Sadiq Khan has called the huge success of the Elizabeth Line as Sunday services and more direct routes were opened.
The Mayor of London joined transport leaders to ride the £19 billion railway from Stratford to Paddington.
The trip marked the opening of direct routes across the line as well as a seven-day service for the first time since the line opened in May.
The railway has so far operated in three separate sections, requiring passengers to trek for several minutes to switch trains at Liverpool Street and Paddington.
As of Sunday morning, passengers could travel across the whole line extending from Reading in Berkshire and Heathrow Airport in southwest London, to Abbey Wood in southeast London and Shenfield in Essex without changing platforms.
Sunday services are also now operating after they were stopped in the London tunnels almost every weekend since the line opened on May 24 to allow more testing to take place.
Talking at Paddington, Sadiq Khan said that it was wonderful news, not just for the Elizabeth line but also for the south of the country.
He said that London benefits but also if people live in the west in Reading or in Shenfield if you live in Essex or in Windsor you benefit as well.
Sadiq Khan met several transport leaders, including Transport for London’s acting commissioner Andy Lord and transport minister Richard Holden, at Stratford Station on Sunday morning.
The group boarded the 10.16 am train, which took slightly over 18 minutes to get to Paddington after the removal of the interchange at Liverpool Street.
They could be heard discussing the complicated signal system, the size of platforms and the confusion around the Elizabeth line not being part of the Tube network.
At Paddington, the group was welcomed by two trainee railway workers and posed for photographs.
Sadiq Khan called the Elizabeth line a huge huge hit but also asserted Government to invest more in London’s infrastructure, including projects like Crossrail 2, which has been suspended indefinitely.
He said that he believed what the Elizabeth line shows is that if they invest, people will use it, adding that 60 million journeys had been made on the railway since it opened in May, and he said that it demonstrated the difference good public transport can make but that actually the great news was that as a global metropolis we now have a new piece of infrastructure, and that we can’t simply stand still and that when he talks to associates in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Paris and New York, they’re investing in infrastructure.
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