A megalopolis of engineering: the verdict on London’s £18bn new Elizabeth line
The longest medieval cathedral in the world, Winchester, is 170 metres (558ft) from end to end. The new stations on the Elizabeth line are 240 metres (788ft) or more long, and sometimes nine or 10 storeys underground. And these are only the most visible manifestations of the vast volumes hollowed out of the London soil to achieve an underground railway bigger and faster than any before, of what was at one point the largest transport engineering project in Europe, decades and billions of pounds in the making, a system more technologically complex, says its chief executive, than any outside China.
Sometime soon – those in charge won’t be more specific than “the first half of 2022” – 10 of these stations on the central section of the line will open. Another, Bond Street, will open a little later. To visit them now and ride the distance-shrinking trains, as I did over the past three weeks, is eerie and impressive. It is an alternate universe of London transport, hitherto unseen. Everything – trains, signs, lights, doors, advertisements – is up and running. It’s just that there aren’t yet any passengers.
It is as if you took a traditional underground line and pressed a three-dimensional enlarge button. The trains will carry up to 1,500 passengers, which is nearly twice as many as, for example, the Piccadilly line, at rates (eventually) of up to 24 trains per hour. At Liverpool Street the platforms extend enough to reach what, in the old money of not-supersized tubes, is a wholly different station, Moorgate.
When the line is fully joined up and operational – in 2023, we’re told – its 73 miles (118km) of track, 26 miles (42km) of it in new tunnels, will run uninterrupted east-west, across the capital and beyond. It will go from
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