please empty your brain below

London Overground gets shortened to 'Overground' on line maps, despite its full modal name, so TfL are not being consistent here.

The suffix 'station' is also omitted for all TfL modes (but not for London Underground) so inconsistency abounds, it seems.

Don't get me started on the inconsistency of external TfL station name signage being in either lowercase or uppercase...
Thanks for the permission to vent ...

Johnson comes up with (or tags along with?) an idea and tells people to make it work and it ends up being a mess we have to live with, like it or not.

Sound familiar?
I wonder if they’re bargaining that, in maybe ten years from now, and certainly once the line’s namesake is no longer with us, we’ll all just slip into calling it “the Elizabeth” in the same way as we do “the Victoria”, and the awkward branding can be simplified.
I think the thing is, them telling us about these stupid decisions multiple years ago doesn't make them any less stupid.

The Battersea Power Station Station one is just out of neccessity - what else are you going to call it? But the Elizabeth line having to use the word line to show that it is a different mode of transport is just nonsense.

The pricing is the same in the core, and it has huge capacity, so I'm sure they'd love people to use it instead of the tube. So pretend it's just another tube. The key to adoption is integration.
I hated the name at the time it was announced, but given the timing of its opening I think the name will end up being quite resonant as the last big project of the second Elizabethan age.

The bigger problem is how it leaves the overall naming for TfL routes. It's clear that TfL now have multiple sub-brands for routes (Underground, Overground, DLR, Trams, Dangleway, Elizabeth). But what happens if Crossrail 2 ever gets built? Elizabeth II makes no sense and there's no extendable name for high-capacity, longer distance lines. Perhaps that's not a problem for my lifetime though.
I have absolutely no problem with the entity-known-as-Crossrail being a different 'mode' to the Underground. I do find it disappointing and confusing that this new mode then uses a term ('line') which is used for the other 'mode' we know as the Underground. The Underground uses it to differentiate between services, though no other 'mode' uses that term (the DLR, Overground etc don't use the term 'line' to describe or differentiate their services, so I find it very inconsistent that Crossrail has....)
Am I in the minority in that when referring to current lines I always say the line part, e.g take the Victoria line to Oxford Circus and then get the central line?

I did work at TfL for a number of years but I wouldn’t dream of just saying get the the Victoria and then change for the central and I e never heard any of my friends describe it like that apart from a small number of North Americans.
Kirk - TfL were originally going to call it Battersea station - a perfectly sensible name - but this was changed to the current name supposedly at the behest of the developers.
Crossrail 2 may be the William Line or the George Line, hopefully the former!
This name always reminds me of a telephone service.

Hello, you have called the Elizabeth line. For knighthood, press 1, for tea party, press 2...
I sincerely believe that TfL will quietly drop the 'Line' suffix in 5 years or so. I understand why it is included, but it is not successful in its aims.
Why is the "L" of the word "line" as used on the signage shown in lower case, while that on the list of closures shown in upper case? If this is the name/title of the thing, shouldn't both words always start with capital letters?
TfL's style guide is clear that the 'L' should be lower case. But not everybody follows it.
It looks absolutely horrific on those line diagrams and rainbow boards - the inconsistency is amateurish and infuriating. It also gives the impression that TfL couldn't decide whether they wanted people to think of it as a tube line or not and so tried to split the difference. I really hope that the people who predict the 'line' will be dropped in a few years are right.
I don't find the 'line' part as annoying as others seem to - I interchange quite happily between using line when giving directions on the tube, or not, depending to whom I am speaking.

I swore I'd only ever call it Crossrail, however, hearing 'the Elizabeth Line' used so much recently, I must admit it's beginning to stick!

But the cable car will forever be the Dangleway!
I had forgotten it was changed to Battersea Power Station because of the developers. Although I still think calling it Battersea might have been a little optimistic. Battersea Park possibly.
Alan, blame Boris who wanted it called Elizabeth line.
It should just be Crossrail 1
In the future, a second Crossrail line gets built. Roundels on that line and the existing Elizabeth line are purple. The second line gets called Charles, George, Yvonne or something else. Interchanges now say Elizabeth [without the line suffix] and/or Charles, George Yvonne or something else [no line suffix]. The lettering on the crossbar on the purple roundels outside of stations will say Crossrail, apart from those thra they forgot to update…

Or maybe not. Maybe Crossrail 2 will be called Charles line, George line, Yvonne line etc and get a snazzy new colour.

Or perhaps it won’t ever be built at all.
Given that Queens are extremely rare in UK, and there is unlikely to be another for several generations, I would have named the new line Queen Elizabeth II.
Then like almost everything else with this moniker (bridges, hospitals, ocean liners, etc.) it could have been shortened to QEII without any disrespect.
David- despite all my Victor Meldrew style rantings, I'm inconsistent in my use of the term 'line' when talking about the Underground. For example, I'll jump on the Met, or the Hammersmith and City. If I change at Baker Street I'll head for the Jubbly or the Bakerloo. If I change at Kings Cross, I'd make a beeline (ho! ho!) for the Northern line, or the Victoria line (or at other stations, the Dizzy line or Circle line)
I think it's lovely. Who wants consistency, this is England after all...
Crossrail is more descriptive of the train route.
Most people managed to transition from calling the construction project known as the "Channel Tunnel Rail Link" such to calling it "HS1" pretty smoothly, I think we'll cope.
I struggle with why the public need to know that the Elizabeth Line is technically a different mode and why it can't just look like it's a tube line (even if it does have a different operator). In the same way that the public probably don't really care to notice the difference between a deep level and a sub-surface tube, are people really going to notice that the Lizzie line is any different just because it says 'line' on the interchange?
I'm reminded of a piece in John O'Farrell's 'Things Can Only Get Better' where one of his friends refused to use the Jubilee Line when it opened because they were a staunch anti-monarchist.

Personally, the Elizabeth Line seems a perfectly reasonable and appropriate name to me and I'm not entirely sure what the fuss is about. Lines usually change name from when they were planned. True, I'm not sure 'line' is needed but it does spare everyone my Captain Mainwaring impression every time I use it.

That said, anyone calling it the 'Lizzie Line' has an appointment with me and this extremely sharp pencil.
I'm a republican but was secretly (not any more) pleased to see herself turn up at Paddington. Circle yellow suits her. If this is one of her final public acts then it is a fitting endpoint to an era-defining reign.
I’m remember when local newspapers were hailing the tube being extended to Hackney and south London long after TfL had announced that the old East London Line would be rebranded as London Overground. The North London Line, by then operated by Silverlink, would receive the same treatment. A few of us oldies might still say east London line and north London line in passing but I’d wager that most passengers call it the Overground. TfL could have kept the ELL and NLL names under the Underground umbrella and even painted class 378s in red, white and blue and people today would be calling it the tube. But they didn’t. It became the Overground - apart from the bit that became the DLR…
I guess with this post you want to draw a Line under all this.
Everyone who doesn't like the name should vote with their feet, and insist on referring to it as Crossrail at every opportunity. Eventually they might get the message and this stupid cumbersome political name might fall into disuse and get dropped.
I have no problem with the 'line' bit. But the lower case 'l' is another matter entirely.
Boo.
I make the case here for the Lizbeth line.

E-liz-a-beth has four syllables whilst Liz-beth has two and is a straightforward contraction.

By way of analogy we already have the DLR, Drain and Met. The only exception may be the Hammersmith and City line, which I have ridden but a few times and know not what it may be called colloquially. All other lines are said using two or three syllables only.

Having said all that, long live Crossrail!
Frank F: you can't (or shouldn't) shorten the ocean liner's name to QEII because its full name is Queen Elizabeth 2, meaning the second liner named QE. It is not named after Her current Majesty.

Back on topic, despite TfL's best efforts I suspect people will see it as part of the Underground (it's not that different in function from the Met, after all), but people will still call it the Elizabeth line because the Elizabeth on its own sounds a bit silly (as does the Victoria, without the line).
I love it: a fantastic new line will open next week that will revolutionise travel in London and all people can do is grouch about the name!
Ken, Hammersmith & City is to me always just the H&C - 3 syllables...
You got to bag Dangleway, but sadly Geoff Marshall's attempt (CrossElizPurp) isn't resonating enough to be dictionary worthy
It would be much simpler if we switched to the Parisian mode of naming lines - using letters and numbers.
Someome on the Rail Forums posted information from a FOI request saying that TfL's policy was meant to remove "line". I was doubtful, particularly as there was no link posted to the FOI request.
I see Carto Metro have called it just ELIZABETH. Tut tut.










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