Crossrail has a “wow factor” that will entice people working from home back to the office, according to Sadiq Khan.
The Mayor took a trip on the central section of the £18.9bn line on Monday as it continued to undergo testing prior to opening in the first half of this year.
“I’m really excited,” Mr Khan said. “There is a wow factor when you come on the Elizabeth line. Brilliant trains, brilliant stations, the signalling is working really well.”
A precise opening date has yet to be set but, with two more months of trial operations yet to be completed, May is looking the most likely month for the launch of Elizabeth Line services between Paddington and Abbey Wood, via the West End and Canary Wharf.
Mr Khan said: “What we need to do is entice people from working from home to working in the office. What better way to entice people than increased capacity and increased connectivity?”
Canary Wharf station today became the ninth of the 10 new stations to be handed over to Transport for London, leaving only Bond Street, which is three months behind schedule, to be completed.
TfL commissioner Andy Byford said he was prepared to delay Crossrail’s opening by a “few weeks” until he was sure it was operating “flawlessly”.
He said: “No-one will thank me if we open these beautiful stations and the service wasn’t 100 per cent reliable. The good news is: we are nearly there.
“If it takes a few more weeks after trial operations to make sure the service is reliable, I want a flawless opening, so we will be able to firm up on the date as soon as possible.
“Not only will it add at a stroke 10 per cent capacity to London’s mass transport network, it will also offer state-of-the-art clean, spacious, beautiful surroundings.
“You will be able to get from Canary Wharf to Heathrow in around 40 minutes, Liverpool Street to Paddington in 11 minutes, it will be completely transformative.
“It will be a huge morale boost to London post-Covid. This to me is the ultimate symbol of the city’s emergence from Covid, this beautiful state-of-the-art railway which will serve us for many, many years to come.”
The line was initially due to open in December 2018. But Mr Khan only discovered it was way off schedule in the summer of 2018, more than two years after he became chairman of TfL, which at the time jointly oversaw Crossrail with the Department for Transport.
On Monday, Mr Khan blamed the previous Crossrail management for making “a mess” of the opening preparations and for failing to realise what was needed to move from a construction project to an operational railway.
“A mess was made when Crossrail Ltd were in charge of this in relation to them not understanding what was required for the Elizabeth line to open, but also not having a plan for how the Elizabeth line would open,” he told the Standard.
“It was in August before the December [of 2018] before we discovered that Crossrail wouldn’t open. Since then, we have had experts come in to help us. From October 2020, we and TfL have been responsible for the Elizabeth line.”
Canary Wharf station was built for Crossrail by the Canary Wharf Group and declared “completed” in 2015, only for TfL to discover that further works were needed.
If Bond Street station is not completed in time for the line’s opening, trains will run through the station without stopping.
The trial operations phase will include five mass evacuation exercises that are due to start in the middle of February.
The pre-election “purdah” period prior to the May borough elections will not stop TfL from opening the Elizabeth line but would prevent any “fanfare” celebrations - meaning the official opening is likely after the May 5 polling day.
This would also allow several weeks for Mr Byford to be absolutely certain the line is running without flaws, with the 12 trains an hour operating to timetable.
Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild said the project had reached an “exciting” phase. “It’s the culmination of years of work but we are not there yet but we are getting very close,” he said.
“This railway will open before the end of June. As to the precise date, over the next two months we will complete our trial operations exercises.
“Then from the middle of March onwards, it’s really a [question] of: have we got the reliability? Nobody would thank us for opening an unreliable railway.”
He added: “Trial operations have gone well. There haven’t been any real issues. We have learned a lot - new roles, new procedures - people bedding in to their new roles. It’s been very valuable
The £18.9bn cost of Crossrail excludes the £1bn cost of the new fleet of trains and the cost of the train depots in Old Oak Common and Abbey Wood - meaning the final bill will exceed £20bn.
The arrival of Crossrail at Canary Wharf will transform links to the area. Pre-pandemic, commuters were dependent on the overcrowded Jubilee line and the DLR.
The new Canary Wharf station, in the North Dock of West India Quay, sits below a five-storey mixed-use development known as Crossrail Place.
The “station box” is 256m long, which is greater than the height of One Canada Square, the landmark building on the Canary Wharf estate.
During construction, almost 100 million litres of water were pumped out of the station box and hundreds of fish were relocated. A piece of woolly mammoth jawbone was found, as well as a fragment of amber which is estimated to be 55 million years old. Both were passed on to the Natural History Museum.
