The Purple Elephant in the Room: Crossrail’s Opening Date | Hacker News Reader

The Purple Elephant in the Room: Crossrail’s Opening Date

londonreconnections.com

46 pointszeristor34 comments

I guess I've been living in the US too long because I just don't understand some (not in this article to be clear) like to shit on Crossrail.

I happened to be living in London in the early 2000s at the inception of the project and I can remember reading in 2003 the expected opening date was 2017. There was some delay in planning (of course) and we've had Covid so realistically this estimate was only 1-2 years off. That's a staggeringly successful estimate.

Then we get to the cost. Estimated ~15B pounds. Actual cost is what? 20B pounds? Again, that's honestly not that bad.

But I guess my perception is coloured by the Second Avenue Subway, which spent almost as much for 3 miles of tunnels compared to >25 miles of tunnels (under a 2000+ year old city, no less), a bunch of new stations and upgraded rails.

One weird thing I noticed from looking at photos of the new stations. One thing I liked about the Tube was most stations had 3 sets of escalators together. This is massively beneficial. You typically have 2 up (for passengers disembarking) and 1 down. Why? People disembark in huge bursts and arrive relatively smoothly. Also, when you need to do maintenance you shut down one and still have 1 up and 1 down. But I've seen some photos of the new stations where there appears to be only 2, which is surprising and disappointing.

Still, I look forward to this opening and I consider the whole project a massive success.

British people love to fetishise any perceived failure in any part of UK life, as if we're uniquely incompetent.

https://twitter.com/nocontextbrits/status/141631491606828237...

Ironically, I'm probably doing this myself right now - I guess people do this everywhere?

As an Italian now living in Britain, I'm surprised how smooth and efficient things are here. Brits don't know how good they have it.

TIL that Czechs are honorary Brits :-) We definitely do the same.

It must be difficult to fault the Prague tube system, it's one of the best in the world. Certainly much better than the London one.

You are right, people don't complain about the subway.

But they love to complain about long repairs of tram tracks and streets on the surface, and they have a point. Repairs are usually tendered by cost only [0] and they tend to stretch for months, with very low energy effort made (e.g. you won't see any workers on the spot for days, because the tendered construction company has other jobs to do and no incentive to speed things up).

[0] A nasty aftereffect of the "Great Anti-Corruption Revolution" of the early 2010s. Everyone in the public sphere is afraid to buy but the cheapest things and services. Investigations dragging for years are a punishment themselves, even if you are acquitted at the end.

> I guess I've been living in the US too long because I just don't understand some (not in this article to be clear) like to shit on Crossrail.

The reason why Crossrail got shit on for their estimates is because they were still pushing the "on time and on budget" slogan just a month or so before it got delayed which was just a few months before it was meant to open.

Everyone expects large projects like this to overrun a bit, but if you start bragging about it then you better be right.

> "on time and on budget" slogan just a few months before it was meant to open.

December 2018 was the opening date [0];

24 July 2018: Department of Transport update [1]: On time and we are so great we managed to barter them down by 2.5bn on the cost. This will enable the completion of the project at a cost lower than planned under the last Labour government.

31 August 2018: It is announced that Crossrail's opening had been delayed by at least nine months to autumn 2019.

April 2022: It still isnt open...

I get shit happens, but how can you be on track 6 months away from opening and 4 years later you are still an unknown time away from opening.

[0] https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2018/08/i875/20180831_0... [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/annual-update-on-cros...

> Then we get to the cost. Estimated ~15B pounds. Actual cost is what? 20B pounds? Again, that's honestly not that bad.

Considering the UK gov announced 7B pound to improve transportation for _the rest of the UK_, the 5B overrun is put in perspective.

An additional 25,000 riders was a big deal in New York City.

“Amazon is Coming, Can NYC Transit System Handle It”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/nyregion/amazon-new-york-...

The deal fell through and now everyone has to drive to the new Amazon headquarters.

What amazes me is the London ExCeL centre which can host huge events of tens of thousands of people but the connections don’t seem to be that overloaded, with Crossrail no doubt even less so.

Though sporting events still overwhelm the system albeit for an hour or so.

The picture I saw I assumed it was two ramp escalators and one stair stepped escalator.

I don't know the first thing about train operations - could someone ELI5 why signal failure is a recurring thing in the UK?

After a decade of upgrades the Met line suddenly had extremely frequent signal failure (around 2019ish) and ran a service that felt considerably less reliable than 2007 before upgrades began.

Places like Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo run like clockwork. I also feel like the DLR runs better but I don't take it often enough to intimately know its failure rates.

Is it just the curse of legacy infrastructure?

Hong Kong has its fair share of signal failures; check out the @mtrupdate Twitter.

Also, they are trying to install a new signalling system, and during testing two trains collided: https://www.railjournal.com/signalling/contractors-responsib...

I was about to make a comment about the poor rollout of signal upgrades in San Francisco but I checked wiki page about the Metropolitan Line first. Welp. Put succinctly the problem is Thales (nee Alcatel).

Curiously DLR (and Jubilee and Northern lines) use the same system.

The signal/point cabling at new street in Birmingham is the textbook definition of cable gore.

Just bundles on bundles snaked alongside track, bulging out of channels meant for them... Is it any wonder there's been a half dozen point or signal failures over the last few weeks leading to significant delays for commuters?

To say nothing of how much left over track sections, sleepers, gravel bags and other material are strewn alongside the lines, left for years.

> To say nothing of how much left over track sections, sleepers,

I am sure I have seen enough lengths of track seemingly discarded along the lines to build entire rail networks.

An elephant not explicitly mentioned in the article: The Queen's Platinum Jubilee weekend is coming up on 2-5 June.

Aaaah, now I get it - yeah, it sure would be convenient if they could open the Elizabeth Line in June then...

Wonder which terrible family member she will try and rehabilitate at the event, assuming she is well enough to attend.

Pretty station design. Of course 1000's of folks are the real test.

When I visited the UK and London, railways and the tube were so nice compared to having to drive everywhere where I live in the US.

It’s nice as a tourist. As a commuter who ends up having to cram in like sardines in a tin can, waiting for multiple trains because they’re over-full, and now post-covid dealing with the thought that breathing can be dangerous, it’s really a much nicer prospect to drive, walk, cycle, skateboard, etc

I wonder how much of the US's opinion that "Europe has perfected mass transit" comes from tourists visiting tourist places and doing tourist things at off-peak hours.

Eh, mass transit here mostly works. Some lines in some cities are over capacity, and uncomfortable at peak hour, but 1) still beats sitting in traffic 2) there's lots of work and infrastructure projects being done to improve the situation.

Crossrail, new longer trains a few years back in London. Paris similarly built a new metro line (14), extended it a lot, is a building a whole bunch of new metro lines ( Grand Paris Express) to better serve the suburbs, and is improving signaling to make trains more frequent. And of course lots of alternative infrastructure like proper biking lanes.

The biggest issue for which there isn't yet a good solution is air quality in old tunnels, but masks probably help with that.

Prague mass transit is fairly good even at the rush hour, unless there are some significant works on the tracks etc.

You will have to stand during the rush hour, but the subway trains aren't hopelessly overflowing.

But as a staunch introvert with a fresh Garmin watch, I try to walk as much as possible anyway. Those 10 000 steps do not make themselves.

Perhaps the solution for those stuck in the Tube at rush hour is to petition their employer to vary the hours so that the peak is wider an not so high.

Well, "perfection" (or what most people consider perfection) is relative...

Breathing isn’t dangerous. I’d rather not rehash the statistics on covid, but if you’re not quite old you’re going to be fine.

I’d rather not rehash the statistics on the air on the tube in London, but I will because it is disgusting. While not breathing is extremely dangerous [no citation needed] the air quality on the deep lines in particular is extremely bad [1].

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6f381ad4-fef7-11e9-be59-e49b2a136...

I would have thought that the air system in Crossrail would be far more capable, they’re aware of the issue, and have a clean slate to build on.

The platforms have doors, ostensibly this allows trains to enter stations faster, but also would keep out break dust from getting onto the platforms, as well as reducing suicides (a grim feature of commuting in the run up to Christmas)

The crossrail train seats are damn hard on the bum. There is a trend with public transport upholstery to go from the spring-bedded seats of olde to a mere veneer of fabric atop some plastic. Why bother with any fabric?

I suspect the new seating is cheaper, lighter and easier to maintain, and they can cram more of them in.

I think it’s better than the Bakerloo (I think?) line where it’s an air cushion. If someone heavy sits down next to you a bit quickly, you risk being launched into the aisle.

The article doesn't bother to go deeper into this claim, but maybe someone here can explain what "the line will have a solid claim to be the first “fully digital” railway, at least at its scale, in the world" actually means? There are various more or less advanced automatic electronic train control systems around (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System), but is it that important whether the technology is analog or digital?

Are the white panels removable? As that looks like hell to clean.

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