Monday 21 May 2007

Untangling Crossrail Line 2

Crossrail Line 2 is a bit of an enigma. It's a development of the Chelsea-Hackney tube line, for which a route was safeguarded in 1991 and then promptly forgotten about. Control of the plan was given to Cross London Rail Links Ltd, to work on as soon as they finish Line 1.

That was the situation a couple of years ago, at least. Visiting the Crossrail website today that Line 2 has its old Chelsea-Hackney name back, and Line 1 is referred to simply as "Crossrail". This suggests to me the notion of a large number of RER-style numbered Crossrail lines is dead. Line 1 will be "Crossrail" and everything else is on its own.

Possibly related, possibly not, last month the DfT announced a refresh of the Chelsea-Hackney plans, and again there's almost no mention of the name "Crossrail Line 2" anywhere. The refresh itself seems purely procedural, since they more-or-less admit they're never going to build it in this form.

0 comments: