The opening of the Elizabeth line in central London will be further delayed to summer 2021, according to Crossrail’s latest official assessment, with full services across the route coming in mid-2022.
The forecast opening would be two and a half years beyond the original deadline, and another three to six months past the revised window set last year by the chief executive, Mark Wild.
However, they are more optimistic than the “planning assumptions” divulged by London’s transport commissioner, Mike Brown, this week, of an autumn 2021 opening.
Wild said Bond Street station, whose construction was lagging behind, could be operational when the Elizabeth line opens after all.
Crossrail said the forecast was based on progress with the software for its signalling and train systems. Intensive test-running of train services along the route will begin later this year.
Transport for London (TfL) operates services on existing railways in west London from Paddington and east from Liverpool Street, which will eventually join up as the full Elizabeth line.
Should the central section, tunnelled between Paddington and Abbey Wood, open in summer 2021, Crossrail anticipates full opening a year later.
Direct services from Heathrow and Reading in the west to Shenfield in the east will follow in mid-2022.
Wild said there were “no shortcuts” to building the railway. He said: “We continue to make good progress with the central section now reaching substantial completion and we are increasingly confident that Bond Street station will be ready to open with the rest of the railway.
“Our latest assessment is that Elizabeth line services through central London will commence in summer 2021 – but we are aiming to open the railway as soon as we can.
“The key focus for everyone on the Crossrail project is commencing intensive testing of the Elizabeth line as soon as we can in 2020, to enable passenger service as early as possible in 2021.”
All stations, bar Bond Street and Whitechapel, would be substantially complete by the end of March, Crossrail said, with the final two ready by the end of 2020. Intensive trials, with multiple trains simulating the actual planned service, should start this autumn.
Crossrail said the new timescale would not cause it to break the revised budget announced in November 2019, of just over £18bn.
Construction delays, design changes and problems with signalling systems and software have heaped costs on Europe’s largest infrastructure project, whose former bosses had repeatedly claimed it was meeting its £14.8bn budget and timetable until just months before its 2018 due date.
The problems have also been hugely costly to TfL in lost fare revenue. Its business plan, published last month, shows it expects income from passengers to be reduced by £1.3bn as a result of Crossrail’s delayed opening.
A spokesman for the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “As the mayor has made clear, it is vital that Crossrail’s new leadership team continues to be open and transparent with Londoners about the complex challenges that need to be addressed to enable the line to open.
“TfL and the Department for Transport, as joint sponsors, will continue to hold the Crossrail leadership to account to ensure it is doing everything it can to open Crossrail safely and as soon as possible, and to mitigate further cost pressures.”
