Cross London Rail Links, Crossrail ______________________________________
Volterra have been involved in developing the economic case for Crossrail, a new East to West London tube and train line since 2002. The £16bn line was finally agreed in October 2007. The team developed the argument for Wider Economic Benefits, created a methodology for valuing them and liased with the DfT in order to gain acceptance for the methodology.
The introduction of Wider Economic Benefits and agglomeration has changed the debate on transport priorities considerably, as reflected in the recent Eddington Review. Volterra's ongoing work for Crossrail is to improve the methodology and to explore the wide ranging consequences including for taxation and regeneration.
Volterra worked with transport consultants Colin Buchanan in estimating the impact of crowding on the transport system on levels of employment. Finally we developed methods to value levels of employment and particularly to describe agglomeration, the link between employment density and productivity.
This work has brought the concept of agglomeration into policy. Although the idea dates back to the earliest economists, its importance had been neglected in policy making. This had particular impact on investment in cities, since the neglect of the benefits of agglomeration has reduced investment in infrastructure for decades. We have been instrumental in convincing HM Treasury that the concept is valid and important. Much of this work has been done under the auspices of Crossrail Ltd to make the case for this investment.
Our work was used by Alasdair Darling, then Secretary of State for Transport, when he introduced the Crossrail Bill into the House of Commons. We continue to argue that the size of the tax bill generated by this investment more than covers the costs of building the railway.
Read about the costs of delaying Crossrail and the economic benefits of Crossrail. We have recently completed two further pieces of work for Crossrail - the first assesses the impact of the recession on the benefits of Crossrail and the second considers the possibility of using the Post Office Railway Tunnel (PORT) to excavate material during construction. Contact Ellie Cooper for more information or download the Crossrail case study overview.
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Cross London Rail Links | Crossrail Case Study...
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