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They're putting a brave face on it but pre-lockdowns it was anticipated to ramp up fairly quickly to 16-17 million passengers per month, so only managing 10 is indicative of how much mandatory work from home and the culture change that followed has crushed transport demand in London.

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While the plural of anecdote is not data, I've been pleasantly surprised at how busy the service is. Coming home at rush-hour I've had to stand for several stops.

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.

That's probably the most positive way to regard not being able to get a seat I've heard of.

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?

The central core stations are capable of handling longer trains, I believe an additional two carriages. But the above ground stations may not be capable of receiving those carriages, leading to a few where the carriage doors will not open.

If you're enjoying waiting for a train now, you should've started waiting in 2017 when it was due to open :-)

How much of that is due to the reduced capacity and services they're running at this point though? Adding on Sundays and doubling the trains per hour would certainly increase the passenger figures.

It's not just that. How much is simply people transferring away from alternative buses and tube trains? These other services still need to be paid for so if we have the same overall number of passengers but more infrastructure to support, it's even more reason for TfL to go to the Government (or London Assembly) with the begging bowl.

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.

In fairness at the time Crossrail was commissioned and built the demand was huge. London transport was overflowing. They couldn't have predicted that governments would suddenly mandate work from home and this would permanently weaken office culture, such that even the government itself couldn't get worsers back to commuting. I'm at libertarian as they come but you can't fault the planners for not seeing that one coming.

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.

Hence why cost of travelling is going up next year!

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