The central section of the Elizabeth line has clocked up a million journeys in less than a week.
Opening on Tuesday 24 May — to much purple-tinted fanfare — the line between Paddington and Abbey Wood had already hit the cool million mark by Saturday 28 May.
As for the entire Elizabeth line — including the pre-existing TfL Rail sections between Reading and Paddington, and Liverpool Street and Shenfield — over two million journeys were made on the line between the Tuesday and Saturday.
Currently, there's no Sunday service, but the high number of passenger figures still means the Elizabeth line would be well on track to smash its estimated 200 million passengers per year.
Howard Smith, TfL's Director of the Elizabeth line, said: "It has been fantastic to see the Elizabeth line receive such a great reception. Customers have been flocking to the railway in the hundreds of thousands each day since opening to marvel at our beautiful new stations but also to experience drastically shorter journey times."
There's not been such a buzz about a London train line in living memory; to give a little context, in September 1968, the Victoria line opened to a tepid reception, welcoming just 20,000 passengers in its first day, so probably around 140,000 in its first week. Even if the city's population was some two million lighter back then, the sheer mammoth scale of the Elizabeth line is now coming into clear focus.
Of course, some of the opening week's two million passengers will have been train lovers keen to be among the first to ride the new trains and visit the new stations (people were singing songs and everything). But long after the initial novelty's worn off, people will be using the Elizabeth line to slash their journey times and make their lives easier. Compared to, say the cable car, which had almost 100k passengers in its first 10 days — a figure that's long since plummeted to less than 30k a week.
