The new Crossrail tube service, which will run through central London, has been named after The Queen, it was revealed yesterday.
Her Majesty joined Mayor Boris Johnson and Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin at the Bond Street work site to see how the £14.8bn project was progressing, and it was there that the name was revealed: the Elizabeth line.
Opening in 2018, the Elizabeth Line will serve millions of people each year as a high-capacity route across the capital on 200-metre-long trains. It will be a regal purple on the map.
It was always known there would be a Royal connection to the route, but it was only yesterday that the name was announced, after the longest-serving British Monarch in history: Elizabeth II.
The Mayor said it was a fitting tribute to the Sovereign: “Queen Elizabeth has given extraordinary service to this country over an unprecedented period and it is entirely right that she should be honoured with a living tribute that will last.”
The route of the new tube will serve the centre of London, linking it with Reading and Heathrow airport in the west, with Shenfield and Abbey Wood in Essex.
Her Majesty was the first Monarch to travel on the tube as she opened the Victoria line back in 1969, and Prince Charles officially marked The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 with the Jubilee line.
