The Elizabeth line is running on time

IT’S quite something to reflect that half the new Elizabeth line — previously known as Crossrail 1 — has been completed on time and on budget. The Mayor, Sadiq Khan, today makes the journey from Custom House to Canary Wharf to mark the completion of half the track that will, when it’s up and running in 2018, carry 200 million passengers a year. What’s more, the line will bring an extra 1.5 million people within 45 minutes’ commuting distance of central London. And it will, accordingly, change the way we think about the housing challenge: areas of new development can be farther flung.

So much of London’s future is conditioned by its infrastructure; it determines where we live, what jobs we can take, how long we go out in the evenings. At the same time as the Crossrail development promises to bring millions more people within reach of the centre of town, Transport for London is planning, on a very much smaller scale, to revive the Thames cable-car crossing by applying for a licence to sell alcohol at either end of the line, as well as show films and hold disco and karaoke nights. At present, the crossing between the Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula, which cost £60 million, is underused: figures released this month show that it is used by just over 4,000 people a day despite having the capacity to carry 2,500 passengers an hour. Indeed, many people only encounter the service en route to City Airport.

If the plans go ahead — and there is sturdy opposition from local people who worry about the social disruption to the area — the Emirates Air Line cable-car crossing would be similar to the Millennium Wheel, which is now a hugely popular tourist destination. It would become part of London’s night-time economy, which itself has been powerfully galvanised by the advent of the Night Tube.

Where infrastructure leads, the economy follows. The Elizabeth line is transforming the entire area within its axis; now for Crossrail 2.