Keep on digging: Boris’s route to recovery

31 October 2009

Elliot Wilson says all the razzmatazz for the start of work on Crossrail highlights the construction industry’s urgent desire to soak up public funds before Tory cuts set in

No major city anywhere has achieved as much as London has with such poor public transport at its disposal. Trams that break down; bendy buses that burst into flames; an underground rail network that overheats in the summer and taxes the patience and the wallets of millions of commuters all year round.

The experience has been likened by London’s own mayor, Boris Johnson, to ‘sardine-tin travel’ — doing little for its citizens’ quality of life, or its reputation as the world’s leading centre for financial services, media and communications.

Such woeful infrastructure also explains why Mayor Boris, a former editor of The Spectator, spent most of Tuesday this week surrounded by a scrum of journalists, advisers and construction-sector lobbyists, peering at a big muddy hole in the ground. This prestigious event constituted the much-heralded launch of Crossrail, a stupefyingly ambitious £16 billion rail project set to straddle London, linking Maidenhead in Berkshire with Shenfield in Essex via Canary Wharf and the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

Once complete in 2017, the 75-mile-long spanner-shaped rail line, which zigzags north and south of the Thames, will cut travel between Heathrow airport and the City from more than two hours to just 43 minutes. On a more human level, it will herald the arrival of a world-class rail service (heated and air-conditioned) linking central London with the home counties, thus lightening the daily mood of millions of commuters.