By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Andy Byford points to the cathedral-like ceiling, the crystal-clear acoustics, the “purity of the aesthetic” that surrounds it.

The head of London’s public transport system is raving about an underground station – part of a new line he says will be “the envy of the world” when it opens this month.

“It really gives people a sense of grandeur, but there’s also a sense of calm,” Byford said as he showed reporters around Liverpool Street station on London’s new East-West Elizabeth line, which is due to open on May 24.

The £19billion ($23billion) combined overhead and underground railway, named for Queen Elizabeth II, is three and a half years behind schedule and £4billion ($5billion) off more than its budget. But Byford says it will be a game-changer for Britain’s pandemic-scarred capital.

“I think when it opens it’s going to be a huge morale boost for London, post-COVID,” said Byford, Transport Commissioner for London. ?”

Yet there is a question mark over whether London still needs the Elizabeth line.

Since the project – also known as Crossrail – began in 2009, London has weathered a recession, Britain’s rocky exit from the European Union and a coronavirus pandemic that shut down the city for months and transformed travel habits. work and travel, potentially for good.

Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics, said the Elizabeth Line “is a remarkable and magnificent thing”.

“But it was built – after a lot of effort and over a very long period of time – for a different economy,” he said. “His whole economic record was based very heavily on the continued growth of the central London economy.”

Britain’s biggest infrastructure project for decades, the new line involved digging 26 miles (42 kilometres) of new tunnels under Europe’s biggest city – uncovering 68,000-year-old mammoth bones, Roman ruins and the skeletons of medieval plague victims along the way.

It was scheduled to open in late 2018. But with months to go, the launch was postponed, then postponed again as workers struggled to complete 10 new stations and link three separate signal systems on the western, central and eastern sections of the 60 1 mile (100 kilometer) railroad.

In 2020, builders turned to Byford, a veteran public transportation executive who ran the Toronto Transit Commission and then New York City Transit Authority, where he was nicknamed “Train Daddy” while in the struggling with the Big Apple’s often frustrating subway and bus systems. .

Byford staked its reputation on the establishment and operation of the Elizabeth Line.

“He had his challenges,” he admitted. “It has been a labor of love for us. We sweat blood on this thing.

The largely underground central section from Paddington station in west London to Abbey Wood in the south east opens to paying customers this month, days before the UK celebrates the jubilee of queen’s plate, although not fully integrated with the east and west aboveground legs until the drop.

Builders say the Elizabeth Line will provide a fast new link between Heathrow Airport in west London, the city’s financial district in the center and Canary Wharf business hub in the east.

For anyone who has traveled London’s cramped Underground, parts of which are over 150 years old, the scale of the new line comes as a pleasant shock. The spacious trains can carry more than 1,000 passengers each. They are also air-conditioned, which is rare in the sweaty London Underground. The tunnels seem to curve endlessly and the stations soar – Paddington is 10 stories high and as long as the Shard, London’s tallest skyscraper.

Crossrail’s builders pride themselves on attention to detail, from the purple patterned fabric on the train’s seats to playful touches of station design, such as a ceiling at Liverpool Street station in the city that’s striped to evoke a banker’s striped suit. The lighting is cool in the hall, warm on the platforms — a “boost” to subtly urge people towards the trains.

Elizabeth Line opens in a city and country facing economic uncertainty, with the war in Ukraine fueling record inflation and the city center still quieter than before the pandemic as many officers work at least on time partial from home. The line’s projected ridership was reduced from around 250 million a year before the pandemic, to around 200 million a year.

The public transport network, London’s circulatory system, needs even more investment. But Britain’s Conservative government is focused on spreading economic opportunity from England’s wealthy south to the poorer Midlands and north, and is reluctant to spend money on the capital – especially as London is a stronghold of the opposition Labor Party.

A plan for Crossrail 2 which would cross London from south-west to north-east is on hold, although Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild hopes it will be completed one day.

The new line is sure to help get London back on track.

“If there ever was going to be a pandemic-proof railroad, this is it,” Wild said. “It’s airy, fast, the stations are cathedrals, the air is fresh. It’s modern, clean. If there is one railroad that can boost the return to the office, it will be this one.

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