The opening of the world’s first metro system in London in 1863 was a chaotic event: steam in the tunnels blocked signals and suffocated drivers, gas lights frightened passengers – and “there were so many anxious passengers trying to get on board that there were he is fighting for seats, ”writes Penny Gazette.
Nearly 160 years later, the British capital hopes to launch more smoothly this week the launch of the latest 100-kilometer addition to its transport network: the £ 19 billion Crossrail train, designed to carry tens of millions of passengers between the western and east of London.
Designed to halve travel time and unite the four metropolitan airports with just one hub, the new Elizabeth Line will bring an additional 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of central London when fully open at that time next year.
Even four years late and £ 4 billion over budget, the project is perhaps as much an engineering triumph as its first predecessor, the Metropolitan Railway, which also connected Paddington and Faringdon stations.
In the 13 years since construction began, builders have avoided existing London Underground lines, medieval plague pits, Victorian sewer pipes, Tudor Castle foundations and a grid of gas and telecommunication pipes buried in often porous honeycomb soil under one of the most the oldest cities in the world.
A man walks through an empty station in the underground section of the Elizabeth Line on Liverpool Street in London. The line will carry an additional 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of central London when it opens fully at this time next year © Neil Hall / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
The irony is that its engineers overcame all these obstacles just to slow down the project, among other things, because of this curse of 21st century life – problems with the IT system.
Crossrail is finally arriving, but it does so at an inopportune moment – when the business rationale for mega-large urban infrastructure projects faces unprecedented uncertainty from changing ways and new technologies that emerged even before the pandemic.
“Crossrail is built for a completely different world,” said Tony Travers, a government expert at the London School of Economics. “The case was that this would lead to increasing employment and economic activity in central and inland London, and for a while this logic has been paused.
Various cities such as Paris, Auckland and Ho Chi Minh City are making progress with the construction of new urban metro systems, while the Maltese government presented a proposal for a new metro across the island last year. But they come as improved cycling infrastructure, destructive technologies such as riding applications, and new work models are already changing travel patterns around the world.
Driver makes test run on Elizabeth Line train between Paddington Station and Liverpool Street Station in London © Justin Talis / AFP / Getty Images
Even before the discontinuation of Covid-19, the number of passengers in urban transport systems is stagnant in five key global cities, including the British capital, while their population and economies continue to grow, according to an analysis by official Financial Times data.
In London, travel fell 3.5% year-on-year in 2019 to its lowest level since 2014. Figures recovered last year after falling off the edge of the pandemic cliffs, but are still only 65-70% of level before Covid.
In Paris, where Mayor Anne Hidalgo has tried to control the number of cars and invest in bike lanes, metro travel has fallen the most in the last decade. In 2019, they fell by 4% compared to the previous year, reaching a 10-year low. In Hong Kong, a similar pattern is observed with a decrease of 6.1% in 2019. Meanwhile, in New York, subway travel fell by 3.7% in 2019 compared to its peak in 2015.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tried to control the number of cars by investing in bicycle lanes © AFP / Getty Images
“This is a trend with significant implications,” said Alexander Jan, a former chief economist at engineering giant Arup and chief economic adviser to the London Property Alliance, which tracks the data.
“The pressure on household incomes, Deliveroo culture, as well as changing work and leisure patterns will play a role,” he said, adding that the decline in bus use is even stronger in some cities.
The discovery of Crossrail is the latest chapter in the evolution of London as an economic and cultural center for the United Kingdom and the world. But changing passenger habits raise questions about the future and funding of new urban rail projects, even when the threat of climate change makes the transition from cars more urgent than ever.
Transit trends
The purpose of metro systems around the world has hardly changed since the first one was built in Victorian London: moving huge numbers of people from the suburbs and suburbs to growing cities as quickly as possible and getting people out of crowded streets.
For more than a century, the number and duration of human journeys have continued to grow, driven by the birth of new modes of transport, the popularity of leisure travel and urban growth.
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That has changed in the 21st century. Between 2002 and 2019, the average distance traveled by people in England per year decreased by 10% and the number of trips by 11%, according to official data from the United Kingdom. The decline is observed in almost all modes of transport, from short walks through public transport to driving.
The trend is similar in Europe and the United States, although it is sometimes obscured by population growth. Even before the pandemic, fewer people traveled to work full five days a week, and more employees were on short-term contracts or working in the less routine gig economy.
This has weakened the economic rationale for shiny new urban transit projects in these places. Of the 56 new metro systems opened worldwide between 2010 and 2020, 44 were in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the International Public Transport Association, and only one was in Europe.
A woman sits in an almost empty train car on the London Underground during what would traditionally be a busy time traveling to work, in March 2021. © Leon Neal // Getty Images
The pandemic has accelerated and consolidated change. Today, more so-called knowledge workers are based at home or in third rooms closer to home, such as cafes or shared workplaces, than ever before.
Although the number of people traveling by public transport on weekdays worldwide has returned to between 70 and 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to the International Public Transport Association, an advocacy group, the increase in hybrid work means that in some cities are unlikely to return completely soon. In Greater London, public transport use last week still fell by about 33 percent from February 2020 levels, according to Google Mobility.
Almost all major transport projects require government subsidies, even if they end up generating part of their tariff revenues. But the shock of the pandemic and the long-term decline in passenger growth are making a hole in transport budgets, challenging politicians even as the threat of global warming accelerates the need for clean travel.
“Crossrail was partly financed by loans that had to be repaid over time from ticket revenues,” Travers said. “This will be significantly lower than expected, which means the need for more funding from taxpayers.”
Despite this uncertain financial future, some cities continue to invest in new systems. In Paris, work continues on an even larger project from Crossrail: the Grand Paris Express, which will include 200 km of new railways connecting the suburbs of Paris and cost at least 30 billion euros.
Workers from Vinci Construction and Setec wave flags after the arrival of an Ellen tunnel boring machine at the construction site of the Grand Paris Express station in Clamart, southwest of Paris, in July 2020. © Ludovic Marin / AFP / Getty Images
But others are pushing the brakes. In London, plans for Crossrail 2, a proposed £ 33 billion north-south
Proponents of public transport warn that withdrawing funding from bus and subway schemes creates a downward spiral that could be disastrous for cities.
In the long-suffering US city of Detroit, voters in 2016 rejected – by a small margin – a $ 4.6 billion regional plan that would increase taxes in exchange for modernized and expanded bus and rail lines.
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Instead, regional authorities have tested a scheme that offers people who travel by city bus between midnight and 5 am and need an elevator from the bus to their destination, subsidized Lyft travel, and a shuttle service.
The subsidy was soon abandoned and tens of thousands of key workers remain blocked and struggling to get to work, said Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United, a nonprofit organization in Detroit that is fighting for better transportation.
“Employers find that they just can’t find staff because people can’t get to work,” she said. “Even if people can save for an old junior car, they can’t afford the insurance and then risk being arrested because they don’t have one. The lack of transit throughout the region further detains a community that has long suffered from decades of racial discrimination.
While large numbers …
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