Elizabeth line not meeting high standards, says London mayor

The Elizabeth line has "not met the consistently high standards" expected by Londoners, Sadiq Khan has said.

At a Transport for London (TfL) board meeting, the mayor criticised the line's delays and cancellations.

It comes as some passengers were stranded for more than three hours on the line last week after overhead power cables were damaged.

TfL and Network Rail apologised to passengers and said they were both reviewing the incident.

Ahead of the meeting, the mayor wrote to Andrew Haines, the managing director of Network Rail, to say the "the reliability of the Elizabeth line has not been good enough".

'Hugely complex'

"Loss of lighting and electricity on trains, a lack of communication, and long waiting times to be evacuated were widely reported," he wrote.

Passengers being evacuated from an Elizabeth line train

Although he acknowledged that the overhead lines were damaged by another rail operator. Mr Khan said it was "hugely complex" to operate a "metro style service" on the same infrastructure as national rail services.

A Network Rail spokesperson apologised to passengers, and added: "The whole industry response wasn't good enough and we will learn from this."

They said Network Rail was operating a "different railway compared a few years ago" with the addition of the Elizabeth line and that it had invested £3bn in upgrading infrastructure in London and its surrounding area.

The Elizabeth line first opened in May 2022, and fully opened a year later

At Wednesday's meeting of the TfL board, the body's commissioner, Andrew Lord, said Network Rail was reviewing the response to the overhead cable damage while TfL was looking into the response given to passengers.

Addressing wider issues on the Elizabeth line at the meeting, Mr Khan said: "Londoners and others are rightly frustrated by the recent delays, cancellations and at times inadequate customer communication."

He added that the rest of the TfL network was "bearing the brunt" when there was disruption on the line.

'Extremely frustrating'

In September, Office of Rail figures revealed the Elizabeth line topped the list for train cancellations in Britain.

Mr Lord said: "I sincerely apologise for the disruption that has affected some Elizabeth line services recently and we recognise cancellations and delays are extremely frustrating for our customers."

Despite these issues, he said the line was among the most "popular and punctual" rail operations in the country which saw its busiest ever day on 6 December with 769,000 journeys recorded.

Mr Lord said there were about 4.3m journeys being made on the line each week and 270 million journeys made since it opened in May 2022.

Analysis by Tom Edwards, BBC London Transport Correspondent

This is a definite change in tack and approach by the mayor and Transport for London.

For nearly a year commuters in the west - particularly around Ealing and Hanwell - have been complaining about the new Elizabeth line service and say they regularly suffer disruption and overcrowding.

TfL's response previously was reliability was improving - commuters thought that was ridiculous and patronising. There seemed to be a refusal to accept there were any issues at all with this gleaming new railway.

Last week's incident at Paddington changed all that.

One of the issues is the Elizabeth line shares tracks and signalling with Network Rail on the very busy Great Western which is now struggling to deal with a regular metro Elizabeth line service and normal rail services.

The Great Western line is now subject of an investigation by the regulator the Office of Rail and Road.

Commuters won't get out the bunting until they see improvements. They regularly tell me that they had a very good service before the Elizabeth line came along.

It seems the Elizabeth line's honeymoon period is well and truly over.

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