As Crossrail celebrates a trio of significant milestones, Ike Ijeh takes a look at the current state of play with the biggest expansion to London’s public transport infrastructure since the Second World War
Over the past two months Crossrail has celebrated three significant milestones that together mark a huge step forward towards the completion of the massive £14.8bn railway project. Firstly, the underground railway tunnels that have bored their way 40m under central London for the past three years were completed. Secondly, the retail and public gardens section of Foster + Partners’ Canary Wharf Crossrail station were also opened to the public.
And in a final development that garnered by far the least publicity, but is arguably of the greatest operational significance, tube maps now indicate that Transport for London (TfL) has quietly assumed control of the former National Rail route between Liverpool Street station and Shenfield. This is in anticipation of these services eventually being provided exclusively by Crossrail, which in turn will be fully administered by TfL.
These three milestones essentially mean that Crossrail is still well on track to launch services in 2018, as planned. But even getting to the point