The appalling design - Rodgers aptly likens it to flat pack furniture - is perhaps the least of it. Crossrail's plans are for a station as cheap as it thinks it can get away with. Commuters have waited 30 years for some proper interchange facilities at Ealing Broadway and an easing of the overcrowding. The current plans, which you can find on Ealing’s planning website: http://www.pam.ealing.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=164510 (look at the two volumes of the Design and Access Statement) show we’ll have to wait another 30 years.The promise was always that improvements would be made as part of Crossrail. This seemed to be the case in the original design which show the station rebuilt and equipped with escalators. But to save money, Crossrail has ditched these early ideas. While sparing no expense in Central London and in Boroughs like Tower Hamlets and Greenwich, Ealing Broadway will have no escalators and a tilting canopy, drunkenly fixed to the existing concrete frontage. None of the big problems around the station – the crossing into Haven Green, the sprawling bus stops, the cycle clutter - are addressed. There’ll no longer even be any space to set down passengers at the station entrance. Crossrail is managing pretty well to keep all this out of the public arena. They seem to be trying to smuggle their plans through the planning system during the Christmas holidays while we’re digesting our turkey. They’ve declined to discuss the objectives for the design with anybody will not publish detailed passenger forecasts. They must know the numbers will grow which would make the existing problems around the station far worse than they are now.The big puzzle for me has been Ealing Council’s attitude. Though they promised to push the case for the station at election hustings and in the Gazette, our elected Councillors seem to have done nothing to get Ealing a better deal. Take a look at the designs for Whitechapel, Woolwich or Abbey Wood stations where the Councils have been much more active. See how these much smaller stations will be vastly better than what Ealing is expected to make do with. Finally, it’s not just Ealing Broadway where this problem lies, but all 5 stations in the Borough. The opportunities Crossrail offers to regenerate areas around any of these stations are being left to pass us by. If you think Ealing should do better tell the Council before 14 January 2014 when the consultation closes.
Will French ● 4480d