Is Crossrail worth the wait?
WE TAKE A TRIP ON MUCH-DELAYED AND COSTLY UNDERGROUND PROJECT
CROSSRAIL, the mega-project that has been in construction since 2009, will soon be complete.
Transport bosses hope that once it is finished, people will forget the four-year delay and the £4 billion in cost over-runs. I think they may be right.
We toured the soon-to-open Paddington-Abbey Wood stretch this week, which got reporters from Paddington station to Canary Wharf in just over 15 minutes.
It is astonishingly quick, airy and spacious.
So spacious that three Wembley Stadiums and the Shard would fit comfortably inside Paddington station, Crossrail chief Mark Wild told media on Monday.
In his words, it is “not a tube line: – it’s a new mode of transport”. There is nothing like it in the UK. We start in the glass-topped concourse of the new Paddington station, built using the same brick firm Brunel used to construct the 1850s station next door.
The platforms are enormous. Paddington’s is 20m below ground, with platforms 208m long. It is a beast of subterranean engineering.
The trains use floor-to-ceiling platform screen doors, allowing safety bods to prevent tunnel fires from spreading into the platforms.
You may have already seen the carriages themselves – they are the same trains used on TfL Rail, the Heathrow to Paddington section of Crossrail that is already open.
Paddington connects to the Bakerloo line via a massive tunnel, which cost £1 million per metre to build. You would think they could buy some art for it at that cost, but I will save my grumbles for another time.
Of course, the journey times are super-fast. I had to cut my interview with TfL boss Andy Byford short as we had made it from Liverpool Street to Canary Wharf in seven minutes. They should have slowed it down for us really.
You may have seen the carriages already – they are the same trains that TfL Rail runs from Paddington to Heathrow and Paddington to Reading. It is a good colour, though I cannot imagine the white staying white for long.
There are no loos, which could be an issue for Reading passengers heading to East London, but Mr Byford assures us it will not be an issue – those customers will be few and far between. So, after just 17 minutes, we landed in Canary Wharf and its sleek black concourse. The yellow is meant to represent the yellow of ‘canaries’ apparently.
Londoners may have already seen the Canary Wharf station – or not, as it is tucked away behind One Canada Square. It blends in to the eerily artificial, spaceship vibe of Canary Wharf itself.
There are just weeks to go before all this is open to 170 million passengers a year.
The last major simulation of full operations of the new Elizabeth Line, the name of the project when complete, took place on Sunday March 13, paving the way for a potential April launch.
The test involved 1,600 volunteers using the new central stretch from Paddington-Abbey Wood to stress-test the system in the runup to launch day.
Passengers will have to wait a bit longer for the rest of Crossrail to open – the other (separate) lines to the Paddington-Abbey Wood route are due to be joined up over the next year, running from Heathrow and Reading to Paddington and Shenfield to Liverpool Street.
It has to be said, for all the waiting, TfL is doing a pretty good job of building excitement for this project.
You will soon be able to judge whether the waiting has been worth it.
All I can say for now is this – non-Londoners are going to be rather jealous of this costly, delayed, glorious project.