An innovative Verification Process speeds construction of Crossrail's Moorgate shaft

Crossrail's Liverpool Street station will serve the City of London and provide interchanges with London Underground's Northern, Central, Metropolitan, Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines, connections to Stansted airport and National Rail services at Liverpool Street and Moorgate stations. Built at deep level to pass beneath LU's Northern and Central Lines, the new platforms extend between the existing Liverpool Street and Moorgate stations with both stations having access to the Crossrail station. With Crossrail operating 24 trains/hour, 26 million people per year will use the new station.

In the morning peak Crossrail services will deliver some 8000 passengers per hour at Moorgate. The existing Moorgate station ticket hall is being enlarged to create an integrated western ticket hall from which a bank of three escalators will descend to an intermediate concourse, whence a further bank of three descends to the platform central concourse 35 m below street level. This entailed the construction of the deepest shaft on Crossrail to 42 m below street level (113 m ATD), all within one of Crossrail's most constrained sites (Figure 1), bounded by the Metropolitan Line to the north, the Northern Line tunnels to the east, listed buildings immediately to the south and the existing Moorgate station ticket hall nearby. The shaft's 8 levels of basement accommodate the upper bank of escalators, lifts and emergency escape stairs from platform level, tunnel forced ventilation (60 m²), draught relief ( 40 m²), smoke extract (10 m²) and associated plant rooms.