Crossed Rails

Crossed Rails ↗

I always enjoy Hatherley’s writing, and this has all the hallmarks: a sense of melancholy at lost ambitions, wonder at the scope of the new line and some of its architecture, and, of course, muted anger at the proliferation of ugly offices, rewritten pasts and extension of the unliveably-expensive-London zone.

Still, at least it means London will become even more red:

The ‘Elizabeth Line’, with its naff royalist name, will be the agit-train that paints Maidenhead, Romford and Brentwood red. Perhaps when it does so, the Labour Party that currently dominates London to a degree not seen since the 1950s will be ready to imagine a less moronic way to run its public transport than as an expensively engineered rocket fired into the rent gap.