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Today's ceremony at Canary Wharf marks yet another stage on a long, expensive and tortuous journey. Way back in January 1989, Margaret Thatcher's government published the Central London Rail Study, which suggested that an “east-west Crossrail” should be built. Its cost was put at just under £900 million, including trains.
In the Nineties, a Parliamentary committee abandoned the Crossrail process, citing a lack of financial commitment by John Major's regime The Jubilee line extension opened in 1999. Lobbying by Canary Wharf's owners ensured this project leaped ahead. Meanwhile, Tony Blair kept Crossrail in a zombie-like condition, never quite giving it the final go-ahead.
Now it is Gordon Brown's turn. No one can ever be certain a particular “Crossrail Gets Go-Ahead” story will mean the line is actually built. There have been too many false dawns. But today's events imply there is a better-than-evens chance.
The overall cost will be £16 billion and the work will take seven years. It is estimated that at the peak of building — between 2013 and 2015 — some 14,000 people will be working on it.
It appears the complex deal to bring together cash from the Treasury, Mayor, City of London Corporation and businesses such as BAA may finally have been completed.
There will also be a levy on business ratepayers, subject to legislation now before Parliament. Concerns have surfaced about the need for the Mayor to be protected against a possible legal challenge over the decision not to hold a ballot on the levy. Ministers have given assurances he will be safe from the courts.
There are also worries that the huge cost will drain cash from investment in the Tube. Boris Johnson remains committed to both projects, as was his predecessor Ken Livingstone.
There is no doubt that when it is built Crossrail will add lustre to the capital. Like all schemes of this kind, it will be on an epic scale, with no expense spared. Just look at cathedral-sized Canary Wharf station on the Jubilee line to see what happens when rail enthusiasts get their hands on the public purse.
The new Crossrail interchanges at Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street and Paddington will be places guidebooks direct visitors to. The route will be the most important addition to the city's economic stock since the Victoria line opened in the Sixties. It will bring an extra one-and-a-half million people within an hour of the key business districts.
London makes decisions about new underground rail lines in a most extraordinary way. First, an idea is generated. Then follows 20 or 30 years of lobbying, during which time innumerable studies are published.
There are false starts. Transport ministers — and prime ministers — come and go. Eventually, the line will be built. Once Crossrail is truly under way, the Mayor and London's transport lobby must move on to the next great project: the Chelsea-Hackney line, linking Woodford and Hackney to Chelsea and Clapham. If all goes well, it might open by 2035.
Tony Travers is director of the Greater London Group at London School of Economics.
