Passengers arriving at London Heathrow Airport will soon be able to cross the city in minutes as a new high-speed rail line opens in the capital.
The first leg of the new Elizabeth Line, also known as Crossrail, opened on May 24 after a three-year delay caused by testing and budget issues, and then by the pandemic.
The project promises to significantly improve transport links in the South East of England, reducing travel times and increasing accessibility through new stations and longer, more spacious trains.
Crossrail connects east to west, passing under the streets of central London, the Docklands with the ExCel exhibition center and London City Airport, the financial districts, the West End, as well as suburbs in the south-east of England and major transport hubs, including Heathrow Airport.
Traveling around the capital will become much faster and easier, especially for passengers arriving at Heathrow, who can reach Canary Wharf in central London in just 38 minutes. This section of the line will open in autumn. Compared to today, the savings will be an hour. And when compared with a taxi, then all two.
The journey from Paddington to Canary Wharf will be reduced to 17 minutes, compared to over 30 minutes currently on the Underground.
Initially, Crossrail will operate 12 trains per hour from 6:30 am to 11:00 pm Monday through Saturday, while engineering work on the line will continue on Sundays. The launch phase will launch a service between Abbey Wood in southeast London and Paddington in central London.
In autumn the Abbey Wood line will run to Reading and Heathrow via Canary Wharf. Additional trains from Shenfield to Essex will connect to Paddington around the same time.
The full schedule will only come into effect in May 2023, when up to 24 trains per hour in each direction will run across the entire network.