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Crossrail opening delayed (opening date not yet known)

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ijmad

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Farringdon station appears no less a building site than it was before, despite still seeing work going on. I appreciate most of what's underneath is done but it's pretty clear the stations weren't as 'nearly finished' as was made out either. I haven't heard anything myself and I'd like to know how much substance there is to the 'it's less like 9 months, more like 18' suggestion posted here a while back. Having recently had to make trips from both Paddington and Tottenham Court Road back home, it really is a project that directly affects me from both a journey time and convenience factor, quite considerably.

The oversite development at Farringdon (and many of the other stations) was never supposed to be complete by the time the railway opened. There is going to be two more years of work on the office towers over the top. Farringdon Crossrail station itself is largely finished - the part causing confusion perhaps is that there won't be an entrance from the area that is currently a building site, you will enter it from the existing NR ticket hall where the hoardings are currently up, and go down angled escalators to the station below.
 
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Yeah, I don't get the impression that there's much useful information about the status to be gained from looking at the exterior of the stations, which doesn't tell us much about the actual operational status of the railway itself.

On the bailout, this still means that despite the overruns, Crossrail will be delivered within the original budget of £15.9bn, which was established before the ~£1bn cut in the 2010 spending review. I think this goes to show that it can be ineffective to try and trim project budgets in this way – in the end, the budget has ended up the same, but the railway will be delivered two years later than it otherwise could have been.
 

Taunton

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On the bailout, this still means that despite the overruns, Crossrail will be delivered within the original budget of £15.9bn, which was established before the ~£1bn cut in the 2010 spending review. I think this goes to show that it can be ineffective to try and trim project budgets in this way – in the end, the budget has ended up the same, but the railway will be delivered two years later than it otherwise could have been.
That's not really so; the 2010 budget cut eliminated a number of aspects of the project, generally those which were peripheral. The (unexplained so far) additional expenditure now is for delivering the core works which remained.

I want to see what the sudden extra expenditure is for. The contractors on the project have the progress they have made against the programme assessed every month, and are paid every month for that. By now they should have been all complete and their money pretty much all paid. If any construction work is late being delivered then the funds allocated for it won't have been paid out yet.
 
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That's not really so; the 2010 budget cut eliminated a number of aspects of the project, generally those which were peripheral.

Oh sure, I totally accept the the project is now "over budget" in the sense that it has obviously not met the revised spending plans. I meant that more generally the scale of the cost overruns (something like 6% before inflation) aren't wildly out of line with what the project was expected to run to in the first place – though of course any overspend is a bad outcome.

But I thought that the savings were primarily from extending the tunnelling program by a year? I didn't really follow it closely at the time though, so I could be totally wrong on that.

It would be interesting to know what the additional costs are though, I agree.
 

hwl

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That's not really so; the 2010 budget cut eliminated a number of aspects of the project, generally those which were peripheral. The (unexplained so far) additional expenditure now is for delivering the core works which remained.

I want to see what the sudden extra expenditure is for. The contractors on the project have the progress they have made against the programme assessed every month, and are paid every month for that. By now they should have been all complete and their money pretty much all paid. If any construction work is late being delivered then the funds allocated for it won't have been paid out yet.
Circa half of the 2011 budget reduction was due to higher cost certainties allowing price reduction rather than scope reduction...

Most of the extra for Bond Street and Whitechapel problems will have been paid out leaving nothing for late 2018 and 2019 works, e.g. robbing Peter to pay Paul.
 

DynamicSpirit

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On the bailout, this still means that despite the overruns, Crossrail will be delivered within the original budget of £15.9bn, which was established before the ~£1bn cut in the 2010 spending review. I think this goes to show that it can be ineffective to try and trim project budgets in this way – in the end, the budget has ended up the same, but the railway will be delivered two years later than it otherwise could have been.

I don't think that logic holds, because the current cost (and time) overruns are - so far as we can tell - not related to the original cost cutting. The original cost cutting changed some of the design - for example, at Abbey Wood, they revised the plans so that Crossrail would emerge from the tunnels on the North side of the SouthEastern railway (originally the Crossrail tracks were going to be between the two SouthEastern tracks) and I believe simplified the Abbey Wood station design. And I as matthewmacleod mentions, they also extended construction time by a year to cut costs. Presumably, if they hadn't made those savings, the things that have gone wrong and put Crossrail back would probably still have gone wrong, and Crossrail would have ended up still going over its (bigger) budget.
 

plcd1

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Don't have a good gut feel about this at all - can't see much progress on the stations I go through, still look extremely unfinished. Think we could be looking at a fairly massive cost overrun here...

There was an emergency TfL Finance Committee meeting on 3 December which discussed Crossrail. No real detail as the numbers are all in part 2 of the papers which is the commercially confidential / "exclude the media & public" part of the meeting. The next planned Finance Committee is 13th December and it is noteworthy that the new TfL Business Plan which should be on the agenda is not yet published in the meeting papers. Something tells me the numbers might be getting reworked.

I can't recall where I read it but it seems testing in the core tunnels is now delayed to January 2019 so that's 3-4 months delay over previous statements about testing resuming in October 2018. There are still statements being made that installation works in the tunnels are incomplete which I find a little startling but I don't know what systems are proving problematic. The stations, except Bond St, are supposed to be "complete" by end 2018 so that may be what is draining the cash reserves as contractors dash to meet whatever their (revised) targets are.

Crossrail was supposed to be "fully funded" to end March 2019 with the use of loan from Government to the Greater London Authority (passed through to TfL). What's unclear is whether the extra funding in the FT article takes us beyond March 2019 into the new financial year for TfL or if it is to fill an ever deepening hole this financial year.
 

mrmartin

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It's a shame that there has been such a lack of transparency since the delay was announced, for such an enormous project. While I get they want to manage expectations, there has basically been 0 communication from the project since then.
 

JN114

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It's a shame that there has been such a lack of transparency since the delay was announced, for such an enormous project. While I get they want to manage expectations, there has basically been 0 communication from the project since then.

What’s there to communicate?
 

reddragon

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It's a shame that there has been such a lack of transparency since the delay was announced, for such an enormous project. While I get they want to manage expectations, there has basically been 0 communication from the project since then.

"Perhaps" they are assessing just how bad things are before they go public and maybe realisation of how bad it is could be is the reason for the recent top level departure? Now with the government trying to choose if they was chocolate digestive brexits or rich tea brexits with their cuppa, what a time to bury bad news!!!

You need to realise that the Engineers on the Crossrail stations are now getting jobs on HS2 stations; that some M&E work requires going back to step 1 and starting again as what was installed was not fit for purpose!
 

adrock1976

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What's it called? It's called Cumbernauld
Regarding the phrase "the new railway will be known as the Elizabeth Line", how did that come about?

Assuming it is a reference to the present monarch and not the actress Elizabeth Hurley, it does seem strange that it is named after somebody and something that is undemocratic, unelected, and unaccountable to the general public. London already has the Jubilee Line on the Underground, and the Jubilee Walkway.
 

JN114

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Regarding the phrase "the new railway will be known as the Elizabeth Line", how did that come about?

Assuming it is a reference to the present monarch and not the actress Elizabeth Hurley, it does seem strange that it is named after somebody and something that is undemocratic, unelected, and unaccountable to the general public. London already has the Jubilee Line on the Underground, and the Jubilee Walkway.

It was a TfL decision a number of years ago. No different to the former Olympic Park being named for the incumbent Monarch; or the plethora of other public “things” named after members and former members of the Royal Family:-

Victoria Line
Royal Albert Hall
King George V DLR station
 

FOH

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Went through Whitechapel today for the first time in a while. The Overground to Underground passageways have been mostly retiled and there is just the hint of structures getting finished behind the hoarding. It’s still a long way to go but finally passengers are getting glimpses of progress towards the finish line
 

87015

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Went through Whitechapel today for the first time in a while. The Overground to Underground passageways have been mostly retiled and there is just the hint of structures getting finished behind the hoarding. It’s still a long way to go but finally passengers are getting glimpses of progress towards the finish line
Finally in a state for night overground services to call too, starts 14th.
 

adrock1976

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What's it called? It's called Cumbernauld
It was a TfL decision a number of years ago. No different to the former Olympic Park being named for the incumbent Monarch; or the plethora of other public “things” named after members and former members of the Royal Family:-

Victoria Line
Royal Albert Hall
King George V DLR station

Many thanks for clarifying that it was a TfL decision.
 

plcd1

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Regarding the phrase "the new railway will be known as the Elizabeth Line", how did that come about?

Assuming it is a reference to the present monarch and not the actress Elizabeth Hurley, it does seem strange that it is named after somebody and something that is undemocratic, unelected, and unaccountable to the general public. London already has the Jubilee Line on the Underground, and the Jubilee Walkway.

It was a decision by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor and Chair of TfL. Personally I think it's ludicrous and unnecessary but there you go.
 
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plcd1

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It's a shame that there has been such a lack of transparency since the delay was announced, for such an enormous project. While I get they want to manage expectations, there has basically been 0 communication from the project since then.

I expect that nothing will emerge until the "investigations" by expensive consultants are concluded and the politicians decide what to do with the recommendations. Politicians will always want "cover" from other people and will want to look as if they are doing something by agreeing to implement whatever the recommendations are (assuming Khan and Grayling can agree what they want to do). Only then will there be any real public discussion as to what is being done to finish the project and to give some outline to the programme. I'd expect a huge amount of work is being done to try to understand how they get the trains and signalling working. The next element is how and when the NR branches get linked into the core and how that relates to Gtr Anglia / GWR franchise / timetable obligations. The Liv St mainline platform works will also be a factor too re timing. I'm assuming the core stations finish by next Spring. The stn works on the GEML and GWML will continue to drag on and I suspect some won't be fully finished before trains are linked into the core. There appears to be no urgency at all to get those works concluded.

My hunch is that TfL want the NR branches linked in ASAP because it brings in money. When and how it is technically and operationally feasible is a key issue that will also drive costs and revenues.

The Mayor, the Commissioner and Sir Terry Morgan are being dragged in front of the London Assembly Transport Cttee on 21 December. I suspect there will be a flurry of activity just in advance of that meeting to get info into the public domain and to reduce the ability for "point scoring" by the Committee.
 

PR1Berske

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Diamond Geezer muses on the trainers launched this weekend, the open secret Crossrail launchday


Absurdly, TfL's perfect silence was broken two weeks ago by a most unusual culprit - a campaign to sell trainers. As part of a commercial tie-up between TfL and Adidas, a collection of tube-inspired training shoes is being launched this weekend, including one shoe for every tube line and a separate foursome for Crossrail.
Link: http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/12/st-crossrails-eve.html?m=1
 

ijmad

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Useful article, though I gather quite a lot of the station work is more complete underneath than the exteriors suggest.

Indeed, a lot of the stations are designed with a basic entrance with a giant slab on top (so the oversite development can be done later) or something like Farringdon or Liverpool Street where the station box is off to one side of the actual entrance, again so that the oversite building can be done later. However plenty of examples of 'direct' entrances to station boxes not finished yet, as per the article Paddington, Whitechapel, Bond Street. I just hope they keep up the pace of work and try to finish them as soon as they can, rather than make the classic mistake of taking their feet off the gas pedals, and replanning work with the Autumn launch in mind and then missing that schedule as well....
 

Meerkat

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Is the comment that the private sector is much better (as Canary Wharf is finished) fair, or was that just far easier than the other stations?
 

samuelmorris

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It didn't look any easier to me given the work involved in draining the dock, but I imagine the private component of the building may have helped things along a little.
 

Ianno87

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It didn't look any easier to me given the work involved in draining the dock, but I imagine the private component of the building may have helped things along a little.

It was pretty much the very first bit of construction to start...and I imagine there was a clause in the contract to make the commercial space available by such and such a date to release the funding without penalties.
 

ijmad

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Is the comment that the private sector is much better (as Canary Wharf is finished) fair, or was that just far easier than the other stations?

Woolwich seems nowhere near finished and that's also a private sector job, right?
 

sprunt

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Regarding the phrase "the new railway will be known as the Elizabeth Line", how did that come about?

Assuming it is a reference to the present monarch and not the actress Elizabeth Hurley, it does seem strange that it is named after somebody and something that is undemocratic, unelected, and unaccountable to the general public. London already has the Jubilee Line on the Underground, and the Jubilee Walkway.

And the Elizabeth Tower in the Houses of Parliament, and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and the Queen's Terminal at Heathrow. A visitor from North Korea would be taken aback by the cult of personality we've got going on around her.
 

Ianno87

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And the Elizabeth Tower in the Houses of Parliament, and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and the Queen's Terminal at Heathrow. A visitor from North Korea would be taken aback by the cult of personality we've got going on around her.

Well, she is the longest reigning Monarch ever for over 65 years...

Naming four things after her as you've identified is hardly decadence (over 15 years per thing)
 
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