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£7bn Thameslink expansion due to arrive in 2020... two decades late

The new Thameslink expansion will not fully open until 2020, it was revealed today: Tadie88/Flickr
The new Thameslink expansion will not fully open until 2020, it was revealed today: Tadie88/Flickr

The trains soon to arrive are 20 years late... Thameslink 2000, the massive expansion project for the through-London service — originally costed at £650 million with its host of more and faster services — should, as the name implies, have opened for the new millennium.

Instead, after years of objections, changes and dramatic expansion including new trains and routes, combined with wildly escalating costs to £7 billion, it will not fully open until 2020, it was revealed today.

Plans to run 24 Thameslink trains per hour through central London have been delayed for 12 months and the speedy Tube-style service will not start until December 2019.

The majority of work is being completed for next year but upgrade delays on the Maidstone East to London Bridge route will push the long-awaited final completion into 2020.

As delays continued, the name Thameslink 2000, proposed in 1989, was quietly dropped to be replaced with the Thameslink Programme.

Expanding Thameslink is the biggest investment since Victorian times —some trains will even have information systems telling passengers where to move to carriages with more space.

GTR, the parent company, says 70 per cent of the overall benefits will be operational by next May, with huge timetable changes on the biggest rail network in the country, comprising Thameslink, Southern Rail, Gatwick Express and Great Northern.

From May there will be additional capacity with new faster trains for 35,000-40,000 more passengers during the morning and evening peaks across the GTR network.

Bringing in all the changes is such a huge task that it was decided to split their introduction between next May and December 2019 in six monthly sections. GTR says avoiding a “big bang” approach will reduce the risk of disruption.

It admits not all routes “will be connected together, north and south of London” for a May completion date.

"Industry insiders also doubt the reliability of 24 trains per hour, at peak times between St Pancras and Blackfriars, saying the slightest hiccup will lead to chaos. One said: “A service every two or three minutes on the Tube is one thing but trying to do the same on mainline rail will be very different.”

A GTR spokesman confirmed the 24 trains per hour at peak times would not now begin until December 2019.

Chris Gibb, chairman of the Thameslink Programme Industry Readiness Board, said: “By phasing the introduction of the new timetable in this way we have front-loaded the benefits for passengers and then spread further changes in such a way that they can be more reliably introduced.”

From next May the expanded Thameslink network will mean new direct routes through London between Cambridge and Brighton, Horsham and Peterborough; Luton and Kent Medway towns; Littlehampton and Bedford; and East Grinstead and Bedford.

Cambridge to Gatwick Airport will be 20 per cent faster, and Greenwich to Luton Airport 37 per cent faster.

There will be new Siemens-built Class 700 Thameslink trains, many the size of 21 double-decker buses, and from December 2019 there will be extra connections between Maidstone East and Cambridge.