One of the joys of a long-running blog is that I can look back through the years to see when it was thought Crossrail would open.
In 2004 I wrote..."2012: Crossrail (optimistic view); 2013: Crossrail (pessimistic view)" (2012, ha!)
In 2006 I wrote... "Crossrail is coming. Very slowly, admittedly, but by 2013 it's hoped that rail travellers will be able to zoom underneath central London and out into the suburbs far faster than is possible today." (2013, ha!)
In 2007 I wrote... "If everybody in the UK contributed five pounds to the Crossrail project... we might just have ourselves a transport lifeline by 2015." (2015, ha!)
In 2009 I wrote... "Work on the grand east-west rail link finally kicked off yesterday, at Canary Wharf, when Boris and Gordon joined together for the first dig. There'll be a brand new station here by 2012, although there won't be any trains for another five years after that. (2017, ha!)
In 2011 I wrote... "Crossrail has been on the drawing board so long that some feared it might never be completed. The completion date keeps slipping back, once 2012, more recently 2017, and now 2018 if we're lucky." (2018, hmmm)
In 2014 I wrote... "Crossrail's coming in stages, with the first proper bit at the end of 2018, and the whole thing by 2019. Hopefully." (2018/2019, ooh)
July 2014 is significant because it's the first time the staged opening of the line was made explicit.
Dec 2018: Trains run through Central Section (Paddington - Abbey Wood) May 2019: Central Section connected to Stratford and Shenfield Dec 2019: Full service operating including Reading
Perhaps unwisely these deadlines remained the same for the next four years. In every announcement and press release the start date was always going to be December 2018, with full completion one year later, and nobody ever suggested nudging anything later.
In August 2018 TfL finally admitted it wasn't going to happen, with the opening of the first stage shunted back to 'autumn 2019'. Precisely who was stringing who along with over-optimistic weasel words still isn't entirely clear. (2019, sheesh!)
In December 2018 TfL came clean again, pushing the start date into 2020, but unable to give much more clarification than that. Construction work and signalling were much further behind than anyone had dared to admit, and didn't look like being sorted any time soon. (2020, meh!)
And yesterday we got the latest bad news, an actual definition of the delay, specifically "a six-month window for delivery of the central section with a midpoint at the end of 2020". Translating that out of projectspeak suggests an opening date somewhere between October 2020 and March 2021...but with Bond Street missing "because of design and delivery challenges". (2021, aaaagh!)
I thought it might be instructive to provide a visualisation of just how late Crossrail's going to be.
Aug 2018:First delay announced Sep 2018: Oct 2018: Nov 2018: Dec 2018:Original opening date(Paddington - Abbey Wood)Second delay announced Jan 2019: Feb 2019: Mar 2019: Apr 2019:Third delay announced ←[We Are Here] May 2019:Original opening date(Paddington - Shenfield) Jun 2019: Jul 2019: Aug 2019: Sep 2019: Oct 2019: Nov 2019: Dec 2019:Original completion date(through Paddington to Reading) Jan 2020: Feb 2020: Mar 2020: Apr 2020: May 2020: Mayoral election Jun 2020: Jul 2020: Aug 2020: Sep 2020: Oct 2020:Earliest opening date(Paddington - Abbey Wood, minus Bond Street) Nov 2020: Dec 2020:Two years late Jan 2021: Feb 2021: Mar 2021:'Latest' opening date(Paddington - Abbey Wood, minus Bond Street) Apr 2021: Queen Elizabeth's 95th birthday (fingers crossed)
None of that includes the key dates for the opening of Bond Street station, the connection to Shenfield and the final extension to Reading, which will commence "as soon as possible". And of course there's always the possibility of yet another delay in a grovelling press release yet to be written. Don't get your hopes up.
From 2012 to 2013 to 2015 to 2017 to 2018 to 2019 to 2020 to 2021, Crossrail's launch date has slipped depressingly and inexorably further into the future. For a megaproject once lauded as "on time and on budget" it's a chronic embarrassment, because it turns out building railways is difficult, writing software is hard and over-promising is really simple.
