I went through Farringdon station towards the end of summer in 2018. There were lots of posters proclaiming the opening of the Elizabeth Line that December, but also a large number of hard-hatted construction staff visible.
Up till then, I had broadly believed Crossrail was an ‘on time, on budget’ project, in sharp contrast, for example, to Great Western electrification. But what I saw at Farringdon made me wonder whether the service would indeed start that year, particularly as it was reputedly further advanced than the other central London stations. However, in my darkest nightmares I would never have imagined that opening would be delayed until sometime in 2022.
I have several thoughts on this. Is it really possible the senior executives on the project didn’t realise the scale of the problems facing it? And did the Crossrail board members just turn up to board meetings, simply relying on papers saying everything was fine? Did none of them get out and about, looking for example at progress on Bond Street station, or checking the programme for trial running, or, most crucially, the highly complex systems integration issues facing the project?
To be fair, scandalous failures like this are not uniquely…
