Liz talk about London’s new route
No one is cross (or railing) about the Elizabeth line anymore
London’s newest transport route opened this week, with the Elizabeth line adding 10% to the capacity of the pre-existing underground network*
The eventual cost of Crossrail (the original name of the infrastructure project) has reached £19bn, twice as much as the London Olympics in 2012
- This is significantly higher than the original projected cost (£10bn back in 2003, admittedly with a different route proposed) or the budget set out at the start of construction (£14.8bn)
- The project was predominantly funded by Government-backed organisations including Department for Transport (DfT, £5.1bn), Network Rail (£3bn) and Transport for London (TFL, £2bn)
- On top of this, there was £7bn-worth of commercial and government-backed (from DfT) loans and £800m from Developers, Private Businesses and other organisations like the Greater London Authority (GLA) and City of London Corporation
- New station development was one of the main costs, for example with the new Canary Wharf station costing £500m (£150m of which was contributed by the Canary Wharf Group)
- Tunneling under London’s already congested centre is another significant cost, with the deepest tunnels running through the centre and under the Blackwall tunnel at 40m underground
- And 932 miles of cables were laid underground to connect up the new automated signaling system
The new Elizabeth line is adding 10% to the capacity of the pre-existing underground network
It feels like Crossrail has been in development for an age, but actually its even older than you realise:
- Inter-city rail construction has been discussed since the Second World War, with Thameslink being the first attempt at this (going North-South), and Crossrail first being proposed 48 years ago (in 1974)
- Architects were designing the plans for individual stations as early as 1993 (29 years ago), only to be delayed by a recession that year and then only enacted by Parliament in 2008
Despite the costs and delays, the new line is going to bring massive benefits for the city:
- When fully joined up (expected in 2023), the route will connect 40 stations over 100km from Reading / Heathrow in the West to Shenfield / Abbey Wood in the East
- 10 of these stations have been built brand new, with the remainder going through some form of upgrade or refurbishment
- This entire route will take just over 100 minutes from one end to the other, reaching a max speed of 90mph in the outer parts of the route
- Before the pandemic, it was estimated that this would enable an additional 1.5m people to access central London within 45 minutes
- The trains themselves are 205m long (more than 1.5x the existing underground stock) and have capacity for over 1,500 passengers at any one time
- Environmental impact has been minimised by re-using 98% of the soil dug up during tunneling to build nature reserves and restore land for recreational / agricultural use
And finally, along with all of the architects, engineers and construction workers, Crossrail employed up to 100 archaeologists during its 14 year span - some of whom were involved in the excavation of over 3,500 skeletons from the Liverpool Street station development
Underground Network*: the Elizabeth line is technically not part of the underground network, but instead an inter-city train service which connects to the underground, similar to the RER in Paris
Online Sources: Crossrail Benefits; Economic Business Case (2003); BBC Cost of Crossrail; Crossrail trains; Crossrail Funding; Crossrail Canary Wharf; Guardian; Crossrail tunneling
Other Sources: Platform for Design, Hugh Pearman (2016)
