Progress at Canary Wharf - February 2010

Work on the Canary Wharf Crossrail station, which will be the first Crossrail station to be constructed, began on 15 May 2009. The six-storey structure includes plans for about 9300 m3 of retail space and a roof-top park.

Tunnel boring machines are expected to reach the site in summer 2012 and the station is due to be completed in 2015. Crossrail services will begin operating from 2017 cutting journey times across London allowing travel from Canary Wharf to Liverpool Street in 7 minutes, Paddington in 17 minutes and Heathrow in 44 minutes.

The station box will be 260 m long, which is approximately the height of the UK's tallest building One Canada Square, and will be between 27 and 30 m wide.

Canary Wharf station, like the nearby Canary Wharf Tube station, will be built in a dock. The completed station box is due to be ready for the tunnel boring machines in summer 2012 enabling the North Quay worksite to be vacated for construction of a new office development to proceed.

To enable construction of the station box, 293 interlocking steel piles 18.5 m high and 1.2 m wide have been sunk into the dock floor to form a coffer dam. As part of this, 38 m-deep reinforced concrete piles have been placed through each of the 293 steel tubes. A further 160 temporary anchor piles and ties have been installed to provide restraint for the coffer dam wall.

In addition, a temporary access desk has been installed to provide access to the station box once pumping of the coffer dam has been completed as access is presently provided by boat.

Bearing piles for a permanent access deck between the Canary Wharf estate and the Crossrail station (located to the North of 30 North Colonnade) have been constructed and the first phase of piling works through Upper Bank Street Bridge has been completed.

Canary Wharf Crossrail station will be six storeys high. Retail is planned for four of the six storeys including a landscaped garden, restaurant and community facility on the top floor. The station will be covered by a semi open-air timber lattice roof with views over the dock, Canary Wharf and beyond.

North Quay is the worksite for Canary Wharf Crossrail station. When works are completed the site will be handed back to CWG to enable development of office space at North Quay, which already has planning permission. This development will be demand-led.

Canary Wharf Group (CWG) is constructing Canary Wharf Crossrail station for a fixed price of UK£ 500 million (€ 575 million). A total of UK£ 350 million (€ 402 million) of the station's costs are being met from Crossrail's UK£ 15.9 billion (€ 18.3 billion) budget with CWG bearing the risk in relation to costs above the fixed price limit.