Meta's Cambridge Analytica woes are far from over. Karl Racine, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, has sued Mark Zuckerberg. He accused the Meta CEO of having a direct hand in making the decisions that led to the major data breach.
Racine claims that Zuckerberg "contributed to Facebook’s lax oversight of user data and implementation of misleading privacy agreements." That, according to the suit, allowed consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire personal data on more than 70 million Americans, including more than 340,000 DC residents. The company allegedly used the data to help sway voters in the 2016 presidential election through political ad targeting.
The AG previously sued Meta (then known as Facebook) over the scandal in 2018. That case is still ongoing. This time, Racine is targeting Zuckerberg directly. Under the jurisdiction's Consumer Protection Procedures Act, which bans unfair and deceptive trade practices, individuals are liable for a company's actions that they were aware of, controlled or failed to stop.
Racine is seeking a jury trial against Zuckerberg. He wants Meta's CEO to refrain from future CPPA violations and to pay damages and civil penalties. Engadget has contacted Meta for comment.
“Since filing our landmark lawsuit against Facebook, my office has fought tooth and nail against the company's characteristic efforts to resist producing documents and otherwise thwart our suit. We continue to persist and have followed the evidence right to Mr. Zuckerberg," Racine said in a statement. “This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook's wrongful conduct. This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including CEOs, will be held accountable for their actions.”
Following a pilot last fall that saw AT&T test Google’s Immersive Stream for Games technology to allow its customers to stream Batman: Arkham Knight, the carrier is back with a new game. Starting today, AT&T mobile postpaid subscribers can play Control: Ultimate Edition on their phones, tablets and computers at no extra charge. To access the game, all you need to do is visit the company’s Play Now website and input the phone number and ZIP code associated with your account.
No download is necessary as you’re streaming the game through the same technology that powers Stadia. AT&T envisions a future where publishers could use the technology to offer limited-time demos of their games. The carrier says you could search for a game and then, if you decide to buy it, your progress from the demo would carry over. Coincidently, that’s functionality Google already offers in Stadia through the platform’s “Click to Play Trials” feature.
Galaxy Watch 4 users can now start using Google Assistant on the device. Along with being available in the app tray, you can trigger Assistant via voice command and assign it to a long press on the home button. In addition, today's update offers users access to Google Pay, Maps and YouTube Music.
During Google I/O earlier this month, Samsung said Google Assistant support would arrive on the device sometime this summer, so it's arriving earlier than some may have expected. Patrick Chomet, Samsung's executive vice president of products and experience, noted that Assistant would allow for "faster and more natural voice interactions."
Samsung also said Spotify control will be available via Google Assistant and support for other third-party apps is on the way. Google apps and services will be optimized for the Galaxy Watch lineup will later this year.
While Galaxy Watch 4 owners are able to sideload Google Assistant, official support should make it easier for most folks to start using the feature. The move comes a year after it emerged that Samsung and Google are collaborating on Wear OS. Samsung is phasing out the Tizen platform on its wearables and will use Wear OS going forward.
One of the biggest takeovers in the history of the gaming industry is complete — Take-Two now owns Zynga. The companies announced the $12.7 billion acquisition in January. The two sides have cut through all the red tape and, after shareholders gave the thumbs up last week, the deal is done.
Zynga has joined the likes of Rockstar Games and 2K under Take-Two's umbrella. As s result of the deal, Take-Two now has a bigger stable of well-known mobile and casual gaming franchises, including Words with Friends and Farmville. Among the games Zynga is working on is Star Wars: Hunters, a free-to-play arena shooter for mobile and Nintendo Switch that's supposed to arrive this year.
“As we bring together our exceptional talent, exciting pipelines of games, and industry-leading technologies and capabilities, we believe that we can take our portfolio to another level of creativity, innovation, and quality," Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. "Each of our teams has a strong history of operational execution, and together, we expect that we will enhance our financial profile through greater scale and profitability, paving the way for us to deliver strong shareholder value.”
Take-Two's buyout of Zynga is part of a major wave of consolidation across the gaming industry. In January, Sony announced it was buying Destiny 2 studio Bungie for $3.6 billion. That news came just days after Microsoft said it planned to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Both takeovers are pending regulatory approval. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted in favor of the Microsoft deal last month.
Back in the 80s and 90s, immersion blenders were often restricted to high-end restaurants and the kitchens of nerdy home cooks. But thanks to improvements in tech, immersion blenders (also known as hand or stick blenders) have become powerful and affordable general-purpose cooking gadgets – especially for people who might not have the space for a traditional countertop model. Unfortunately picking the right one for you can get a bit confusing, so here’s a guide covering the important things you need to consider, along with our favorite devices across a handful of categories.
Which device is right for you?
Before you even think about buying a new kitchen gadget, it’s important to figure out how you’re going to use it and where it fits in with any appliances you already own. In an ideal world, everyone would have a dedicated food processor, countertop blender and a stand mixer. But the reality is that many people don’t have the room or the budget.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
While immersion blenders and traditional countertop models have a lot of overlap, there are strengths and weaknesses to both. For example, if you’re looking to make smoothies every day, a countertop blender might be a better choice. The bigger pitchers make it easier to blend drinks for multiple people at once, while larger motors will make short work of ice and frozen fruit. Additionally, more expensive options like those from Vitamix or Robocoupe can even cook soup during the blending process using the heat generated from the blender’s motor, which isn’t something you can do with an immersion model. I’d even go so far as to say that if you have the space for it and don’t own a blender of any kind, a countertop version is probably the best option for most people.
That said, immersion blenders are often less expensive and, thanks to a wide variety of accessories offered by some manufacturers, they can be great multitaskers. A whisk attachment allows you to make whipped cream or meringues quickly without needing an electric hand mixer, or risk getting tendonitis in your elbow doing it manually. Some immersion blenders also come with food processing bowls, so you can easily throw together things like a homemade pesto in minutes. And because immersion blenders are smaller and less bulky than traditional models, they're a great choice for apartment dwellers or anyone with limited storage or counter space. That means if you’re simply trying to expand your culinary repertoire without blowing up your budget, an immersion blender can be a great way to try something new without committing too hard.
Corded or cordless?
Similar to figuring out if you should get a blender or not, trying to decide between a corded or cordless model depends a lot on the other gadgets you already own. Corded versions typically have more powerful motors, which makes them great for people who don’t have a countertop blender or food processor. But if you do own one of both of those, cordless is the way to go. Not only do you get the convenience of not worrying about wires, but the ease of use makes it fast and easy to whip out your immersion blender to add some extra texture to a soup or sauce.
A quick word about safety
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
No one should be ashamed of being nervous around a device that is essentially a motorized wand with a spinning blade at the end. But with proper care and use, an immersion blender doesn’t have to be much more dangerous than a chef’s knife. The most important safety tip is to make sure you always keep the sharp end pointed down and away from you or anyone else nearby. That includes your hands, along with any utensils (like a spoon), that might be in or around your mixing bowl.
Thankfully, all consumer immersion blenders are designed to prevent their blade from directly hitting the vessel holding your food (be it a mixing bowl or a pot). However, to be extra safe, you should avoid blending things in glass containers or non-stick cookware, as glass can chip or shatter while the metal blades and shroud of an immersion blender can damage teflon and ceramic.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
You’ll also want to make sure you keep water away from the plug or outlet of corded immersion blenders. And if you want to remove the blade or clear away any food that might have gotten tangled, first make sure the blender is off and disconnected from its power source (either its battery or wall socket).
On the bright side, cleaning an immersion is rather simple and straightforward. All you have to do is fill up a bowl or cup with soapy water, submerge the immersion blender, and then run it for 10 to 20 seconds. That’s it. If it’s still not clean, you can repeat that process again until it is. And if that’s too much work, the blending arms on a lot of models (including all of the gadgets on this list) are dishwasher safe too.
Engadget picks
Best wired immersion blender: Breville Control Grip
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Starting at $120, Breville’s Control Grip not only has one of the most powerful motors (280-watts) available on an immersion blender in this price range, it also comes with a wealth of handy accessories. In addition to the main 8-inch shaft/immersion blade, the kit features a 25-ounce chopping bowl for cutting and mincing and a 42-ounce blending jug for making soups and smoothies. There’s also a whisk attachment, which means that between all of its accessories, the Control Grip can take the place of three different common kitchen gadgets: a food processor, blender and hand mixer.
I also appreciate the two-button attachment system, which ensures accessories are properly locked in before use. Breville even includes a removable blade guard to help prevent the blender from scratching your other appliances in storage. And with support for 15 different speed settings, there’s a lot of flexibility to handle all sorts of dishes. Alternatively, if you’re looking for an all-purpose immersion blender with even more attachments for making drinks and sauces, you may want to consider KitchenAid’s 5-Speed Hand Blender, which comes with two extra bell blades to help crush ice, froth milk and more.
Best cordless immersion blender: KitchenAid Cordless Variable Speed Hand Blender
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
If you just want an immersion blender that’s simple and easy to use, KitchenAid’s Cordless Variable Speed Blender is the one to get. It comes with a dishwasher-safe blending jar and an optional pan guard to help ensure you won’t nick your cookware. However, the real nifty feature is that instead of having discrete speed settings, you can adjust the blender’s 180-watt motor simply by squeezing down on the trigger. This makes using it incredibly intuitive, and thanks to its built-in safety switch, it’s much more difficult to spin up the blade by accident.
KitchenAid also claims the battery can blend up to 25 bowls of soup on a single charge. And while my kitchen is too small to test this properly, I never ran into any issues. That said, you’re going to want to make sure to top off its battery beforehand because its charging port is next to where you attach the blending arm, which means you can’t have it plugged in while it's running.
Best budget immersion blender: Hamilton Beach 2-Speed Hand Blender
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
For those who want something that’s versatile and a great value, Hamilton Beach’s 2-Speed Hand Blender is a great pick. While it isn’t cordless, in addition to the main blending arm you also get a whisk attachment and a chopping bowl – all for just $35. On top of that, its 225-watt motor is rather powerful for its price, though you don’t get as many speed settings as you would on more premium rivals. With this thing having been on the market for more than 15 years, this blender has long been a top choice among budget-conscious cooks.
We've all misplaced our keys, wallet or TV remote in the past, but Bluetooth trackers can help you find those things a bit more easily the next time that happens. Tile's devices are some of the most popular out there since they work well with both Android and iOS devices and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Now, you can pick up a four-pack of 2022 Tile trackers for $68, which is 15 percent off and a return to its all-time-low price.
The Essentials pack comes with two Tile Mates, one Tile Slim and one Tile Sticker. The Mate chips have built-in keyring holes so you can easily attach them to your keys, while the Slim is designed to slip seamlessly into your wallet, a luggage tag and other thin places. The Sticker has an adhesive backing that lets you stick it to things like a remote control, a game controller or even your pet's collar. All of these Tile trackers have IP67 water-resistant designs along with three-year, non-replaceable batteries.
Their designs may be different, but all of the Tile trackers in this pack do the same thing: allow you to keep track of your things from within Tile's mobile app. The trackers connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and transmit the last known location of your stuff to the Tile app. And if someone else finds your things before you do, you can add your contact information to the Tile so they can get ahold of you.
Each model in this pack has a Bluetooth range of 250 feet, and when you're within that range, you can force the Tiles to ring so you can more easily find your stuff. The opposite also works too — if you've misplaced your phone but have your keys with a Tile in hand, you can use the tracker to ring your smartphone even when it's on silent. Aside from the fact that you'll have to replace the entire tracker once the three-year battery runs out, Tile devices are a good way to digitally keep track of your things.
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Last year, it was reported that Amazon planned to use AI-equipped cameras to surveil delivery drivers on their routes. Now, the company has started installing such cameras on its vans in the UK, according to The Telegraph. The action has created concern from privacy groups who called it "excessive" and "creepy."
Amazon will use a pair of cameras to record footage from inside vans and out to the road. They're designed to detect road violations or poor driver practices and give an audio alert, while collecting data Amazon can use later to evaluate drivers.
They don't allow drivers to be monitored in real time and won't capture sound, but can supposedly upload footage to a dedicated safety team in certain circumstances. Some of the actions monitored include illegal road behavior like failure to stop or speeding, along with actions like hard braking or seatbelt violations.
A privacy group called Big Brother Watch said the system is "excessive, intrusive and creepy worker surveillance" and called for it to be paused. "This kind of directed surveillance could actually risk distracting drivers, let alone demoralizing them," director Silkie Carlo told The Telegraph. "It is bad for workers’ rights and awful for privacy in our country."
The GMB union that represents Amazon workers said the cameras inside the cabins aren't necessary and create a major distraction. "We are against cameras being pointed in the face of the drivers every second of every day that they are working. This is surveillance, it does not aid driver safety," a spokesperson said.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson told The Telegraph that "the purpose of introducing this technology is to keep drivers and communities safe, there is no other reason behind that. We have carried out a comprehensive data privacy assessment in line with applicable laws."
Electronic Arts is actively courting buyers — or another company willing to merge with it, according to insider news site, Puck. The video game company reportedly held talks with several potential buyers or partners, including major players Disney, Apple and Amazon.
EA remains a company of its own for now, but Puck said it’s more proactive in its quest to find a sale since Microsoft announced it's snapping up Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. In short, it shows that some companies are willing to throw around enough money to buy a gaming giant like EA.
The company, arguably best known for its legion of sports games, recently parted ways with FIFA for its soccer/football series. It’ll be called EA Sports FC going forward. No, it is not catchy.
Xiaomi finally confirmed its "long-term strategic cooperation" with Leica, and that they've been co-developing a flagship smartphone for launch in July 2022. Teaming up with camera companies has been done several times over – especially by Chinese phone manufacturers trying to stand out from the crowd. In 2020, Vivo joined forces with Zeiss, while Oppo and OnePlus started releasing handsets jointly developed with Hasselblad, including the Find X5 series and the OnePlus 10 Pro.
Harder to stand out when everyone is doing the same thing, though.
Amazon beamed the first episode of sci-fi series Night Sky out of Earth's atmosphere. It’s calling it "the first-ever intergalactic premiere for a TV series."
Prime Video’s press release said the transmission won't be caught by broadcast satellites and sent back to terra firma, as is usually the case. "Theoretically, this makes the broadcast available to anyone open to receiving satellite signals 384,000 kilometers away from Earth and beyond — the equivalent distance from Earth to the Moon."
Netflix is trying to build up hype for Stranger Things season four in a not-so-subtle way: sharing the first eight minutes of the introductory episode. It’s heavy on the flashback, but there should be enough to hook intrigued parties.
The FCC wants to boost rural broadband internet speeds through proposed changes to the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program. It wants to crank up download and upload speeds to 100/20 Mbps in areas served by carriers that receive A-CAM support. The current baseline is 25/3 Mbps.
Last week, the Biden administration launched a $45 billion project to bring all Americans online by 2030.
Clearview AI has been fined £7.55 million ($9.5 million) by the UK's privacy watchdog for illegally scraping the facial images of UK residents from social media and the web. It was also ordered to stop obtaining the data of UK residents and to delete any it has already collected. "The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behavior and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable," said UK information commissioner John Edwards in a statement.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) opened a joint investigation with Australia into Clearview AI back in 2020, and issued a preliminary fine of £17 million ($21.4 million) against the company late last year. At the time, the office noted that "Clearview AI Inc’s database are likely to include the data of a substantial number of people from the UK and may have been gathered without people’s knowledge from publicly available information online, including social media platforms."
In issuing a final injunction, the ICO noted that globally, the company illegally collected more than 20 billion facial images for its database. "Although Clearview AI no longer offers its services to UK organizations, the company has customers in other countries, so the company is still using personal data of UK residents," it said.
Clearview AI sells an app that can be used to upload a photo of someone, then try to identify them by check its database. The data has been used by thousands of public law enforcement agencies, despite the technology being in a legal grey area.
Twitter, Google and YouTube have all sent cease-and-desist letters to the company, alleging that it violates their terms of service. Facebook has also demanded that Clearview stop scraping its data. The company has received complaints from privacy groups in Europe, and was hit with a €20 million fine in Italy.
In the US, the ACLU sued Clearview for violating Illinois state laws. The company recently settled that lawsuit by agreeing to restrict the use of its database in Illinois, though it will still supply it to federal agencies and other states.
London has the oldest underground railway in the world, and on May 24th, it will welcome its newest addition to the family. Crossrail is the realization of a dream first mooted in 1941, but one that would only start being built in 2009. It is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the western world, arriving several years late and several more billion pounds over budget. But it’s hoped that this gigantic system will spur growth, relieve congestion on its Victorian-era network and remind the world of what Britain can do when it puts its mind to something. No pressure, then.
The London Underground as it exists today was borne out of a historical railway boom, with competing companies building routes to serve the city’s major economic hubs. Its many quirks are a consequence of nearly 200 years of politics, commerce, geography and geology shaping how things work. It comprises eleven lines, 272 stations and 250 miles of track, which is now under the aegis of a dedicated body, Transport for London.
Despite the wealth of transport links, many of the lines were built to serve a city far smaller than its present population. Not to mention that London is the center of gravity for far more than just the people living within its metropolitan area – it dominates much of the southeast of the country. It’s for this reason that Crossrail was given the green light, as both a way to relieve congestion on its tiny, Victorian-era tunnels, and to recognize just how broad London’s influence had become.
Crossrail Ltd.
Crossrail runs from Shenfield, a commuter suburb 35 miles northeast of London in the neighboring county of Essex, via the Great Eastern Main Line. It then runs through the city, connecting to the Great Western Main Line and then on to Reading, a large town 40 miles west of London. When fully running, it is expected to serve 200 million passengers a year, increasing London and the south east’s total rail capacity by around 10 percent in total. Crossrail is primarily an above-ground line, aside from the Central Operating Section (COS); the tunnels that run through London itself.
“It’s hard to fathom how there is space in this city to put in new stations, new infrastructure,” says Olga Konopka, Principal Delivery Engineer at Crossrail. She cited an example of how when the new Crossrail tunnels pass existing Jubilee line tunnels, the gap between them is just two meters (6.5 feet). A fleet of eight 1,000-ton Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) were tasked with weaving a new route through some of the most congested soil anywhere in the world. It’s one of the reasons that Crossrail’s birth hasn’t been an easy one – since you’ve got hundreds of years worth of infrastructure that you can’t touch during the construction process.
The TBMs pulled around seven million tonnes of material out of the ground, but Crossrail’s leaders said that almost all of it was re-used. For instance, around three million tonnes of soil was donated to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. This was used to construct a new wetland nature reserve at Wallasea Island in neighboring Essex. The rest of the clay soil was used to restore landfill, raise land and, in one instance, help build a golf course.
Luca Marino / Crossrail Ltd.
Some 26 miles of tunnels have been dug below the city, which took between May 2012 and May 2015 to complete. Konopka explained that as well as being “the biggest civil engineering project in Europe,” it also produced the largest tunnels dug for the London underground. The Central Line, for instance, has a diameter of roughly 3.5 meters (around 11.5 feet), while Crossrail tunnels are 6.2 meters (around 20 feet) wide. “Crossrail tunnels have an emergency walkway in them, which is a massive improvement to health and safety from the current infrastructure,” she said.
Konopka explained that there was some art and artistry baked into the system to help things run smoother and smarter. For instance, the gradient of the railway line gently inclines in the tunnel sections approaching a station. That way, a train slows down more efficiently since some of its forward motion is being sapped by the hill it has to climb. The situation is reversed when you pull out of a station, the track sloping almost imperceptibly downward in order to give the train a speedy departure.
It should be clear by now that Crossrail, despite the fact that it is an electric railway running under a city, is not a regular subway. It may feature on the Underground Map, and even has a line name – The Elizabeth line – but it’s not an official part of the underground itself. (Pedants beware: Crossrail denotes the project, the Elizabeth line is the thing you’ll actually be riding.) Because it connects to mainline stations at either end, and uses full-size mainline trains, it is a railway unlike anything else in the UK. In fact, the closest comparator is Paris’ Réseau Express Régional (RER), a series of lines that connect commuter suburbs to the city itself, and then moves people between stops in the city – a railway that acts like a subway when it’s in the middle of a city.
Crossrail Ltd.
One thing that was often repeated was the fact that Crossrail was a project designed to marry the very old and the very new into one seamless whole. “Farringdon was the first part of the Underground,” said Konopka, “we need[ed] to somehow marry up the old and the new, and that’s been the biggest struggle.” And making a 21st century railway run in perfect harmony with a pair of railways built in the Victorian era is one of the reasons that Crossrail’s deadline slipped from 2018 to 2022. (COVID-19, of course, was the other.)
“Conceptually, the project is brilliant,” says Colin Brown, Technical Director of the Crossrail project, but “it joins up to railways that were built in Victorian times, and that’s where your problem starts,” he said. “The Great Western was built by [Legendary engineering pioneer Isembard Kingdom] Brunel,” he explained, “and the Great Eastern wasn’t far behind it.” “The technology on those two railways has evolved over many years,” he said “but hasn’t been changed since the ‘60s or ‘70s.”
Britain’s railways, including the two main lines that Crossrail connects, use an antiquated, analog signaling system to communicate hazard warnings to drivers. This system, after a series of fatal train disasters in the ‘90s, was updated slightly to improve safety, but remains a 20th century tool. The digital replacement is ETCS (European Train Control System), which brings digital technology into the railways and promises a much safer network overall. While Crossrail was built with ETCS as standard, it also had to play nice with its analog predecessors.
Subway systems, however, use an entirely different signaling system called Communications Based Train Control (CTBC). Given the density of trains using tunnels under cities, and the need for accurate location data, CBTC is key to run services with small gaps between each train. Crossrail may not be a subway, but it will run 24 trains per hour inside the tunnels, and so needs to behave like one while it’s underground. Not to mention that CBTC is the only system that can also run the more subway-esque functions, like platform screen doors and tunnel vent interfaces.
Brown explained his dismay at the patchwork of systems and why it wouldn’t have been simpler just to pay to standardize the technology. For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t deemed feasible, and so engineers have spent years finding ways to make the old and new, analog and digital, above-ground and below-ground systems work as one cohesive whole. “You’ve [never had] a mainline train morphing into a metro train and then morphing back out again,” said Brown – at least not in the UK.
CBTC is also predominantly automatic, with drivers acting in a more supervisory role while the trains are underground.This automatic system will even operate the train when it needs to reorient itself ready for its next leg of the journey. “When it gets to Paddington,” said Pradeep Vasudev, Head of System Integration, “the driver pushes a button and then he walks from one cab to the other [at the other end of the train] while the train drives itself.” This system is also sufficiently smart that it can help find ways for the timetable to recover when a train breaks down or an incident causes a delay elsewhere on the line.
And because the system is now so much more complex, and broad, means that the timetabling systems are paramount. “For the first time, a train in Bristol [120 miles west of London] breaking down could affect a train on the Great Eastern [Main Line] in Shenfield [Crossrail’s Eastern Terminus, 35 miles northeast of London],” said Vasudev. And, of course, on the software engineering side, all of this information, and calculation, needs to be boiled down to a series of simple commands that a staffer can use to recover the service when things go awry.
One problem that Crossrail was also forced to address was the privatization of Britain’s railways in the early ‘90s. Rather than a centrally-planned and operated railway, the then Government decided to franchise each region’s railway operator. Consequently the Crossrail project had to engage with a variety of operators running different lines and find some happy harmony. “We have MTR driving, we have RFLI who owns the central section of the railway, we have London Underground, who operates a lot of the stations, we have Network Rail on either side, when we go into Heathrow, we’ve got Heathrow Express which is a different operator,” said Vasudev.
“Some of that, you’ll never get away from the fact that an operator is key, regardless of how much information the system can give you,” said Vasudev. Lee Price is one such operator, a former personal trainer and badminton coach who joined the company in 2016. Price’s story is common among new Crossrail drivers, coming from outside the train driving fraternity rather than within. This was because the project opted not to poach drivers from other underground or mainline services to avoid denting staffing levels elsewhere. (Not to mention that it helps bring the economic benefits of the system to more people, creating training and job opportunities.)
Andrew Parish / Crossrail Ltd.
Price is now a veteran of the service, and trains other drivers, although he too isn’t yet rated for the entire route. Since it’s being used as three separate railways, it will only be after the central section is opened that drivers will be running back and forth on a regular basis.
Unlike a mainline train, or a subway, the role shifts depending on where along the route the train is. “On the East and the West, you’ll be physically driving [the train],” he said, while in the COS, “in theory, the train is automatic, but we’re there for more of a safety [role].” “Although you’re doing less, you still have to remain alert,” he added, especially in the dark tunnels that require drivers to “keep their awareness up.”
Crossrail opens to the public on May 24th, with services running between Paddington and Abbey Wood. On the day, the various arms of the service will be rebranded from TFL Rail – a placeholder name – to the Elizabeth line. 12 trains per hour will run along the line, starting at 6:30am and ending at 11:00pm each weekday, with a fuller service ramping up over time. One of the new mainline stations, Bond Street, has yet to open thanks to service delays.
Work on the project is not likely to be complete for a long while yet, but if the railway does help boost London’s fortunes, it won’t be long before eyes look forward to the next project. Crossrail 2 is a proposed line running from Broxbourne and Cheshunt in London’s northeast down to Chessington, southwest of the city. It is designed to join up routes north and south of the city, and relieve congestion on those journeys as much as Crossrail is expected to do from east to west.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 and government funding cuts have put the project on ice for the foreseeable future. But one thing that is clear, is that the expertise, the lessons learned from Crossrail’s slower-than-expected birth, are currently embedded in the team that’s just finishing their work. To let all of that experience wither on the vine would seem like a criminal waste of resources. Then again, there will be voices asking why London deserves yet another expansion of its public transport network when other major cities have nothing. As always, politics, economics, geography and geology will determine the future of the most famous tube in the world.
