Confirmed: Elizabeth Line to open later this month

Commuters will need to wait a bit longer to access Elizabeth line services to Heathrow, as Transport for London (TfL) announced the central portion of the line will open in 20 days’ time.

After falling three and a half years behind schedule and costing around £18.9bn, the long-awaited tube line will be open to the public from 24 May, with services running every five minutes between Paddington and Abbey Wood.

The Elizabeth line, TfL said, will initially operate as three separate railways, with services from Reading, Heathrow and Shenfield connecting with the central tunnels later this year.

Until the autumn, people travelling between Reading and Heathrow into central London will need to change at Paddington to access the central portion of the line while those coming from Shenfield will need to change at Liverpool Street.

“This is the most significant addition to our transport network in decades, and will revolutionise travel across the capital and the south east – as well as delivering a £42bn boost to the whole UK economy and hundreds of thousands of new homes and jobs,” commented London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan.

The news was welcomed by Londoners, who took it to social media to express their jubilation.

“I’m not being dramatic when I say this is the best day of my life,” tweeted journalist Sophie Thompson while another user said the new line would mean a “great deal to the less-affluent part of London I’m from.”

Others, including i paper editor Harry Robertson, remained skeptical as the line was originally planned to open in December 2018 but had been plagued by several issues such as construction delays.

The new date comes ahead of the bank holiday weekend at the beginning of June to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.

“I’m so proud of this new line and can’t wait for millions of passengers to start riding on the Elizabeth Line from 24 May,” Khan added while TfL commissioner Andy Byford said the line will provide “transformative services for Londoners for decades to come.”

According to Nick Bowes, chief executive at London think tank Centre for London, despite all the delays “London is getting a magnificent piece of public transport infrastructure […] that will change the mental geography of east-west city travel forever.”

The opening date delivered on the promise made by Byford earlier this year when he said the line would open by the first half of 2022.

“No other city in the world will have something like this, or something as spectacular and enabling as the Elizabeth line,” he told Morning Wire “Londoners will be blown away when they see the magnitude and magnificence of these stations.”