Crossrail work set to cost £100m a month until next year

London mayor Sadiq Khan is expecting the equivalent of around £100m a month to be poured into Crossrail’s construction every month until March 2020, budget papers have revealed. 

In his final draft budget Khan revealed construction costs for Crossrail were expected to hit £1.4bn in 2018-19 with another £1.2bn still due to be spent in the year to March 2020. 

The total amount expected to be spent on Crossrail in 2019-20, which has been outlined in the final draft capital plan for TfL’s expenditure across the next five years, is almost £1.3bn when costs associated with rolling stock and depots are included.

At the moment, the budget does not include any expenditure on Crossrail construction after March 2020. New Crossrail boss Mark Wild has not yet put an opening date on the scheme since taking on the top job in November.

The scheme was originally due to open last December but last summer this was delayed until this autumn and since then Wild has admitted he has no idea when it will be ready.

Meanwhile, the long-term capital strategy for TfL, which covers spending between 2023-24 and 2037-38, predicted TfL would spend £41.3bn on the planned Crossrail 2 project.

This means the proposed north-south running railway is expected to cost more than twice as much as Crossrail – which now has a revised budget of £17.6bn