Crossrail not Elizabeth
Worryingly, it’s already started. By trying to name Crossrail ‘The Elizabeth Line’ it sets a precedence that it can now be referred to as ‘an Underground Line’, because the Tube is referred to as the Victoria Line, and the Northern Line, and the Bakerloo Line, as so on…
But Crossrail is not a ‘tube’ railway. I repeat – Crossrail is not a tube railway. The trains are larger, the tunnels are bigger, the trains go waaaay beyond central London running on National Rail tracks. It is a National Rail service that then also goes underground – but that does not make it the Tube – no, it is its own new category of railway which we shall call ‘Crossrail’.
Two people have fallen foul already, we’ll add more here as we spot them:
- The (now online only) Independent have written an extremely lazy article where they call it ‘a new Tube line’ (is isn’t) and to add insult, they tag on the world’s easiest ‘quiz’ where you have to match the colours to the Tube lines. And they include Crossrail in that – which still isn’t a tube line.
- FishbowlNY reporting on the lady in the USA that is also called Liz Line wrote an article where they referred to Crossrail as ‘a London Tube line’. Nope, nope it isn’t the Tube. It really isn’t. It’s Crossrail.
Besides which, we’re still trying to work out how travelling on the Underground just three times in your entire life means that you have “A long association with UK transport”. We’re fairly sure that there are thousands of people that have worked on Crossrail, and railways, and even thousands more that have travelled on trains everyday of their working life, that therefore have a stronger case for having a long association with transport.