The Thameslink project, slated to run trains automatically through central London, will not be fully implemented until December 2019, after plans to run 24 Thameslink trains per hour at peak times have been delayed for 12 months. 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.
GTR, the parent company, says 70 per cent of the overall benefits will be operational by next May. 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. The 24 trains per hour service at peak times would not now begin until December 2019.
As the name implies, Thameslink 2000 should have opened for the new millennium, but as delays continued, the name, proposed in 1989, was quietly dropped to be replaced with the Thameslink Programme. The project, which was originally estimated at £650 million (EUR 730 million), will cost £7 billion (EUR 7.8 billion).
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