Hello everybody, it's Mark Wild CEO Crossrail here. I'm delighted to give you a program update
from the newly completed Paddington station. Paddington became the sixth of the nine central
stations to be handed over to TfL and the really excellent MTR Customer Experience
Team are operating the station around me. Today we are running 12 trains an hour and certainly when
you stand here on the concourse of Paddington you realise how close we are to opening the
Elizabeth line. As i say, Paddington became the sixth of nine stations to be handed over to TfL,
the seventh will be Whitechapel. Whitechapel will be handed over to London Underground
in the next few days actually so we really look forward to that and when we handover
Whitechapel we will also provide step free access to London Underground and London Overground at the
same time. Similarly at Liverpool Street, when we handed that over recently we provided access from
the new Moorgate Ticket Hall to the Hammersmith and City line. Three months ago we commenced the
phase of Trial Running. We've always said that this phase will take several months as we shake
the system down, this immense digital electrical and mechanical system. We get all of the bugs out
of it, we get the operators and maintainers familiar with their policies and procedures
get used to operating the system in normal modes and in degraded modes. We're three months in, it's
actually gone very very well. We are running up to 12 trains an hour and we will drop software build
ELR 100 in the autumn and that's the customer quality software for the train control system
that will support Trial Operations which as i say is the dress rehearsal before we enter revenue
service. We aim to be in Trial Operations by the end of this year and we are very much on target
to open this railway in the first half of 2022 and as i say always our commitment is to get
to the earliest front edge of that window as we possibly can. Elsewhere on the program the
surface works continue at great pace. We have recently added West Drayton in the west to be
step free access and in the coming months Hayes & Harlington and Southall will be added as well.
In other news we are increasing the number of nine car full-length units traveling between Liverpool
Street and Shenfield. This follows the successful extension of the Liverpool Street platforms.
Of course when we open the Elizabeth line between Paddington and Abbey Wood
at 12 trains an hour it's very much just the start of the operational journey. We have a new plan to
combine trains from the west and the east into the central section from Heathrow and Reading
in the west and from Shenfield in the east to combine them in a single section which will follow
the opening of the Elizabeth line. The earliest we can do that is in autumn 22 and we will
complete the railway by May 2023 with the final tweaking of the timetable service so i hope people
really look forward to that because at that point the Elizabeth line is delivered and complete. So
we're doing well in the phase of Trial Rrunning, it's all about reliability growth because once we
open this railway we know it's going to be safe but it's also going to be reliable end-to-end.
Reliability Growth is the term we use to get the systems not just the train but the tunnel
ventilation system, the escalators, the lifts, the platform screen doors. This immense system
not only needs to be safe, it needs to be a level of reliability that customers can really rely upon
it to be on time and metronomic in its delivery. It's very important that when we open this railway
we know it's going to be safe but it's also got to be reliable and that's what we mean by Reliability
Growth. The tweaking of all of the processes the system the software to get this immense system
in a state when it can support the 200 million customer journeys that will happen every single
year. I hope everybody finds this update useful and informative. I know how important opening the
Elizabeth line is we're appreciative of all the support people have but rest assured we're doing
everything we possibly can to get this railway open at the front end of our opening window of
the first half of next year. I hope people are reassured that we are making great progress
and we are certainly in the final lap of opening the Elizabeth line now. Thank you very much.