Years late, London's 'game-changer' subway line set to open

LONDON (AP) — Andy Byford points out the cathedral-like ceiling, the crystal-clear acoustics, the “pureness of the aesthetic” that surrounds him.

The head of London’s public transport system is rhapsodizing about a subway station — part of a new line he says will be “the envy of the world” when it opens this month.

“It really gives people a sense of grandeur, but there is also a sense of calm,” said Byford as he showed journalists around Liverpool Street Station on London’s gleaming new east-west Elizabeth Line, due to open on May 24.

The 19 billion-pound ($23 billion) mixed overground and underground railway, named in honor of Queen Elizabeth II, is three-and-a-half years late and 4 billion pounds ($5 billion) over budget. But Byford says it will be “a game-changer” for Britain’s pandemic-scarred capital city.

“I think when it opens it is going to be a huge morale boost for London, post-COVID," said Byford, who is commissioner of Transport for London. "What could be a greater symbol of London’s emergence from COVID than this spectacular railway?”

Yet there’s a question mark over whether London still needs the Elizabeth Line.

Since ground was first broken on the project — also known as Crossrail — in 2009, London has been through recession, a rocky British exit from the European Union and a coronavirus pandemic that shut down the city for months and transformed work and travel patterns, potentially for good.

Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics, said the Elizabeth Line “is a remarkable and beautiful thing.”

“But it was built — after a lot of effort and over a very long period of time — for a different economy,” he said. “Its entire economic case was very heavily predicated on the...