# The London Crossrail

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2015-10-23

architect-this-city, atc, athiscity, boris-johnston, business-relations, cities, john-tory, london, metrolinx, mobility, rail, regional-express-rail, rer, smarttrack, suburban-rail, the-crossrail, the-london-crossrail, toronto, toronto-london, transit, uncategorized, urban-mobility, urbanism

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On Thursday afternoon the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, was in London meeting with their mayor, Boris Johnston, and talking about Toronto-London business relations, the economy, and transit.

Here is the tweet:

> I’m meeting with [@MayorofLondon](https://twitter.com/MayorofLondon) this afternoon to talk Toronto-London business relations, the economy & transit. [pic.twitter.com/fpVsPIBvtQ](https://t.co/fpVsPIBvtQ)
> 
> — John Tory (@JohnTory)
> 
> [October 22, 2015](https://twitter.com/JohnTory/status/657238226499932160)

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On the topic of transit, the big item to see and discuss was The Crossrail. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, here are a few bullet points from [their website](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-numbers):

> _Crossrail is Europe’s largest construction project – work started in May 2009 and there are currently over 10,000 people working across over 40 construction sites._
> 
> _The Crossrail route will run over 100km from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new tunnels under central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east._
> 
> _Crossrail will transform rail transport in London and the south east, increasing central London rail capacity by 10%, supporting regeneration and cutting journey times across the city._
> 
> _Crossrail will bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London and will link London’s key employment, leisure and business districts – Heathrow, West End, the City, Docklands – enabling further economic development._

And below is a neat diagram that I found in [this City of London report](https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/economic-research-and-information/research-publications/Documents/Research-2015/Impact-of-Crossrail-briefing-paper.pdf). I think it does a good job summarizing some of the spatial impacts of The Crossrail.

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8a01b9b05b5f09d0134ecfd91668c463.png)

In the past I’ve been negative about John Tory’s [SmartTrack proposal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartTrack), which is clearly inspired by The London Crossrail. I had my reasons for that. But I want to be clear that I am not in any way negative on Regional Express Rail as a mobility solution.

Toronto would benefit greatly from RER and [Metrolinx is working diligently](http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regionalplanning/rer/) to deliver it to the region. I can’t wait for that to happen so I can drive even less than I already do.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/the-london-crossrail)*