The Elizabeth line opens tomorrow (Tuesday 24 May) – providing significant journey-time savings for Great Western Railway customers.
Commuters will be able to travel from London Paddington to Canary Wharf in just 17 minutes – half the time the journey would take today.
It means the capital’s central business hub will be within an hour’s reach from Reading; and under 90 minutes from Oxford and Swindon.
GWR Managing Director, Mark Hopwood, described the opening of the line as a game-changer for passengers travelling into the heart of London.
He said: “The Elizabeth line will be completely transformational for Great Western Railway customers, improving connectivity and reducing overall journey times from Paddington into other key points in the city.
"It’s a really exciting step forward for the whole industry but it will bring particular benefits to Great Western Railway. We know that 81 per cent of our customers who travel into Paddington then take an onward journey elsewhere in London.
“If you’re travelling from Reading or Oxford, Paddington becomes a much more attractive option as you’re able to reach the heart of the city in half the time it would have taken previously.
“We expect these new services to help make travel on GWR services into the capital even more compelling, attracting new customers across our network and boosting demand as we work hard to attract customers back to the railway.”
When the line opens tomorrow, passengers will be able to travel from Paddington to Tottenham Court Road in just five minutes, compared to 14 minutes previously; Liverpool Street in 11 minutes (25 minutes previously); and Abbey Wood in south-east London in 29 minutes, compared to 61 minutes today.
The line will initially operate as three separate railways, in the east, west and through central London.
Services will start with 12 trains an hour (a train every 5 minutes) between Paddington and Abbey Wood from 06:30-23:00, Monday to Saturday. Work will continue in engineering hours and on Sundays to allow a series of testing and software updates.
Customers travelling between Reading or Heathrow into London will initially need to change at Paddington for services into the central section of the route, and customers from Shenfield into London will initially need to change at Liverpool Street.
Services from Reading, Heathrow and Shenfield will connect with the central tunnels in the autumn when frequencies will also be increased to 22 trains per hour in the peak between Paddington and Whitechapel.