Finally, on 24 May, CrossRail will open. Named The Elizabeth Line, the stats are extraordinary and impressive. An £18.7 billion infrastructure project for a 62-mile-long railway line with stations stretching from Reading in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. It has taken 20 years to bring the project to fruition with the inevitable overspend running into billions. Once open, it will increase the London rail network’s capacity by ten per cent.
Now, if you’re expecting the whole line to open all at once, you’d be mistaken. The central section will open offering a train service between Paddington and Abbey Wood. The Bond Street stop won’t open for another three months. In fact, the route won’t operate as a single entity until 2023.
By the end of this year, it’s expected that trains will run from Reading and Heathrow through to Abbey Wood and from Shenfield in the East to Paddington.
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