Crossrail is a memorial to another London - one that expected to prosper for ever | Ian Jack [The Guardian]
Date: 11/01/2021
The £18bn Elizabeth line was designed for an ever-growing city. After Brexit and Covid, it looks like a white elephant. In the tangle of west London^s railway junctions - out Willesden way, where trains creak around tight curves, attempting to circumvent the London termini - I recently came across lines of new carriages waiting for work. I think it was at that famous railway placename Old Oak Common, where the smoke from the locomotive sheds once lay black across the sky. Several long sidings were filled with them: new, in a livery of shining white, with the London Transport roundel emblazoned on their sides in purple and crossed with the words ELIZABETH LINE. The sight gave me a stab of longing for a time of greater certainty, pre-Brexit and pre-Covid, when the most problematic aspect of Londons future, the levels of inequality among the population apart, was its apparently unstoppable growth.
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The £18bn Elizabeth line was designed for an ever-growing city. After Brexit and Covid, it looks like a white elephant, says the Guardian columnist Ian Jack
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Tags: x Crossrail x Elizabeth Line
