IT’S BEEN open for 18 months and it is already exceeding expectations: passenger usage of the Elizabeth Line has been growing and last month reached a record high.
The tube line links Reading with the heart of the capital, putting it on the tube map for the first time.
Services in central London run every five minutes between 6.30am and 11pm and, while it takes a little longer than Great Western services, it does allow people to get on at Reading or Twyford and stay on the service rather than changing at Paddington.
At launch in May last year, London mayor Sadiq Khan said: “This brand-new line is the most significant addition to our transport network in decades. It will add billions to our economy and is set to serve up to 200 million passengers each year.”
But numbers are greater than that: Transport for London said the trains have carried more than 230 million passengers and carried out around 4.2 million journeys every week.
And towards the end of last month, nearly three-quarters of a million trips were made in a single day.
Howard Smith, Elizabeth line director, said: “The Elizabeth line has rightly and quickly become one of the most popular railways in the country. Recently we have seen impressive passenger numbers on the Elizabeth line and we were pleased to see that on September 28, we recorded the highest daily number of Elizabeth line journeys since opening in May 2022 with 738,000 journeys.”
