Elizabeth line: Transport for London give tour around design

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The Queen made a surprise apperance to open the £18.9billion Crossrail project – now named after her – but declined to ride one of the new trains last week. Services finally start running on Tuesday after years of delays, for which Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild apologised today. He told Express.co.uk mistakes were made during the lengthy project but it, and other large engineering operations in the UK, have learnt from the errors.

The project was scheduled to finish by December 2018 but now, three years and five months later, it will finally see passengers. It is some £4billion over budget.

A large part of that delay was due to the “underestimation of system integration efforts” and fitting “too many pieces of the jigsaw” into place.

And, at 100km (62 miles) long, encompassing 41 stations, using 70 trains and eventually running 24 trains every hour at busiest times, there are indeed a lot of pieces. 

Mr Wild, an electronic and electrical engineer by trade, told Express.co.uk: “Covid caused three to six months of construction delays before we were able to demobilise and once that was done, we became very productive. It was certainly difficult initially and caused delays.

“The main delays in the project though were before then. We underestimated the system integration efforts and had a finish date of December 2018. It was revealed in the summer of that year that December 2018 was just not going to happen and in fact, it was more likely to be three years.”

It is well-documented that Crossrail had too many pieces of the jigsaw so to speak

Mark Wild, Crossrail chief executive

Mr Wild continued: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime railway project, it was unprecedented. However, it is well-documented that it was a mistake to have said this end date. We underestimated the project. It was a project that faced uncertainty all the time but we have learnt from mistakes.

“I think other programs are taking lessons from this. I think we have got to do one of these to essentially flush out mistakes in these other programs, like HS2, and other programs have learnt more about simplification.

“Crossrail had 37 main workforce contracts. It is well-documented that Crossrail had too many pieces of the jigsaw, so to speak.”

Figures released by Office for National Statistics suggest working from home has been such a success that many businesses are encouraging it to continue into the future.

They showed that from April to June 2021, output per hour worked was 1.7 percent above the 2019 average with a quarter-on-quarter rise of 0.1 percent.

But Mr Wild insists new projects like Crossrail will help see an end to working from home in the capital and encourage offices to thrive again.

He said: “I believe this will be a catalyst to helping bring people back to London.

“We know being mobile is important, and this will introduce again the idea that any journey is possible to and from London. Businesses will benefit from this.”

The line starts in Reading, part of the commuter belt in Berkshire, and runs more than 100km (62 miles) to the eastern end of the capital.

As the hybrid working model grows in popularity, employees have taken advantage of flexi transport tickets, which can offer slightly cheaper alternatives for commuters.

Mr Wild, who became Crossrail chief executive after three years as a London Underground boss, continued: “I think the thing to think about with the Elizabeth Line is this will reconnect us, as it will dramatically speed up journey times to and from London. Paddington to Liverpool Street will take 11 minutes for instance.

“I think it was calculated this will serve 1.5 million people within London’s Central Activities Zone – zones one and two on the Tube network – and this will help with their journeys.

“Around 75,000 people worked on Crossrail but parts were made across the UK. Sixty per cent of the workforce did not come from London.”

Trains will run at up to 60mph on Elizabeth Line, dramatically reducing journey times in and out of the capital.

Trial running of the line began in spring 2021 and trial operations commenced in November 2021. These processes have helped ensure trains will run safely along the line, Crossrail has said.

“There were 250,000 different safety documents completed during the course of the project so safety assurance was very important. The Tube is one of the, if not the, safest rail system in the world,” Mr Wild said.

“We have made sure Crossrail meets the same standard of safety to which the Tube runs and also have had to make sure it meets the standard of the safety to which Network Rail trains run. Therefore, it is the best of both worlds in terms of safety assurance. 

“Everything has got checked by those two, or at times three, different standards. We have tested 150 different scanerios, from fire evacuations to what happens if there’s an object on the line and other unlikely situations. We recently carried out mass evacuation scanerios, one with 2,000 people, including volunteers, at London Paddington. 

“Everything has been tested, from CCTV cameras to doors to pumps on trains. We have done comprehensive tests of objects. The reason we are so late in opening is because of the completion of these tests. It has been a huge effort of safety assurance and its been through a pyramid of testing, a pyramid of assurances. There have been five years of dynamic testing since 2017. I think safety has been paramount.

“It has been about bringing systems together. So now, when people start using the trains, they can be reassured it is safe. We have also tested this with people with restricted mobility and each of the nine new central London stations have step-free access to platform level.

“Crews were using devices like iPads and iPhones, not spreadsheets and pens, as this was a digital project. It is a digital railway so the complexity of the project was huge. It is the biggest all-digital railway in Europe certainly. This is certainly setting a benchmark. It’s certainly the first all-digital railway in the UK and it was a big infrastructural project.

London's new £1bn fleet of Crossrail trains unveiled

During the initial opening phase of the service, Elizabeth Line will operate with 12 trains per hour running from Monday to Saturday between 6.30am and 11pm.

The line will not run on Sundays, however, this will change in the autumn.

A special service will operate on Sunday, June 5 between 8am and 10pm to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

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