Crossrail Project Update
crossrail.co.uk
crossrail.co.uk
Now it's down to two trains (both Elizabeth line, but have to change at Paddington). By autumn it will be a single train and the commute will be down to a bit less than 40 mins each way.
Of course, I mostly work at home now, so I hardly need to use it! Ah well, it is still good to have I guess.
For myself the Central Line is loud, noisy, very hot, crowded, the tracks are bad rocking wildly. I don't think we'll get back to days of standing on the platform waiting for several trains to pass by before being able to get on to the train.
Tube noise is deafening, I seem to be the only person sticking my fingers in my ears, a silent protest.
I'm still glad we have the Elizabeth line. I can get into central London much faster, even if it's not mostly for work. And the trains are nicer than the other tube lines. Because they're open inside rather than being separated by carriage you can just get on and then walk to find a seat if it's busier than normal.
Unfortunately, I live on the central line, and pre-covid, it used to take about 4-8 trains passing through the station before I would consider getting on.. to only be squeezed.
I do the same, at least in the loudest parts. Not as a protest but as a health measure, both mental and physical.
It's occasionally made me mix up Crossrail & HS2, because 'the London one' is 'the x line', obviously.
Or perhaps it's marketed/signed as 'Crossrail' far enough outside London that there aren't any other lines, and nobody there would really consider it an un underground line for their purposes?
Bond Street's odd at the moment, after months of closure to make the Northern line wheelchair accessible, there aren't any lifts that I can see. But perhaps it's just not finished - access to the Southbound platform is awkwardly via the North, and there's hoardings around (ongoing work on) the connection from there to the Central line.
It is very heartening to see wheel chair users in central London more and more.
Between Paddington and Heathrow the European Train Control System (ECTS); west of Heathrow and east of Stratford a legacy system is used; and the central section uses a modern signalling system from Siemens.
Seems like ETCS couldn’t do automated train operation (ATO) back when the tenders were going out, so they commissioned Siemens to deliver their proven Trainguard CBTC system for the core. Since then, systems like Thameslink have used ATO on top of ETCS Level 2, but that’s still a fixed block system so probably couldn’t do enough trains per hour for Crossrail. ETCS Level 3 can do moving-block, but I don’t think there are any ETCS Level 3 implementations anywhere in the world yet.
I believe the way that they operate is that the train is driven by the driver through the ETCS and older TPWS signalled areas, and then when it goes into the core the train switches over to automatic control.
I feel that somehow we hark back to the Victorian days where everything had to be epic but unlike the Victorian days, we are not making enormous profits by stealing resources from the empire that pay for the epic buildings.
In Japan, I think they have it right, basic concrete buildings designed for efficient boarding.
For instance, for people starting at the extreme West of the line, Reading, it does not make sense to take it to go to London. People still take the fast trains to Paddington and hop onto the Elisabeth Line there as needed.
The line provides extra capacity but not much else in those areas.
In addition, the trains are designed to be used as tubes and so are not comfortable for long journeys compared to the previous trains they replace.
I don't think that's a bad thing. Where I live, I often take the Richmond to Waterloo rail instead of the District Line if I'm going to central London because it takes half the time. But it's amazing to have a multitude of options for long and short trips. Now people as far out as Reading have multiple options as well.
> In addition, the trains are designed to be used as tubes and so are not comfortable for long journeys compared to the previous trains they replace
The new trains are kind of a hyrbid with a mix of tube-style seating and train-style seating. They are very large and spacious and very long, but definitely more tube oriented than the typical commuter train. I think they are pretty nice, but I guess it depends on how busy it is and if you are lucky enough to get a nice seat.
The Elizabeth Line is an interesting hyrbid Tube-Rail that covers a medium-length area. I think all your points are true, but I also think it's cool that they connected the whole line and didnt just build the new central section as a new stand-alone tube line. People across the line will benefit even if they don't ride the whole length of the line very often.
Anyway, no-one wants options for the sake of having options. They want fast, reliable, affordable transport, not options.
Train transport is getting ever more expensive, it's not getting faster, and it does not appear to be getting more reliable.
Now as a tube line in Central London the Elisabeth Line does bring faster commute.
Before that it's only people who commute locally between Reading-Maidenhead-Slough where driving is a competitive alternative so it's not too busy.
The Elizabeth Line does improve commute within London but in locations like Reading I think people would have preferred more and cheaper fast trains to Paddington as the Elizabeth Line makes no difference for commutes into London or even more local commutes.
I expect that hybrid working will continue indefinitely. But that's likely to mean more people wanting to travel on it for leisure. It's already become annoying that it isn't open on a Sunday yet.
But when the line goes through at Paddington and Stratford that is when it should be regarded as working fully. Once people can stay on the train, or just jaunt over a platform to switch to the Elizabeth line it should start to show its mettle. Also I believe they plan to double the through train capacity.
Also are there plans to add more carriages to the nine the trains already have?
Obviously, it might be amazing that the existing passengers get a faster and more pleasant journey with less changes but it would also have been nice for money to be spent outside of London in the other major cities which could have benefitted much more from much less investment.
Nonetheless, what's done is done. Investment in public transport makes no sense anymore. The country can't afford anything anyway now. Look at the graphs of public debt. Lockdowns and associated measures were as bad as ww2 for the public finances.
If you haven't seen the technical difficulties that crossrail has run in to then you haven't been paying attention. They've been talking for years about how complex it has been to integrate the 3 signalling systems in use at various points on the line, so I'm not surprised they want a human in the loop in case one of them gets a bit wonky.
It would be good to avoid these snippy comments. Obviously no one can pay attention to everything - we don't have much additional capacity over family and work commitments, so phrasing things as though people are to blame for not knowing enough about a London construction project is worse than unnecessary.
But given that premise, should we not first do away with snippy comments like "why don't they just [..], it's not that difficult"?
The main point of a train operator is to handle things that automated systems cannot. Things break. Humans need to make decisions fast and be onsite.
When you entire goal is to keep things moving and resolve issues as quickly as possible it rarely makes sense to take the local human out of the loop.
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-myth-...
From memory, one of the issues during the last few strikes was that TFL wanted to remove the conductor from some services, only having the driver who would then be responsible for safety. The unions strongly opposed it.
They really are there though, even though they might not be immediately obvious!
The thing is, this is a project which essentially ties together two existing regional railway lines through a new underground core. Those two systems have existing rail traffic on them and different signalling systems on each. It's already been a nightmare to implement three signalling systems and transitions between them – a project to provide fully automated operation on two other railways lines in addition to this would ramp up the complexity even further.
Fully automated lines are totally viable – the DLR system in London works in the way you suggest and has for some time. And I'd bet that if the Crossrail project had been a new and isolated line it probably would have been using full automatic train operation throughout. But it's a hybrid between a regional railway and a metro line – ATO is way harder.
At Paddington the driver gets off and the train goes into a siding, then comes back on the East bound platform.
Makes sense, either you have a different driver waiting to board the back of the train, or wait for the driver to walk the 250m of train to get to the other end.