Michael Hopkins wrote:
Overall common sense appears to be breaking out about Crossrail with
the decision to use Old Oak Common as opposed to Romford , the
redeployment of North Pole, the avoidance of the Hanbury Street shafts
and now the Woolwich decision. Chunky bits still be sorted out include
freight traffic both to the west and east of London, decisions to stop
short at both Abbeywood and Maidenhead as opposed to Ebbsfleet and
Reading. The Commons committee appear realise that integrating into the
wider network is an issue that the promoters preoccupied with getting
the "big dig" built have tended to ignore.


As a former resident of the Maidenhead/Reading area, I can see abaolutely no
reason at all for terminating at Maidenhead rather than Reading.


I thought that this was to ensure that NR didn't dump the costs of the
impending (in roughly the same sense and timeframe as Crossrail is
impending) resignalling and remodelling of the tracks into and east of
Reading Station onto CLRL's budget.

Therefore, everyone has to pretend that Crossrail won't go to Reading
until the Reading project has been approved in its own right, at which
point the necessary slight timetable amendments will be made and the
additional few miles of knitting will be procured.

Ebbsfleet is similar-ish. To avoid conflicting moves with North Kent
Line trains that would seriously delay the whole Crossrail service,
proper infrastructure investment would be needed between Abbey Wood and
Ebbsfleet.

Again, the theory is that this will be easier to raise on the basis of
"all we need to extend this groovy new Crossrail service that's already
being built to Ebbsfleet is this infrastructure spend", rather than
adding even more cost to the original project.

Cynics might describe some or all of this as 'smoke and mirrors'. I
couldn't possibly comment...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org