A Ride on the Liz Line

Why London's (Newish) Elizabeth Line is a Game-Changer

// I finally got to take a ride on the Elizabeth Line, or the "Liz Line," as it was quickly dubbed by Londoners. The last time I was in London, it hadn't quite opened. (The late Queen Elizabeth II surprised everyone by dedicating the line in person on May 17, 2022. I take it Her Majesty enjoyed the occasional jaunt on transit. In the 1969 photo above, she's riding the line named after her great-great-grandmother, Victoria.) The time before that, in 2017, I was given a hardhat-and-high-viz-vest tour of a Crossrail site at Canary Wharf: impressive, but hard to judge what was coming from that brief walk-through.

"Crossrail" was the name given to the construction project that is now the Elizabeth Line, which is a unique high-frequency urban-suburban rail service that runs partly underground, but mostly aboveground. I made the mistake of posting on social media that it was part of the Underground system on the first day I rode it, but I was quickly set straight by none-other-than Christian Wolmar, a Labour campaigner, bicycle advocate, and the author of two dozen-plus books, mostly on rail history. "Taras...it's not an underground line but a main line railway running under London. It has few stops and it is built to main line standards. Only a small section is under ground."