CROSSRAIL, the ambitious, and much needed, plan to give London east to west rail links has taken a step forward, although completion is still not planned until 2013, or in a practical sense the year after the possible London Olympics.
A bill has been deposited in Parliament which should take 18 months to go through.
The Crossrail scheme would link Maidenhead in Berkshire, with Shenfield in Essex to the east, and Abbey Wood in the south east.
The heart of the project is the construction of a new tunnelled route across London, with new stations at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and Canary Wharf.
Heathrow features in the option and T5 already has westbound platforms built into the project.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk