Crossrail

Crossrail is currently the largest construction project in Europe, employing over 10,000 engineers working across 40 work sites. Construction began back in 2009 and is expected to be fully complete by 2019.

The £15bn project will provide London with a new 100km East-West route linking Reading and Heathrow to the West, with Shenfield and Abbey Wood to the East. The route is being made possible with the construction of 42km of new tunnels through the centre of the city.

8, 1000 tonne tunnel boring machines (TBMs) have been busy tunnelling 24 hours a day underneath the streets of London since 2012 and now tunnelling is over 90% complete.

There will be 40 stations on the Crossrail route including 10 new stations at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House, Woolwich and Abbey Wood.

The new route will increase capacity by 10%, provide more connections with underground lines than any other route and reduce journey times between key locations. Crossrail will provide a direct route between Heathrow and Central London, reducing journey times by up to 10 minutes. The journey time from Heathrow to Canary Wharf for example will be reduced from 48 minutes requiring 2 changes, to 40 minutes with no changes.

The new transformational route will be provided with new modern and spacious trains capable of transporting up to 1500 passengers. The 200m long trains to be built by Bombardier will be able to operate at up to 140km/h, they will contain on-train passenger information systems to deliver real-time travel information and be air conditioned.

The trains will be based on Bombarier's Aventra family of electric trains which will be constructed using lightweight materials making them energy efficient. For Crossrail the 345 classification of Electric Multiple Units (EMUs) will be formed of 9 cars each.

In total 65 of the trains will be built at Bombardier's plant in Derby, this will allow up to 24 trains per hour to operate through the central section of the route between Paddington and Whitechapel.

Fact and Figures,
  • Cost £14.8bn
  • Length 118km
  • Tunnel lenght 42km
  • 4.5 million tonnes of material excavated
  • 10% increase in capacity (the largest increase since World War 2)

One of the most visible aspects of the project so far is the construction of a new station at Canary Wharf. Due to the limited space the new station had to be constructed inside the North Dock of West India Quay. 

The 256 metre long station sits 28 meters below the water level, the station consists of 4 above ground floors and 3 below, providing 100,000 square feet of retail space, as well as a public garden housed under a large arched roof.

The public gardens and retail space are expected to open in May this year (2015), a full 3 years before any trains are planned to stop at the station.

For more information about the project visit www.crossrail.co.uk






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