Abbey Wood station, hello, how do you do?
Eastern end of the new Crossrail purple train,
Elizabeth line, whatever you want to call it.
I noticed the other day that Crossrail had put up
on their website the amount of time it takes between
to go between the new stops on the new purple train line,
and that made me, as per the title of this video,
want to come out and take a journey now
and ride the 10 stops, starting here at Abbey Wood,
heading west all the way through to Paddington,
to see how long it takes to do now
to compare it to how long it's going to take
when the new train line starts to operate.
Let's do it.
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So I'm going to take point-to-point journeys
between all the new 10 stations that will be
on the Crossrail Elizabeth line and time them
how long it takes using existing tubes and DLRs and trains,
and then compare those to how long it will take
when the new line is open.
So that's the Southeastern service taking us
to Woolwich Arsenal in exactly five minutes.
The Crossrail train, purple train,
doesn't stop at Plumstead, of course.
The Crossrail station at Woolwich is actually
a separate station but this is the nearest
comparable journey that we can do
and the new purple train does it two minutes quicker.
We've just come under the river,
which is what the new Elizabeth line will also do,
it will do a new tunnel under the river
and I think out of all the time savings on today's journey,
this might be the one that saves the most time,
'cause we've gotta go up the DLR
all the way up to Custom House,
change on the DLR there, and then go back down two stops
down to Custom House, which on the DLR is one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven stops.
On Crossrail, purple train,
that would just be like one stop.
So this will be a big time-saver.
Made it to Canning Town, there's a familiar face here.
There he is! Hello.
Phil's here, hey Phil.
Hello. Where are we?
We're at Canning Town. Where are we heading to?
Custom House next. Lead on!
I see you've, I see you've printed out
my handy guide then, Phil.
Don't reveal the answers, now, to the video.
That is Custom House at 16:42,
that is 22 minutes later, so 22 minutes to get
from Woolwich by the DLR up to Custom House.
Yes, this is a huge saving in time, but more likely,
you might have come off a southeastern train,
changed to Crossrail at Abbey Wood,
and then gone up to Custom House,
and that is a really fast way of doing it.
Genuinely, I'm ridiculously excited about the new line,
new railway. Yeah.
Are you excited? Of course I am.
What's it gonna bring to our railways?
Well, it's just the connections across London
and I just think when people actually get down and see it
they'll, 'cause we've been down there.
We have been down.
There we go.
That's Bond Street and I'm on the train.
Not allowed on the platform, thanks Phil!
I just can't wait to see people on it and people using it
and people changing their travel patterns
all across London for it.
I think it's gonna be amazing.
Phil, by the way, is the editor
of Modern Railways magazine,
I believe you've got something for me.
This is why I meet Phil.
So this issue is in a bag. A bagged issue!
A bagged issue. This is the new one?
This is the May issue.
And this has got - What a plug!
This has got a 48 page Crossrail special in it, so.
Okay, back onto the DLR, it's three stops, Phil?
Three stops to Poplar. No, it's -
Four stops, five? Five stops.
Five stops, and then we'll change, but what's interesting
is that there's a northern entrance exit
to Canary Wharf Crossrail comes up by West India Quay DLR.
It's like, you can walk it in 30 seconds,
but I think we should go to, it's the same name,
so we'll go to Canary Wharf DLR, which is two stops
but if you were changing onto the Livers line,
Crossrail, you could do it, West India Quay.
It'll be a little secret for you then.
Or are you just wearing them for occasions?
What, about my socks?
They're gonna get light use, aren't they?
I've got multiple pairs of socks, yeah.
You should get 10 pairs, one for every day.
Yeah, buy the socks at the transport museum.
I'm fairly sure it's an adjacent platform change here
at Poplar.
Oh, it's in five minutes, five minutes.
On another day, you'd get a better connection,
but five minute wait, four minute wait now,
for the Canary Wharf train.
We're discussing the most intricate change,
which is Farringdon to Tottenham Court Road.
'Cause we'd rather go down Thameslink, City Thameslink,
walk St. Paul's along Central Line to Tottenham Road,
or you go to Euston Square, walk to Euston
down the Northern line, or the faffy one,
Farringdon to King's Cross, down the Piccadilly,
to Holburn to Tottenham Court Road, but that's two changes
so do you want one street change or two?
Or you could, I would go City Thameslink.
Phil has spoken.
Plus, I like Thameslink.
The next stop is Canary Wharf.
That is 16 minutes, wow, from Custom House
to get to Canary Wharf
but that did involve a five minute change at Poplar,
you might get a swifter connection.
The Elizabeth line will be quicker.
Yeah, a swift four minute journey time here
for the Elizabeth line.
It's safe to say that Canary Wharf on the purple train
is gonna be really popular and I will do
a more in-depth video about the station when it opens.
We stopped to grab a drink, which is ridiculous
'cause it now means we're doing Jubilee line at 6:00 PM.
Peak, evening peak.
Where we going?
Canada Water, overground, north to Whitechapel.
Let's do it.
Bing bong.
Changing to northbound overground at Canada Water.
(door beeping)
And as I'm timing this, platform to platform,
18:07, left at 50.
So, at 55, sorry, 12 minutes. 12 minutes, 12 minutes.
12 minutes, and it will of course be quicker
on the new purple train.
A whole eight minutes quicker, in fact,
taking just four minutes to do that journey.
Whitechapel is gonna be really popular,
being a connection point for the Elizabeth line
and the Tube and the London overground.
Phil, I'm kind of gonna cheat for the next bit
'cause we'll get an H and C, Hammersmith and City, west,
and it'll go Aldgate East, Liverpool street, sorry,
Whitechapel, Aldgate east, Liverpool street,
and that mirrors Crossrail.
And then I'm just gonna stay on it, Liverpool street,
Morgate, Barbican, Farringdon.
It's kind of the, the times are probably near identical.
So yeah. I think it'll be quicker.
Quicker on what, quicker on the Tube?
Quicker on the Elizabeth line, probably.
No, but the thing is is that you've got to go down
deeper on the Elizabeth Line,
whereas the Tube is at a shallower depth
so it's probably very comparable.
But the Hammersmith and City will be less frequent.
That is less frequent, it's only every 10 minutes
whereas purple line trains are every five, five minutes.
When they start.
And then when, when it ramps up later in the year
it'll be up to - Two and a half minutes.
Yeah. So this one is a gamble
and the times might be comparable.
Crossrail trains there will be more frequent,
but you have to go down to a lower depth
down longer escalators to get to them,
whilst the subsurface trains, the Tube platforms,
will be quicker to get to.
So I actually think these two will be more or less the same
just depends how the trains are running
on any particular day.
So this is the Farringdon
down to Tottenham Court Road section
which is really, this is a really intriguing connection
'cause nothing else has ever really conveniently connected
up this part of the Tube map before
so that's what's cool about this bit.
It's an eight car train and we'll be at the front.
So when we get to City Thameslink,
we'll be at the correct exit to walk down the road
to St. Paul's on the Central Line.
So we're going one stop? One stop.
Leaving at 6:32.
Phil's going, say bye Phil!
See you. Bye Phil.
See you for Crossrail opening!
So you come out City Thameslink, turn right, walk up
Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's Cathedral, just about here
which means the Central Line Tube station
is around the corner here.
There's a four minute wait for a Central Line train.
Yeah, it's rush hour, so it's busy.
But that is, with a the four minute wait at St. Pauls,
which wasn't ideal.
That was 19 minutes from Farringdon
to here at Tottenham Court Road
so that Purple line sort of diagonal move across
from Farringdon southwest down to Tottenham Road,
is gonna be a massive time-savler, like this.
Yes, this is a genuine fresh connection.
Connecting up the top of the circle line
with the middle part, the central line,
that goes to the centre of the Tube map.
Great stuff and very fast.
Now for the next part of the video
I'm gonna go to Bond Street,
which is only like 90 seconds on the Central Line,
maybe two minutes.
Unfortunately, Crossrail Bond Street isn't opening
until maybe later October, November late this year, 2022.
When we get to Bond Street,
that'll be an excellent opportunity to talk about
why Crossrail Elizabeth line is not part of the Tube.
There goes the northbound Tube leaving out of Bond Street,
gonna get into that in a second, to change at Baker Street,
cross platform connection onto the Baker Loop
to take me to Paddington for the final timed journey.
Before then I wanted to play you a little clip,
which to sort of put to rest any doubt
that Crossrail Elizabeth line, small l line,
isn't part of London Underground,
here is a quote from a meeting where Mark Wild,
the CEO of Crossrail, was talking about
what type of line it is.
Crossrail isn't really a new Tube line.
It's more than that.
It's a new mode of transport
that brings mainline into like RER in Paris.
And in case you're wondering, well, what is the RER,
because he says it's like the RER in Paris.
I thought to myself, do I know anyone in Paris
that could go to an RER station and explain what the RER is?
Yes I do.
Hello and bonjour!
So the RER is the Reseau Express Regionale
or in English, the Regional Express Network.
The initials don't quite translate,
and there are five lines.
The first two opened back in 1977
and all five do the same thing that Crossrail
is designed to do.
They run underground through the centre of the city
and then pop out onto preexisting commuter networks
in the suburbs.
The stations are fully integrated with the Metro
and you can change between the two systems
without really noticing, but they are quite different.
The RER is a full size train.
It's longer, wider, and taller
and like all main line trains in France,
it runs on the left while the Metro runs on the right.
So it's definitely a different kind of system
and that's why they're saying Crossrail
is more similar to this than it is to the Tube.
That's Tim Traveller,
Geoff Marshall's Paris correspondent, on the RER.
Thanks Tim.
That is of course Tim Traveller,
my friend living out there in Paris,
doing all his amazing transport stuff that he does
out in France, subscribe to his channel,
linked below the description.
So that is what I think Crossrail Elizabeth line is like,
like an RER style service that Paris already has.
I'm sure this one is up for debate in the comments.
Until then, we've got one more timed trip to do from here.
Bond street to Paddington, like this.
I think that's like a hat trick of people
only just making it, three in a row, right?
Baker street, changing, Paddington,
and we'll time it.
So, made it to Paddington.
Thank you, Baker Lou lines, swift change back there.
Made it here, I've checked my watch on my phone,
seven minutes, so seven minutes by Tube
and it's a lot quicker on the Elizabeth line.
On the Tube, you could go via Nottinghill Gate,
but that's even slower.
But even with that swift connection at Baker Street,
the purple train wins out easily.
And there we go.
We're at Paddington Crossrail Elizabeth line station,
the main GWR Concourse is over there.
This is where I stood a few weeks ago
and we did the preview trip.
That is the amount of time it's gonna take
using traditional methods going
from point to point as compared to how long
it's gonna take on the purple train.
But of course it's not actually really about that, is it,
because you wouldn't make all those individual journeys
from point to point, the real benefit, the real time saver,
the real game changing moment that it's gonna have,
is the fact that it allows you to go
through the heart of London much more quickly than you can
at the moment, if you're making through journeys
which I know at the moment is broken up by that Paddington
and Liverpool street, won't be open on day one,
but that will come later in the year.
So yeah, truly, Crossrail will fully fledge its wings
the day when you can get on a train at Redding
and then sort of go straight to Bond Street and so on.
But from point to point journeys, it definitely is quicker.
And it's amazing, it's shiny, it's new, it's purple
and I'll see you on Tuesday, May the 24th.
Press subscribe, thanks.
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