Crossrail Update
Less than five months before the Elizabeth Line was due to open in December 2018, we were informed the opening was off. The new opening date was ‘autumn 2019’, implying a delay of about a year. Six months on and that opening projection too is history. Forget 2019, Crossrail Ltd Chief Executive Mark Wild told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in March: ‘There is no opportunity to open this railway in 2019 because of the compression of the critical path and the stations’.
Should we forget a 2020 opening too? According to Mr Wild: ‘We would very, very much want to get this done in 2020’. While it’s good to hear the Crossrail top team have got their mission statement nailed down, confidence in when the line will open appears in short supply even at the top of the organisation.
With two projected openings missed there is an understandable caution towards announcing new dates. Mark Wild said in January that he hoped there would be something more concrete to announce in February (p10, February issue); this has slipped to April, when we can expect a ‘broad window’ for when the central section of the railway will open. This ‘broad window’, Mr Wild said, would be ‘quite wide’. Expe…
