emma Peters~, the council’s director of development. The council had maintained its support in principle, but ‘Crossrail’s original tunnelling proposals would not just have resulted in a major construction site in Hanbury Street,’ she said.
Tunnelling spoil was to be sent by conveyor to Mile End Park, which had been used for spoil handling for five years. Arup’s study showed the new strategy was as cost-effective, and vital new stations could still be built on the Isle of Dogs and at Whitechapel. A small ventilation shaft will still be needed at Spitalfields for heath and safety reasons, but this would cause much less disturbance during construction.
CLRL now plans to drive most of the tunnel from launch sites at Royal Oak in west London, and in Docklands between Canary Wharf and Custom House. Livingstone gave the new strategy his full backing. ‘These improvements would significantly reduce the disruption which has been feared in east London,’ he said. Petitions against the Crossrail Bill are being considered by a parliamentary committee. Meanwhile, CLRL awarded the first of four multi-disciplinary design contracts to Scott Wilson, worth £12-15M.
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