Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

After over a decade Crossrail has finally opened: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-e...ondon-61507125

Rode it this morning. Really modern stations and trains. Connects together some parts of London, like Canary Wharf, that were not that well connected really well.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Hurray for London. The residents of Leeds and Manchester are really happy for you and your new trains.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

The people of this great northern city duly doff their caps and gasp at the latest technological marvel to be unveiled in our great capital. I’m truly chuffed that Londoners can now traverse their city 10 minutes quicker, or get to Canary Wharf without changing at Mornington Crescent.

It’s just a pity it went a teensy wee say bit over-budget isn’t it. I’m pretty sure we could have replaced every single ferry serving the Western Isles twice over with that money.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Not if wee nippy got involved in it :spin:

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Note ‘could have,’ as in ‘theoretically possible’ :D

In reality, the SNP would have spent the money propping up any engineering firm with a Nat-voting boss, thrown several millions at them, then when they failed to deliver, throw some more millions at them and nationalise the mess into the bargain.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

I take it as a sign that we can do infrastructure projects in this country - albeit expensive and late - and that the Government should be doing more of it instead of pandering to NIMBYism and treating the U.K as a project of managed decline.

Besides Crossrail is one of the more complicated projects that could be taken on. Tunnelling through an already widely developed London isn't cheap or easy. Landmarks and homes had to come down.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Nah, these things only happen in London mate.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Then make the politicians accountable for it. What happened to the Northern Powerhouse? Why is HS2 being scaled back?

There is too much pandering to NIMBYs in this country and not enough ambition.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

It's an unfortunate fact about large transport infrastructure that it tends to be over budget and over time. Not inevitable but Berlin Airport (9 year-delay), Edinburgh trams and HS2 suggest it's more common than not.

---------- Post added at 18:56 ---------- Previous post was at 18:43 ----------

We would all be enjoying cheaper energy bills except that our recent governments have pandered to NIMBYs and effectively banned onshore wind power, the cheapest form of electricity.

Northern Powerhouse has been defunded by the government; presumably because there's insufficient votes for them in it.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

HS2 is coming, and it’s a lot quicker than the London Underground!

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Not anywhere near here it's not.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Not much good if the staff are on strike. Still I'm sure it'll look lovely.
https://news.sky.com/story/national-...ction-12620515

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

WOW! So, you expect a totally new service to use old trains and stations.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

I didn't expect it because I knew already but it's not uncommon for 'new' services on TFL to use existing stations or already used trains. When TFL took over the overground sections it used a lot of the same stations, the Highbury and Islington to Rotherhithe overground used existing track, when TFL took over Greater Anglia lines we got the old trains and then eventually recycled Overground Trains some years later.

The Elizabeth Line is also doing some of this. Today’s the day the totally new core London route opened but between Stratford and Shenfield it's using an existing, but rebranded, line.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

That’s what passes for “new” up north. :D

Hand me down trains from TOCs in the south and one new station a decade.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

We may see fancy new trains up here in say 35 years. We've only just got rid of pacer trains because the London centric elite couldn't give a toss about the north - never have and never will. If only Yorkshire got nearer £1500 per person for public transport like London but no we get a measly £500 - interesting stats here. That's what London think is leveling up an that's why it's grim up north!!

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Question: Do you Yorkshiremen still squeak when you walk?

Asking for a Lancashire man. :D:rolleyes::D

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

That would be telling ;) Truth be known I'm actually Birkenhead born and bred :shocked:.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

:Yikes:

So was the family business Lever’s, Laird’s, or both? :D

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

There's tons of new trains up North, from the LNER Azumas on the East Coast Main line, the new sleek trains on the Transpennine Express, the new fleet under test for Merseyrail and doubtless many, many, more.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Levers on my dad's and Laird's and Littlewoods on my mums.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Indeed. And Merseytravel (the strategic transport authority for the Liverpool city region formerly known as Merseyside) had to fund the purchase of the new class 777s because, had they left it to the usual process there was a material risk of the units, if owned by one of the leasing companies, being contracted to Merseyrail for a limited period and then getting redeployed somewhere more lucrative. Which, as it happens, is exactly what happened with the class 507s these new trains are replacing. They were ordered for Merseyrail but then deployed in London for services out of Waterloo, only arriving in Merseyside several years later.

There are new trains appearing on northern and transpennine routes (I’m not giving you Azuma, they serve the East Coast main line into London). However this purchase programme has lagged the southeast of England by decades. Some southeastern lines are on their second generation of new rolling stock since privatisation while lines in the north of England have only just got rid of the dreaded Pacer - the ******* child of a Leyland bus and a freight wagon (yes, really) that was meant to be a 1980s stop-gap but instead hung around like the friend of a friend of a friend hours after the party was over. The state of rolling stock in some parts of the northern network was threatening to make the service unviable and the sign-off on new hardware here could no longer be avoided.

If we sound ungrateful, it’s because we’re still getting far less than what we need just to keep pace with economic growth in the south, let alone catch up.

And, before we get away from ourselves, this isn’t a Tory problem. Crossrail was conceived under a Labour government and a Labour(ish) London mayor.

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My mum probably looked after your dad’s pay packet :D

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Crossrail isn't the problem. The problem is the lack of equivalent ambition elsewhere which is a Labour issue of 97-2010 but also now a Tory one of 2010-2022. They've been in charge for 12 years now.

Crossrail may have come in late and over budget but it's built. It's a rare example of a grand infrastructure project actually completing its initial vision. An East-West Railway that tunnels below central London with several stations redeveloped in some of the most densely crowded areas of London.

Everything else in this country seems to get stuck in public consultation hell before being abandoned or dramatically scaled back.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

The Liverpool City Region financed them this way because it was cheaper. Governments being able to borrow more cheaply than the private sector and no need to make a juicy margin either. They are a dedicated fleet for the region so can't easily be used outside it regardless of ownership.

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HS2 is still a huge and ambitious project, though, even if it were to just go to Birmingham.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

If HS2 ever makes it to Leeds, I’ll be long dead by the time it does. The East Coast mainline is plenty fast enough. I can get to Kings Cross in 2hrs non-stop, and 2.15 with limited stops.

I’ve no desire to get to London any quicker.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

As you say, current lines are pretty good - around two hours to Manchester or Leeds and the trains are pretty comfortable too.

HS2 is a poor choice of brand, its need was really all about extra capacity and not so much speed, though the two are of course related.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Trouble is NS is set on going it alone, so could Scotland actually afford this with its own money.


I would say no way.


Perhaps if she accepted her countrymen want a United Kingdom and not wasted money seeking yet another one in a lifetime vote, the money could have been spent on transport.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

On the contrary - their tailoring to the Merseyrail network is a direct result of their ownership by Merseytravel. It is unlikely they would have been built in a way that more or less prevents them ever being used anywhere else had the usual financing and leasing from one of the main RoSCos been used.

Buying outright is obviously cheaper than leasing in the long run but comes with its own complications, like needing a lot more money up front. Some difficult discussions have been held in Liverpool in recent years, not least of which was tackling a pretty militant local branch of the RMT, which didn’t want to lose control of opening and closing the train doors (a surprising feature of the 507s and 508s in use on Merseyside is that the passenger door controls are blanked off - they are all opened and closed by the on-board guard at every station). Merseytravel insisted at the outset that if it was to find the new trains the wage bill needed to come down, in part by ending the antiquated practice of having a guard on every train.

There are sources directly confirming concerns from within Merseytravel about RoSCo-owned trains eventually being leased elsewhere as one of the motives for direct ownership. When I have time I’ll dig one out.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

The question for London's transport network now is whether Crossrail 2 will happen.

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There have always been ideas for Manchester to have some sort of underground network - Picc-Vic was the closest to actually happening which would have provided on underground link between the city's two main railway stations and would have had several stations between the two. For the most part this has now been catered for by the tram network but the notion of some sort of city centre underground network in Manchester has never fully gone away.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Not in the foreseeable future but you can never say never . For now, even the Bakerloo line extension us not proceeding.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

That’s not really an equivalent idea to the London Underground, or TfL as a whole. London is one of the principal cities of the world. There are few places anywhere that compare and none of them are in the UK.*

“Levelling up” in this context has to mean availability of high-speed transit between Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, so the three of them together can begin to benefit from the same sort of complex connections London has.

* That’s not a homage to the place by the way - simply an observation of its size and complexity in relation to other British cities. And its status as the capital didn’t even make this state of affairs inevitable. It is decades of myopic government investment strategy that kept throwing money into a feedback loop in which the infrastructure projects most likely to boost the economy attracted more and more cash at the expense of everywhere else. That, ultimately, is how we have come to spend an utterly absurd amount of money on Crossrail while claiming it’s too costly to develop rapid transit in the north of England.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Great news on the Elizabeth Line. Looks like a success.








Complete waste of time and needs a total re-think.
A journey to London would only be ten minutes faster for me.


Ten minutes!

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

And the bias, usually against northern English towns continues. A modest proposal to restore a short stretch of track and build a new station in deprived Skelmersdale (population 40,000) in Lancashire has been rejected.

As the local MP noted "During the 2019 election, the Tories repeatedly used Skelmersdale Rail as an example of how they will be ‘levelling up’ rail transport. Not just locally, but even on their national campaign website! To now completely turn their backs on Skelmersdale residents, is a cruel joke, a betrayal."
https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashi...ected-24434213
https://www.rosiecooper.net/2022/07/...ne-says-rosie/

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

It's a really nice line as well. If you compare it to the Jubliee Line which was the newest tube line prior to this it's amazing the leap forward 30 years makes in the context of a 160-year-old railway network.


I think it's better to think of it as additional capacity that is also high speed. There are bigger gains as well. Manchester to London is an hour which, each way, is a big difference that mades day trips between the cities easier for pleasure and business. If the original ambition was maintained then Scotland to London would see huge differences.

I think when we build new intercity railways they should be high-speed by default even when the intention is simply to add capacity and new routes to the network.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

That’s slightly more complicated than the local council and the local Labour MP are (unsurprisingly) making it out to be.

Skelmersdale isn’t on the line between Kirkby and Wigan. The branch line that served it closed to passengers in the 1950s, before the new town grew, and the track bed is now partially built on. For a branch terminating at Skelmersdale to be viable, Merseytravel, which operates most of the line towards Liverpool, has made it clear that its pre-existing plan to extend its current terminus from Kirkby to Headbolt Lane (closer to Skem) has to be in place first. They’re working on it but it’s a little way off yet - partly because any future extensions of the Merseyrail network are dependent on the outcome of battery-electric trials conducted on its new rolling stock fleet.

El Gov is actually right to propose improved bus links to existing stations at this point. Given time, Merseyrail is likely to demonstrate that its new trains can run on battery power from the end of the third-rail electrified track at Kirkby, all the way to Wigan Wallgate. That will justify the case they want to make to complete the Headbolt Lane project (which I understand has track alignment for extension to Skem built in), and eventually create new termini at both Wigan and Skem. Merseytravel is a forward thinking and ambitious transport authority. If they want to do this - and it seems they do - then they will. I wouldn’t bet against them getting money out of central government to assist, when they are actually in a position to build it. Which as of right now, they aren’t.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

You mean 43 years. The Jubilee line opened in 1979. Perhaps it was that it was proposed in 1949 (30 years earlier) that has you confused. Not as the Jubilee line of course but he same route.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Damien was probably thinking of the Jubilee Line Extension…

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Actually, I was thinking of 1979 but was thinking of when Crossrail was first given the go-ahead back in 2008. So cheating a bit. :D

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Possibly but unlike you I am not a mind reader.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

I knew you were going to say that…

;)

(Whereas in reality, I was hypothesising from his post and the fact that the JLE was initiated at around the time he stated, which is where the "probably" came into play (and my hypothesis was faulty)).

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

It's the same issue though. Sections of that extension are loud and shaky. The train isn't smooth and there are horrible screeching sounds. The Elizabeth line is just quiet and smooth.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Screeching is caused by wheels being forced around tight curves, which themselves were likely forced on the track design by the required route and pre-existing obstacles. IIRC the Lizzie Line runs deeper than most and is likely to have been designed to avoid tight curves.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Why have they decided not go ahead with this?

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It often is and the problem with a built-up trackbed often makes it almost impossible to reinstate former lines.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

The real scandal of the Beeching cuts isn’t just that lines were closed but that no provision was made to reverse closures in future. The Beeching Report was as complacent as it was short-sighted.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

One of the dafter things was making Milton Keynes a new town at the same time as lifting the rail connections to Oxford and Cambridge. Completely disconnected thinking. Same thing happened with Skelmersdale too. Siloed thinking.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

Manchester’s Metrolink has shown it can be possible in certain settings - parts of the network run on, or alongside, main roads while other parts re-use abandoned heavy rail routes. There is a long term plan on my local line to convert it from heavy rail to metro, because much of it was axed by Beeching and has since been built on. What remains barely avoided closure in the 1980s (freight usage saved it long enough for the local transport authority to get its act together) but despite the popularity of the line these days there’s simply no way to restore any more of it by traditional means. However, by converting the entire line to light rail, the lost sections of track bed can be bypassed by making use of some of the very wide urban main roads around here (many of which are so large because there was once a very extensive tram network).

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

I believe that some of the Tyne and Wear Metro runs on former heavy rail lines.

Re: Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) opens
 

It does, although the Tyne & Wear Metro looks more like a train than a tram, while the Manchester Metrolink looks more like a tram than a train. There’s also street running in Manchester, but AFAIK there isn’t in Tyne & Wear.