The Elizabeth line’s full peak timetable commenced today, but the start was marred by another broken down train that knocked out services between Paddington and Abbey Wood.
The two events were unrelated, but at their recent committee meeting, TfL’s Elizabeth line director, Howard Smith had warned that they are not as comfortable as they would like to be with the line’s reliability. The recent cluster of problems on the Elizabeth line stems from a software upgrade applied at Easter that introduced some bugs, which were only resolved a couple of weeks ago.
Mr Smith confirmed that the trains are improving their reliability, but more slowly than they had wanted to see. The trains are still breaking down more often than the target. TfL’s Interim Commissioner, Andy Lord, who has a background in the aviation industry, said at the same committee meeting that TfL is pressing the train manufacturer, Alstom and software provider Siemens to speed up their patching of problems, noting that their turnaround is slower than in aviation.
Given time, the railway will settle down once the bugs are ironed out — and is going through the first phase of what is known as the bathtub curve, but will eventually settle down into a low-problem service that will become rather more routine.
The problems aside though, the TfL felt confident enough to push ahead with the timetable upgrade today, which now delivers 24 trains per hour through the central tunnels during the peak hours, with 16 trains per hour running off-peak.
The peak period will also now last for longer, increasing capacity even further.
On the east, more services at peak time will run between Liverpool Street mainline platforms and Gidea Park, providing a faster route for those using the Bishopsgate entrance, and in the west, there will be an increase in peak services from Reading, with some trains that were previously operated by Great Western Railway transferring to become Elizabeth line services with reduced stops. The removal of any significant pauses for trains outside Paddington, will also bring reduced journey times for customers travelling from the west into central London.
This week marks the first anniversary of the opening of the Elizabeth line to passengers on 24th May 2022.
In its first week, more than 2.5 million journeys were made on the entire route. Now with journeys from the east and west running through central London, there are an average of around 3.5 million Elizabeth line journeys each week – with around 600,000 journeys on weekdays.
In its first year, more than 150 million journeys were taken across the Elizabeth line.
TfL figures also suggest that the Elizabeth line has attracted around 140,000 additional journeys in London each weekday than otherwise would have been the case.
Tottenham Court Road has seen the largest (absolute) growth in demand on the Elizabeth line since it opened, with more than 100,000 additional journeys passing through the station each day, more than doubling usage over the year. Farringdon, Whitechapel and Abbey Wood have also seen large rises in demand with 100,000, 60,000 and 30,000 extra journeys respectively, again doubling or nearly doubling the customer journeys that were seen through these stations before the Elizabeth line opened.
Journeys to Canary Wharf as a whole (Elizabeth line, London Underground and DLR) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays as well as at weekends are regularly outstripping pre-pandemic demand to the area.
The full new timetable is available to view here.
In addition, a television personality, Tom Skinner will be the voice of the Elizabeth line for this week only, to mark the new direct service from Shenfield to Heathrow.
Shouldn’t that be a ‘bathtub’ curve? It says Bathtube.
I rather liked the wordplay.
Great article – as usual. I commend this blog for the Crossrail updates it has given over the years.
I do hope they improve the train reliability asap. The number of times the whole line grinds to a halt for hours because of one stuck train is disheartening to see and annoying to experience.
Another hope for the future, is the last train from Tottenham Court Road to Abbey Wood is later than 22:49.
Would also be nice if it ran earlier on a Sunday. Gone 7am doesn’t work for me when I start work at 7am in central. Even with this new timetable nothing has been done about Sundays.
I was passing through Paddington Elizabeth Line not so long ago and not only were multiple platform edge doors adorned with signs of shame, but the next train indicators had packed up too. Seems like the reliability issues aren’t restricted to the trains.
The removal of the Paddington pause has cut around 10 minutes off my daily commute to work from Southall, which is now under 30 minutes. Not bad going at all.
That being said, I agree with other commentators that the early finish time for the line (much earlier than Tube lines, which run until after 0030) is disappointing.
Having given up on the old First Great Western commute years ago, I switched to Chiltern from Beaconsfield which has been good in the main despite a car journey to get there. As I live nearer to Maidenhead I tried the Elizabeth Line for a week in April this year and on the first day I was delayed 30 mins oustide Paddington both outbound and inbound, second day I was held up for 15 mins due to broken train, 3rd day was signalling problems which meant a cancellation of my train. The train’s tannoy system is also inaudible so just sat there with no info forthcoming unless you have the hearing of Superman! Needless to say I have returned to Chiltern !
Will TFL WIFI ever be working?
Working fine at the moment.
I don’t use crossrail tried it once,no more ,too many
selfish people in a hurry on those escalators.
Hope I’m wrong but I can imagine a accident waiting to happen.Yes it’s probably quicker,but I’m not in a rush.
Leave earlier,have a coffee and chill.
This is the third time you’ve made the same observation about escalators — and yet there’s no evidence of the safety problems you cite.
I was looking forward to the improved peak-time frequency out West but it turns out the station I use (Hanwell) saw zero improvement. It still gets only 4 trains an hour with the neighbouring stations all now getting 50% more.
I asked tfl if this was “it” or if they had more improvements coming. They unhelpfully replied it was Network Rail’s fault and I should go to Southall instead! Of all the neighbouring stations, that’s the worst option by far. Improving West Ealing timetable over Hanwell seems a poor choice considering it’s already quick and easy to get to Ealing Broadway from West Ealing, where there are already far more trains stopping.
Since we are now a year in, it would be interesting to see who are the biggest winners and losers in terms of service improvements, station upgrades (toilets, accessibility, shelters), uptake, travel cost, and other local improvements (e.g. new shops/housing/other transport links). Hanwell will score poorly on all of these!