Crossrail - operating discussion and opening day 24th May

[185143]

I’m there on Saturday and will be using contactless. Is it permissible to whizz up and down for a while without tapping out until I’m ready to leave, albeit from a different station?

Provided you don't exceed the maximum journey time

 

[Horizon22]

How is the connection at Paddington between the trains arriving from the west and the trains departing east through the central section? Is it a long walk?

I was able to do it in less than 10 minutes today.

 

[djw]

I’m there on Saturday and will be using contactless. Is it permissible to whizz up and down for a while without tapping out until I’m ready to leave, albeit from a different station?

Some will suggest buying a paper Travelcard in these circumstances so that you do not fall foul of maximum journey times on Oyster/contactless. I suspect a paper Travelcard is not valid to/from Heathrow on the Elizabeth line, though I suspect you have limited interest in travelling on the services west of Paddington (as they have been running as TfL Rail for a while).

 

[swt_passenger]

Some will suggest buying a paper Travelcard in these circumstances so that you do not fall foul of maximum journey times on Oyster/contactless. I suspect a paper Travelcard is not valid to/from Heathrow on the Elizabeth line, though I suspect you have limited interest in travelling on the services west of Paddington (as they have been running as TfL Rail for a while).

A paper travelcard is valid at Heathrow on Elizabeth line. It was discussed only a couple of days ago, but IIRC it has been the case since TfL took over Heathrow Connect.

 

[dastocks]

The interchange at Farringdon is poor - it would have been nice to have a mezzanine under the Thameslink / LUL platforms but I suppose that there is simply not enough space. As it is you seem to be directed to go through two sets of barriers - presumably it will be like the old interchange between the sub-surface & tube lines at Kings X / St Pancras and the gates will return single use tickets. The alternative is to walk along the Northbound Thameslink platform. Overall though a big thumbs up from me.

I would hope for a decent interchange with Thameslink. For LUL services Liverpool St/Moorgate is probably a better place to change?

 

[Nottingham59]

The interchange at Farringdon is poor

That's not good to hear. Farringdon is destined to become a main interchange station for much of South East England.

 

[BahrainLad]

For Farringdon, there is a (badly signed) set of two lifts that take you straight from the west end of the EL at platform level right to the south end of the Southbound Thameslink platform. It’s a very quick interchange as I discovered this morning, much quicker than going all the way up and over through the ticket hall via escalator.

 

[andystock22]

Will Crossrail be able to stop at Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street & Whitechapel during the tube station staff strike?

I know Great Northern do not operate any trains between Moorgate & Finsbury Park on tube strike days & operate a heavily reduced service to Kings Cross.

 

[ijmad]

Not everyone who was with Geoff got on at Abbey Wood. After arriving with Geoff on SouthEastern and being directed to the queue outside, JenOnTheMove bailed out and got a PHV to Woolwich, joining the first train from Abbey Wood at Woolwich.

Same here. I got to Lewisham and was seeing so many tweets about the massive queues at Abbey Wood that I diverted up the DLR to Canary Wharf, which turned out to be a good idea given there was a train that came in to service at Custom House around 06:30.

A lot of entrances/exits seemed to be closed or one way this morning, despite the grand scale of things I suspect they were taking sensible precautions given the high interest levels. Still, I bet it was an interesting morning operationally going from 0 to 15,000 passengers an hour.

Well at 12 tph each way, that's 126,000 capacity in those three and a half hours. Meaning those trains would have been about 40% full. Does that sound about right?

Not everyone took a ride the whole length of the line (and some individuals would be recorded multiple times in that 65k if they were hopping in and out through fare gates) so it wouldn't be that loaded in practice. From what I saw some of the earlier trains were quite heavy with standing room only but I wasn't struggling to find seats by the end of my 'tour' at 09:00.

 

[Mojo]

Will Crossrail be able to stop at Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street & Whitechapel during the tube station staff strike?

I know Great Northern do not operate any trains between Moorgate & Finsbury Park on tube strike days & operate a heavily reduced service to Kings Cross.

It depends on whether sufficient staff are available on the day. The minimum number of staff at all the LU Crossrail stations are quite high purely because of the large size of all these stations. Since the abolishment of the Duty Station Manager grade there are also very few staff trained up to Supervisor level (at least one of whom must be on every sub surface station, at some locations a minimum of 2), aside from people who do this as their full time job.

 

[Lifelong]

That's not good to hear. Farringdon is destined to become a main interchange station for much of South East England.

I did this today and it seemed fine to me (from TL Northbound platform). Stay in back carriage on TL and then behind you is an exit to the EL (not the Way Out)...and then down the escalators. Maybe it's worse coming southbound TL but it was fine for me today

 

[GS250]

I took a ride on it today. All I can say is wow.... that's some infrastructure that's been put in place. A truly astonishing achievement..... late, over budget or not.

 

[Horizon22]

Will Crossrail be able to stop at Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street & Whitechapel during the tube station staff strike?

I know Great Northern do not operate any trains between Moorgate & Finsbury Park on tube strike days & operate a heavily reduced service to Kings Cross.

Potentially not - they run the station operating rooms which have key safety roles. But that will depend on whether people can fill in.

 

[xerosis]

There were decent-sized queues at the top of Liverpool st escalator down at 6.15ish this evening, albeit one escalator was being repaired so the escalators could well be quite busy once it's up and running.

 

[dk1]

Quick escalator ride for us today in our PNB at the Broadgate entrance outside Liverpool St.

 

[Horizon22]

There were decent-sized queues at the top of Liverpool st escalator down at 6.15ish this evening, albeit one escalator was being repaired so the escalators could well be quite busy once it's up and running.

Some large queues at Canary Wharf too and managed crowd control & access, but that was mainly due to severe delays on the Jubilee.

 

[swt_passenger]

Has anyone been through Tottenham Court Rd station? Just thinking that much of the main works above Crossrail platform level had been in use for some time, so it would be interesting to know if the higher levels of the station and ticket hall coped OK?

 

[High Dyke]

Managed to get on the first train from Paddington to Abbey Wood. There was indeed a decent amount of space towards the middle and end of the train. Some observations:

1. The design of the stations is wonderful. The stations are expansive and look very clean. Love the overall feel of them.
2. Canary Wharf at platform level is disappointing. I don't understand why the floor tiling is dark. I believe another member has said the same.
3. The Inspector Sands announcement was being played for a few minutes at Paddington after I returned from Abbey Wood, followed by the evacuation message. Staff performed well in directing passengers outside.
4. The reactions of some people to seeing an aforementioned YouTuber were ridiculous. Several people seemed to only be present to see said individual. I had someone on my train practically scream when seeing him at Custom House. Other passengers then ran towards him inside the train. It was pathetic.

Inspector Sands was busy at Paddington a couple of weeks ago. The inspector was in about 4 different parts of the station, all in the space of twenty minutes.

I'll probably leave it a while before having a ride on the service; then again I still need to do the Borders line to/from Edinburgh and also take a trip on the new Northern line extension.

OpenTrainTimes map here.

 

[ijmad]

Has anyone been through Tottenham Court Rd station? Just thinking that much of the main works above Crossrail platform level had been in use for some time, so it would be interesting to know if the higher levels of the station and ticket hall coped OK?

TCR was coping fine when I had a look around at about 0800, although some confusion evident among passengers that the signposted interchange from the Central Line takes you through the main ticket hall and you have to touch out and touch in again. Witnessed more than one person stuck behind the EL/Northern gates reluctant to touch out and instead asking staff where to go to find the Central Line.

 

[E16 Cyclist]

It's about 150 metres, in an almost straight line. Unfortunately neither station has a sign projecting out into the street so they are not actually visible from each other. I got thoroughly lost between the two!

Interchange at Abbey Wood is a lot easier.

You’re lucky i got throughly wet

 

[Brooke]

There were decent-sized queues at the top of Liverpool st escalator down at 6.15ish this evening, albeit one escalator was being repaired so the escalators could well be quite busy once it's up and running.

I took the line home today from Liv St to the Wharf. My reflections:
~ Very impressed it’s finally open, will revolutionise many journeys
~ Also impressed with the space and general ambience of the stations and trains
~ I assume the lack of internet will be sorted quite quickly
~ BUT: as you say already crowded and slow at 7pm this eve trying to get down at Liv St to the platforms - combination of only one down escalator, plus narrow-ish passageways

Overall my impression is there will quickly be capacity issues getting between the main concourses and the platforms due to this last point.

However well done to the team for their eventual delivery of a hugely complex project.

 

[xerosis]

I must admit I thought they would have done something to improve that area after the gateline, there are now 5 lines converging on one spot and there's no one way as everyone has to cross over everyone.

 

[ijmad]

Obligatory Geoff Marshall video is up. Mostly excitement/reaction etc, he's gonna do a proper look around each station in subsequent videos.

 

[johncrossley]

There was a sign outside Tottenham Court Road telling you to walk down to the other entrance, which is way down Oxford Street. I haven't seen any publicity about this.

 

[Emaharg]

I came down from Leeds on LNER to Peterborough, via Thameslink to Farringdon - no ticket barriers and on to Crossrail.
I rode the line and tried to use my ticket to get out via the barrier at Paddington to no avail. However as my All line rover works very few other barriers this wasn't a great surprise.
The guy on the barrier had a look and waved me through no issue. My assumption is the ALR is valid and Elizabeth line is National Rail.

 

[345 050]

Not surprising considering the northern line is quite a distance from Liverpool Street.

It's just a shame you essentially have to go up to Street level and then back down to Northern line tunnel. But possibly there's too much else going on at Moorgate to allow anything more direct.

 

[Adoarable]

It's just a shame you essentially have to go up to Street level and then back down to Northern line tunnel. But possibly there's too much else going on at Moorgate to allow anything more direct.

There is actually a direct passageway. I don’t think it’s very well signposted but I’m sure savvy commuters will sus it out before too long.

Start at the very western end of the Elizabeth platforms. A wide passageway leads you westwards through a cavernous and completely underground space where you go up some stairs (or use the provided lift). You then get a rather long passageway northwards (maybe not quite as long as the infamous corridor at Kings Cross, but not far off - there are 3 benches to stop off at along the way). This eventually leads you to stairs and a lift that take you to the northern end of the Northern line platforms.

 

[cygnus44]

Very impressive over all, but failed to find a public WC on any of the stations I visited today ,very poor for a 21st century railway in a major capital city surely provision for these should be made urgently. So I only give it 6 out of 10 for that.

 

[hwl]

There is actually a direct passageway. I don’t think it’s very well signposted but I’m sure savvy commuters will sus it out before too long.

Start at the very western end of the Elizabeth platforms. A wide passageway leads you westwards through a cavernous and completely underground space where you go up some stairs (or use the provided lift). You then get a rather long passageway northwards (maybe not quite as long as the infamous corridor at Kings Cross, but not far off - there are 3 benches to stop off at along the way). This eventually leads you to stairs and a lift that take you to the northern end of the Northern line platforms.

Yep and it is (much better) sign posted in the other direction (Northern to Crossrail)

On the crossrail platforms some of the northern line signs have LED direction arrows and the arrows were sending people up to street level this morning.

 

[djw]

Very impressive over all, but failed to find a public WC on any of the stations I visited today ,very poor for a 21st century railway in a major capital city surely provision for these should be made urgently. So I only give it 6 out of 10 for that.

There is a list on MyLondon which seems to rehash the answer given by the Mayor of London in his April 2020 question time.