Elizabeth line
Based on Wikipedia: Elizabeth line
One in every seven train journeys taken in the United Kingdom now happens on a single railway line that didn't exist three years ago.
That's not a typo. The Elizabeth line, which opened in May 2022, has become so popular so quickly that it now carries more than 200 million trips annually. To put that in perspective, that's roughly equivalent to the entire population of Brazil hopping on and off trains running beneath central London every single year.
What Exactly Is the Elizabeth Line?
The Elizabeth line is London's attempt to solve a problem that has plagued the city for decades: how do you move people across a sprawling metropolis when your Victorian-era underground railway is bursting at the seams?
The answer, it turns out, is to build something entirely new that sits somewhere between a traditional underground metro and a mainline railway. Think of it as a hybrid. In the city center, it runs through brand-new tunnels, much like the Tube. But as it stretches east and west, it emerges onto existing railway tracks, reaching towns that most Londoners would never think of as part of the capital—places like Reading, a university city forty miles to the west, and Shenfield, a commuter town in Essex.
This hybrid approach mirrors systems that Europeans have been building for decades. The Réseau Express Régional (RER) in Paris works on the same principle, as do the S-Bahn networks in German-speaking cities like Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. The idea is simple but powerful: instead of forcing commuters to change from a suburban train to an underground train in the city center, why not run one train straight through?
A Royal Name for a Delayed Project
For most of its development, this railway went by the rather utilitarian name of Crossrail. That's what it was called when the British Parliament passed the Crossrail Act in 2008, authorizing the biggest construction project in Europe. That's what engineers called it when they began drilling tunnels in 2009. And that's what frustrated politicians kept calling it as the opening date slipped further and further into the future.
Originally, the plan was to open in 2018. Then 2019. Then the pandemic arrived, adding several more months to a project that was already years behind schedule. By the time trains finally started running in May 2022, the delay had become something of a national embarrassment—and also an opportunity.
Queen Elizabeth II happened to be celebrating her Platinum Jubilee that year, marking seventy years on the throne. Naming the new railway after her served a dual purpose: it honored a beloved monarch and, perhaps, helped Londoners forget just how long they had been waiting for their new trains.
The Queen herself attended the opening ceremony on May 17, 2022, despite not being originally scheduled to appear. She brought her youngest son, Prince Edward, and together they unveiled the commemorative plaque. Passenger services began exactly one week later.
The Geography of a Cross-City Railway
Understanding the Elizabeth line requires understanding its branches. Picture a tree lying on its side, with roots spreading east and branches reaching west.
In the east, two branches extend outward. One runs to Abbey Wood, a suburban neighborhood in southeast London that was chosen partly because extending the line further would have created conflicts with existing commuter railways. The other stretches northeast to Shenfield, a small town in Essex that marks the end of the Greater London commuter belt.
In the west, the line splits three ways. One branch runs to Reading, following the Great Western Main Line—the same historic route that Isambard Kingdom Brunel built in the 1830s. Another pair of branches serves Heathrow Airport, splitting between Terminal 4 and Terminal 5 to ensure that travelers can reach whichever corner of that sprawling airport they need.
The magic happens in the middle. Between Paddington station in the west and Whitechapel in the east, the line dives underground into brand-new tunnels. This central section, about ten miles long, is where the engineering gets interesting. The tunnels pass beneath some of the most densely built-up and historically significant land in Britain, threading between the foundations of centuries-old buildings and the tunnels of existing Underground lines.
Forty-One Stations, Ten of Them Brand New
The Elizabeth line serves forty-one stations in total. Ten of these were built from scratch, primarily in the central underground section. The remaining thirty-one already existed but required significant upgrades to handle the new trains and the flood of passengers they would bring.
Every single station offers step-free access from street level to the platform. This was a deliberate choice and, in a city where many Underground stations still lack elevators, a significant improvement. However, the implementation has drawn criticism. Thirteen stations—those in the central section and at Heathrow—offer level boarding, meaning there is no gap or step between the platform and the train floor. At the remaining stations, the platforms sit about 200 millimeters (roughly eight inches) lower than ideal, requiring some passengers to navigate a small step.
The Campaign for Level Boarding, an advocacy group, has called this arrangement short-sighted. They argue that building a brand-new railway with inconsistent accessibility standards means the system will require expensive retrofitting in the future—or will simply remain less accessible than it should be.
One station arrived fashionably late. Bond Street, in the heart of London's West End, needed additional finishing work before it could open. For five months, trains passed through without stopping, an embarrassing admission that even the underground stations weren't quite ready. It finally welcomed its first passengers on October 24, 2022.
The Trains Themselves
Every Elizabeth line train is a Class 345, a type of train built specifically for this railway. These are not small vehicles. Each train stretches 200 meters (about 660 feet) from end to end—roughly the length of two football fields—and can carry up to 1,500 passengers when fully loaded.
The trains were manufactured by Bombardier Transportation, a Canadian company that has since been acquired by the French firm Alstom. When Transport for London (TfL) put the contract out to tender in 2011, five major manufacturers expressed interest: Alstom, CAF (a Spanish company), Siemens Mobility, Hitachi Rail, and Bombardier. TfL explicitly asked bidders to propose trains based on existing, proven technology rather than experimental designs. They wanted reliability, not innovation.
Alstom withdrew early. Siemens pulled out in 2013, citing other commitments—they were in the middle of a £1.6 billion contract to supply trains for the Thameslink railway, another major London project. That left CAF, Hitachi, and Bombardier in the running. Bombardier won in February 2014 with a bid worth £1 billion for a thirty-two-year contract covering both the trains and their ongoing maintenance.
The trains feature air conditioning (a luxury on much of London's Underground), wide aisles, dedicated wheelchair spaces, and audio-visual announcements. They can reach speeds of 90 miles per hour on the faster sections of track outside central London, though they necessarily slow down in the tunnels.
Initially, 70 trains were ordered. But the line's unexpected popularity has led TfL to purchase more. In June 2024, Alstom received a £370 million contract to build an additional ten trains at its factory in Derby, bringing the fleet to 80.
Three Different Signaling Systems
Operating a railway that runs on both new tunnels and historic track requires some technological compromise. The Elizabeth line uses three completely different signaling systems depending on where a train happens to be.
In the central section and on the branch to Abbey Wood, trains use Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC), a modern system that allows trains to run close together safely by continuously tracking their exact positions. This is the same technology used on the most advanced metro systems worldwide.
On the Heathrow branch, trains use the European Train Control System (ETCS), a continent-wide standard that allows trains from different countries to operate seamlessly across borders. Britain adopted this system somewhat reluctantly, given its historical preference for doing things differently from the Continent, but ETCS is gradually spreading across the British rail network.
On the historic Great Western and Great Eastern Main Lines, the older Automatic Warning System (AWS) and Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) remain in use. These date back decades but continue to function reliably. There are plans to upgrade these sections to ETCS eventually, but railway modernization in Britain tends to move slowly.
Who Actually Runs the Trains?
The organizational structure behind the Elizabeth line is more complicated than it might first appear. Transport for London (TfL) owns the line and sets the fares, but it doesn't actually employ the drivers or station staff. Instead, it hires a private company to run day-to-day operations under what's called a concession.
This model differs from traditional British rail franchising, where private companies take significant financial risk if passenger numbers fall short. On the Elizabeth line, TfL absorbs 90 percent of any revenue shortfall, leaving the operator with only a small stake in the railway's commercial success. The operator's job is essentially to run the trains reliably and safely while following TfL's instructions.
The first operator was MTR Corporation, a Hong Kong-based company that has become one of the world's most respected railway operators. MTR began running services in 2015, initially under the temporary "TfL Rail" brand while the central tunnels were still under construction. When the full Elizabeth line opened in 2022, MTR continued at the controls.
Their contract expired in May 2025, however, and a new operator took over: GTS Rail Operations, a consortium comprising the British company Go-Ahead Group, Tokyo Metro (operator of much of Japan's capital's underground railway), and Sumitomo Corporation (a Japanese conglomerate with interests spanning from real estate to power plants). This international partnership reflects the increasingly global nature of urban rail operations—and perhaps a recognition that Tokyo, which moves more people by rail than any other city on earth, might have some useful expertise to offer.
The Cost of a City-Changing Railway
Building the Elizabeth line was not cheap. When financing was agreed in December 2008, the projected cost was £15.9 billion. The money came from several sources: TfL and the Department for Transport provided the bulk, with additional contributions from Network Rail (the organization that owns most of Britain's railway infrastructure), BAA (then the owner of Heathrow Airport), and the City of London Corporation.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) also played a role, lending up to £500 million to help finance the train fleet. This was one of the many British infrastructure projects that received European funding—a flow that has since ended following Brexit.
Final costs exceeded the initial projections, as major infrastructure projects almost invariably do. But the delays, while embarrassing, did not add as dramatically to the bill as skeptics had feared. The greater concern was opportunity cost: every year the railway sat unfinished was a year that commuters continued to cram onto overcrowded Tube trains and buses.
A Transformative Effect on London
The Elizabeth line's impact on how Londoners move around their city has been profound and immediate. Before the line opened, traveling from, say, Woolwich in southeast London to Paddington in the west required at least two changes—often involving crowded platforms at Oxford Circus or Bank, two of the Underground's most congested stations. Now it's a single uninterrupted journey.
This connectivity has begun reshaping London's economic geography. Areas that were previously considered remote from the city center—Abbey Wood, for instance, or parts of East London along the route—have seen increased development interest. Property prices near Elizabeth line stations rose faster than in surrounding areas even before the railway opened, as buyers anticipated the improved access.
The transformation is not complete. A major new station at Old Oak Common, in west London, is currently under construction. When it opens in the 2030s, it will provide an interchange with High Speed 2, a controversial new railway that will eventually connect London with Birmingham and cities further north. For passengers arriving from the Midlands or the North, this will provide direct access to the Elizabeth line without needing to navigate central London first.
Not Quite Part of the Underground
Despite appearances, the Elizabeth line is not technically part of the London Underground. TfL considers it a distinct service, more akin to London Overground (the network of orbital railways that circle the capital) than to the Tube lines that have crisscrossed beneath London since 1863.
This distinction matters for practical reasons. The Elizabeth line uses a different fare structure in some cases. TfL's Oyster card—the contactless payment system used by virtually everyone traveling in London—works on the line within the TfL fare zones, but not for journeys to Reading or other stations beyond the capital. Passengers traveling to or from Heathrow Airport pay a premium, continuing a policy inherited from the Heathrow Connect service that the Elizabeth line replaced.
The branding is also subtly different. While Underground lines use the famous roundel—a red circle with a blue bar through the middle—the Elizabeth line has its own purple variant. Unlike Underground roundels, the Elizabeth line version includes the word "line" as part of the design, a small but telling acknowledgment that this railway plays by slightly different rules.
What "Crossrail" Means Now
The name "Crossrail" persists, but its meaning has shifted. It no longer refers to the railway that passengers use. Instead, it's the name of the limited company, wholly owned by Transport for London, that managed the construction project. Think of it as the contractor who built the house rather than the family who lives in it.
And what of Crossrail 2? The idea of a second cross-London railway, this time running roughly north-south between Wimbledon and Hackney, has been discussed since the early 2000s. It was always intended as a companion to the east-west Crossrail project. But while the Elizabeth line finally opened after decades of planning and delays, Crossrail 2 remains stuck in the proposal stage, a reminder that building major infrastructure in London requires not just engineering skill but also sustained political will and, crucially, money.
For now, Londoners have their new railway—purple-branded, largely step-free, and carrying a seventh of all the nation's rail journeys. Whether they call it the Elizabeth line or, affectionately, the Lizzie line, they have embraced it with an enthusiasm that surprises even its planners. Two hundred million journeys a year, and counting.