This is a vastly expensive project -- roughly £16 billion (€19 billion/US$24.5 billion) -- designed to provide capacity for 24 full-length trains every hour in both directions, increasing London's public transport capacity by 10% at an expensive stroke.
Crossrail will come from Heathrow and Maidenhead (or, more likely, Reading) in the west via Paddington and Farringdon (where it connects to the north-south Thameslink) to Liverpool Street and then Shenfield/Abbey Wood. 118km in length, more than 20 of which is in full-sized railway tunnels bored under central London.
On the way it passes through Whitechapel, and the reconstruction of Whitechapel station to accommodate Crossrail is shown in these images.
Whitechapel station already serves Underground and Overground lines: Crossrail will introduce a whole order of magnitude of connectivity (and complexity).
It's scheduled to open in 2017, financial crises permitting, and, although I expect to see a bit of trimming of some of the more extravagant elements in the scheme, it still promises to be something worth looking out for.
1 comment:
Is there any correlation between liking railways and being gay?
They used to clergymen and railways, but now it seems many in holy orders are turning out to be gay and so are politicians too.
Only last week, another Tory Minister - it seems all the rage now that we have a PM and his Deputy who are both gay friendly, as it were.
Just wondered. It is a heck of a lot of money at a time of, apparent, belt tightening.
Post a Comment