Review of consents process for Crossrail 2

Rail

The government is reviewing how powers to build Crossrail 2 should be secured if the spending review in July authorises the project to proceed.   

Crossrail 2 will connect the Network Rail lines in southwest and northeast London via a tunnel. The 2015 route map shows that the tunnel would commence at Wimbledon in the southwest, with trains then calling at Balham, Clapham Junction, King’s Road Chelsea, Victoria, Tottenham Court Road, Euston St Pancras, Angel and Dalston. North of Dalston, the line would split to join the existing rail network, with a route to Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale. 

Transport for London and Network Rail submitted a strategic outline business case for the project to the Government last summer. Officials have accepted this as the basis for informing the spending review. A revised cost for the project will be finalised this spring. 

Michèle Dix, managing director of Crossrail 2, told TfL’s programmes and investment committee that a Hybrid Bill was the assumed route for gaining powers to build the line. But she said the DfT had initiated a “review of the consents strategy to understand the potential to use an alternative consenting route”. “The integrated [Crossrail] project team [of TfL and Network Rail] has considered a range of scenarios to test the impact of the various consenting routes on delivery timescales.”

Said Dix: “Before starting the next stage of development – the consents application stage – a route-wide consultation on any proposed first phase of Crossrail 2 will be undertaken.”