London’s Elizabeth Line has made more than one million journeys since it opened last May.

More customers than expected have taken advantage of the capital’s newest transport link, with 600,000 passengers each day, according to data from Transport for London (TfL), meaning the railway is on track to break even by the end of the 2023/24 financial year.

The Elizabeth line stretches from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

Howard Smith, TfL’s director of the Elizabeth line, said: “It has been amazing to see the incredible reception the Elizabeth line has received. Our new railway has truly transformed life and travel in London and the south-east by dramatically improving transport links, cutting journey times, providing additional capacity, and transforming accessibility.”

Seb Dance, London’s deputy mayor for transport, said the line’s “speedy and reliable trains” are helping to encourage people onto public transport.

The final version of the Elizabeth line timetable will be introduced on 21 May, increasing capacity on central London’s rail network by 10%, boosting frequency in central London, reducing journey times from the west stations to Paddington and providing new access to Heathrow Airport. 

The service in the central section between Paddington and Whitechapel will increase to up to 24 trains per hour during the peak and initially 16 trains per hour off-peak. At this point, some direct services will be introduced from Shenfield to Heathrow Airport in the off-peak. 

The final timetable, which was published and confirmed by Network Rail at the end of January, will also remove any significant dwell times for trains between Paddington and Acton Main Line which have been in place since November 2022.

The data has also revealed that the Elizabeth line is one of the most reliable railways with an overall industry performance (over a four-week period) of nearly 93%, compared to the average of 78.5%

According to TfL’s customer satisfaction survey, the Elizabeth line has also achieved the highest score across all TfL services between July and September last year.

The five most popular journeys made on the Elizabeth line all include Tottenham Court Road, with the most popular journey on the line being Tottenham Court Road to Stratford. The popularity of Tottenham Court Road has propelled the station into the top five most used stations in the TfL network, above Waterloo and Liverpool Street stations.