"Good morning and welcome to your new Bond Street station" croons a voice over the tannoy, and finally it feels very real. (Even if we are greeted by the surreal appearance of Geoff Marshall wearing a tux, in sartorial homage to a certain fictional MI6 agent.)
In the early hours of 24 October 2022, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the outgoing London Transport Commissioner Andy Byford were among those there to witness the Elizabeth line station's long-long-long-awaited opening. There was a live performance to mark the occasion, too — a song from the National Theatre's new musical, Hex (presumably a nod to the station's problematic past).
The slow coach of the Elizabeth line's central section, Bond Street should've opened in May 2022, and arguably a lot sooner than that. But as with all these Elizabeth line stations, you find yourself forgiving and forgetting, once you're in the futuristic, creamy folds of its capacious concourses; and zipping along to, say, Paddington in three minutes flat.
We've said it before: the Elizabeth line is a form of time travel, which will eventually shave hours, or even days, off your commuting life.
While the new Elizabeth line stations admittedly don't possess the personality of their tube station brethren (say, the Victoria line's playful tilework), they do have their quirks, and one of Bond Street's is Darren Almond's abstract artwork above the escalators in the Davies Street entrance. The real talking point though, is an escalator itself — the vertiginous 60-metre-long ascent to the other ticket hall — an ethereal, and mildly scary upwards slope, where you feel like you should be emerging at the gates of heaven, rather than Hanover Square.
Importantly, Bond Street's opening means the final piece of the Elizabeth line puzzle is in place. From Sunday 6 November, there'll be direct trains from Reading and Heathrow to Abbey Wood and from Shenfield to Paddington. I think we can finally say it now: the Elizabeth line is here. All of it.
