Higher than expected passenger numbers on the Elizabeth Line have resulted in a £20 million fares bonus for Transport for London.
More than two million trips a week have been taken on the £20 billion line since its central section between Paddington and Abbey Wood opened on May 24.
They peaked at 2.5 million trips in the last week of June, and over the four-week mid-summer period a total of 5.1 million passengers travelled on its central London section and 4.5 million on the western and eastern branches to Reading/Heathrow and Shenfield.
A report by Rachel McLean, chief finance officer for Crossrail, to this week’s Elizabeth Line committee said there had been 14 million more journeys on the Elizabeth Line than expected.
She said: “This was due to the central section opening five weeks earlier than assumed, plus higher than expected passenger numbers across the whole line.”
Transport for London commissioner Andy Byford had previously warned that the difficulty in getting Tube and rail passengers back to central London would leave the Elizabeth Line struggling to hit its financial targets.
But the latest figures say the line, which opened two-and-a-half years late and £4 billion over budget, “is on target to break even in the year 2023-24”.
The Elizabeth is also proving the most reliable of all rail lines in the country, with a 94.6 per cent punctuality rating in the four weeks to August 20.
London Overground was fourth best at 91.1 per cent, Govia Thameslink Railway — the biggest operator in the UK — was well below the national average at 75.3 per cent while no figure was available for Avanti West Coast.
Through trains from Reading and Heathrow will run directly to and from Abbey Wood, as will direct services between Shenfield and Paddington, on November 6. This will mean the first regular seven-day service on the line, other than for the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations and the final day of the lying-in-state.
There will also be more trains — 22 per hour between Paddington and Whitechapel at peak times, and 16 off peak, up from the 12 throughout the day at present.
Services will also run about an hour later, with the last trains leaving central London at about 11.30pm.
But the integration of the eastern and western branches with the central tunnel section — which will end the need to change trains at Paddington or Liverpool Street — will result in long delays for some eastbound passengers waiting to arrive at Paddington.
They will “pause” for up to seven minutes to “regularise” the service from the west through to the central section.
There will also be slightly longer to wait for a train between Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood, from five minutes at present to six minutes during peak times and 7.5 minutes off-peak.
On the western branch, there will be fewer direct services off-peak from Iver to Taplow, Twyford and Reading.
Peak frequencies of 24 trains an hour in either direction in the central section will start when the line is fully integrated next May, meaning direct services will run the length of the line.
