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Sorry, London: Crossrail won’t open this year after all

James Manning
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James Manning
Content Director, EMEA
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Hey, everyone: remember how excited you were about 2018? The year that Oxford Street would finally be pedestrianised and Crossrail, aka the brand spanking new Elizabeth line, would whizz you across London in a matter of mere seconds in bougie, air-conditioned, wi-fi-enabled trains?

Well, first we found out that Oxford Street is going to stay as it is – a fume-choked, bus-clogged, decidedly unpedestrianised artery of death and pestilence – for the foreseeable future. And now the opening of Crossrail has been put back too. Why can’t we just have nice things?

Crossrail announced this morning that the epic engineering project wouldn’t open in December as planned. Instead, we’ll have to wait until autumn 2019 to whoosh around town on the new purple line. Why? The builders need more time for ‘final infrastructure and extensive testing’ to make the line ‘safe and reliable’. Which, sure, sounds like a good idea – and after nine years of construction, what’s another nine months? But considering it’s already had a budget increase this summer, let’s just hope Lizzie is worth the wait.

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