Crossrail/Elizabeth Line. From construction to operation - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[Celestial]

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/bulletins/estimatesoftheveryoldincludingcentenarians/2002to2020

No sorry , I meant Figure 3 here, which you can see how births drifted down during the war, shot up immediately afterwards, and quickly drifted back down again.

[grahame]

No sorry , I meant Figure 3 here, which you can see how births drifted down during the war, shot up immediately afterwards, and quickly drifted back down again.

This one then  :

[Celestial]

Yes, thank you! And of course, 1918 to 20 was also the period of the Spanish Flu pandemic, just to give a parallel with modern times.

Sorry, we've drifted a bit off Crossrail haven't we...

[stuving]

If you want to know the expected future survival rates of old ladies you should look at a life table, which shows that directly. ONS^» (Office for National Statistics - website) has three-year average tables for the whole population, for download from this page.

The latest table is for 2018-2020, and gives numbers per 100,00 live births. This is the bottom right-hand bit of the table (women now aged 95 -99; there are no annual data for age 100 and over):

age	mx	qx	lx	dx	ex
95	0.260177	0.230227	12458.8	2868.4	3.06
96	0.289863	0.253171	9590.5	2428.0	2.83
97	0.322798	0.277939	7162.4	1990.7	2.62
98	0.352456	0.299649	5171.7	1549.7	2.43
99	0.380825	0.319910	3622.0	1158.7	2.26

The columns show (using standard life table notation) probabilities as number, and population numbers per 100,000:
age  exact years at the start of each year of age
mx   central mortality rate - number of deaths from 'age' to 'age'+1 divided by the average population during that year
qx    mortality rate - number of deaths from 'age' to 'age'+1 divided by the population at 'age'
lx     survivors - how many of 100,000 live births would be still alive at exact 'age' based on qx in this table
dx    is the difference in lx: the number of the original 100,000 dying at 'age' to 'age'+1
ex    is the period life expectancy - how many years of life there are on average at 'age'

These are worked out for each year's population data and then averaged over the three years 2018-2020.
These are population figures - based on all the people alive at the same time born over a long period, not cohort figures - based on those born at the same time, reaching any given age in different years.

So for 100 97-year old women, of average health for the country as a whole, 28 will not reach age 98. They will on average live 2.62 years, and have a less than evens chance of reaching 100.

[Celestial]

Thank you, (although that looks very complicated - I think I'm going to be out of my depth if this conversation continues!)

[Ralph Ayres]

Just one small correction - it's Operation London Bridge; I have to hand the plans for church bellringing at the relevant time.  The name did lead to some double-takes in the rail industry a few years back when London Bridge station was redeveloped.

The change of name from Crossrail to the Elizabeth line incidentally has also caused some difficulty with terminology, sprung as it was on all but a select few who were presumably in the know before it was revealed.  The two terms can't always just be swapped by cut-and-paste, and the new name doesn't lend itself to abbreviating in a dignified manner where space is limited.  It's also far from clear why there is to be a separate Elizabeth line roundel outside stations it serves when Victoria line stations for instance just have a generic "Underground" roundel.

[CyclingSid]

I see a significant reduction of numbers in nearly every year in 2020 - the effect of Coronavirus, I would suggest.

Might be worth looking at Excess Deaths https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/excessdeathsinenglandandwales2020final

There are some FoI responses for 2021 figures https://www.ons.gov.uk/search?q=Excess+deaths

Further detail at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-weekly-reports

[IndustryInsider]

A good set of tweets from someone involved in one of the recent mass evacuation test exercises:

https://twitter.com/omari_antony/status/1494989982540390403?t=PWMpGLJhVYUWUxxldQuGig&s=19

[ChrisB]

Comment from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) this afternoon that services through the central section to/from Thames Valley could start as soon as September....building slowly to the 24 tph through the central section

[CyclingSid]

Sorry this is a drop and run
https://twitter.com/MrTimDunn/status/1503051135317381131?cxt=HHwWlsC4_ejC9NspAAAA
but I am a bit busy

[stuving]

Another step towards full rate operations is being tried on Sunday: a whole day of 20 tph (or twelve hours, anyway). The schedule is 3 minute intervals all day, which sounds more demanding than 2.5 minutes with a recovery gap every half hour.

Of each hour's trains, ten will turn at Westbourne Park, four at Old Oak Common, four at West Ealing sidings, and two at Hayes and Harlington. So it might be worth a look to see how they are doing, on one of the signalling maps if you are not going to be close to Westbourne Park.

[IndustryInsider]

It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.  I shall take a peek at the signalmaps site at some point during the day for a gander.

[broadgage]

I expect that trial running will go reasonably well.
The real and much more severe test will be how well the system survives contact with real passengers.
Some of whom will be drunk, stupid or otherwise NFTT.

[Red Squirrel]

I have renamed this thread in anticipation of imminent opening!

[Bmblbzzz]

Yes, thank you! And of course, 1918 to 20 was also the period of the Spanish Flu pandemic, just to give a parallel with modern times.

Sorry, we've drifted a bit off Crossrail haven't we...

Not so much drifted as jumped right over the tracks! Very interesting though.