The central section of London’s delayed Crossrail project may not open until March 2021, and even then Bond Street station will not be ready, the company has confirmed.
Crossrail Ltd said there was a “six-month delivery window” starting in October 2020 for the section between Paddington and Abbey Wood in south-east London.
It expects that section to open during 2020, although it could be as late as March 2021, with initially 12 trains per hour at peak times.
But Bond Street is delayed because of “design and delivery challenges” and will not open at the same time, with Crossrail expecting it to be ready some time in 2021.
The huge project has already had three emergency cash bail-outs, taking the original estimate of the cost of the work up to £17.6billion. It was due to launch in December this year.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “I was deeply angry and frustrated when we found out about the delay to Crossrail last year. The information we had been given by the former chair was clearly wrong.
“We now have a new Crossrail leadership team who have worked hard over recent months to establish a realistic and deliverable schedule for the opening of the project, which TfL and the Department for Transport will now review.
“Crossrail is a hugely complex project. With strengthened governance and scrutiny in place, TfL and the Department for Transport, as joint sponsors, will continue to hold the new leadership to account to ensure it is doing everything it can to open Crossrail safely and as soon as possible.
“When complete, the Elizabeth Line will transform travel across London and the South East, with new state-of-the-art trains taking millions of people more quickly across London, supporting hundreds of thousands of new homes and jobs.”