The Elizabeth line has carried its 100 millionth passenger since opening last May, with Transport for London announcing that the project could start to break even as early as 2023-24.
And TfL has revealed that Tottenham Court Road has become one of Transport for London’s five busiest stations since the new £9 billion line opened.
The Tottenham Court Road-Stratford ticket has proved the most popular overall, while the total numbers to and from the station puts it into the same bracket as Waterloo and Liverpool Street.
TfL said passenger numbers on the new line are higher than expected, and that they will increase further when the final version of the Elizabeth line timetable is introduced in May, increasing capacity on central London’s rail network by 10%.
There will also be a further reduction in journey times from the west stations to Paddington, with a new link to Heathrow Airport.
The service in the central section between Paddington and Whitechapel will increase to up to 24 trains per hour during the peak, and initially 16 off-peak. At this point, some direct off-peak services will run from Shenfield to Heathrow Airport in the off-peak. The changes will remove the dwell times that have been in place between Paddington and Acton Main Line since November 2022.
TfL data also reveals that ridership is currently above target by around 600,000 each day.
Direct Elizabeth line services into central London from Reading, Heathrow, and Shenfield began in November last year. The launch of direct services into central London also coincided with the start of Sunday services, marking the operation of seven-days-a-week Elizabeth line services.
The Elizabeth line has proven to be one of the UK’s reliable railways. Data from the most recent four-week period shows an overall performance rating of almost 93%, compared with an industry average of 78.5%.
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Güntürk Üstün - 20/02/2023 12:46
Services on the Elizabeth line are operated exclusively by a fleet of nine-car Class 345 trains [built by Bombardier Transportation (now Alstom) at Derby Litchurch Lane Works] that was procured especially for this purpose. Due to limited platform lengths at both Liverpool Street and Paddington National Rail stations, most Class 345 units were initially delivered as seven-car formations, then later extended to the intended nine. The first unit entered service in June 2017, between Liverpool Street and Shenfield. TfL exercised an option to acquire a further five units in July 2017, bringing the total number on order to 70. Dr. Güntürk Üstün
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