THOUSANDS of jobs are being created in the New Year when Crossrail construction gets under way at full speed. Many are being targeted for those on the dole, mostly in deprived communities along the route, the Transport Minister pledged today

By Mike Brooke

THOUSANDS of jobs are being created in the New Year when Crossrail construction gets under way at full speed.

Many are being targeted for those on the dole, mostly in deprived communities along the route including the East End, the Transport Minister pledged today.

By the end of 2010, construction at all stations across the City and West End will have started.

Such is the scale that Crossrail is opening a dedicated tunnelling academy’ with as many as 3,000 workers expected to be trained by 2015 for tunnelling jobs.

Teams of construction workers will be working 24 hours a day to complete the tunnels, while thousands of others employed on new stations along the route, including Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street.

Transport Minister Sadiq Khan said: “The first of 14,000 jobs are being created primarily among the unemployed and communities living along the Crossrail route.

“I’ve seen Britain’s most ambitious rail project in decades begin to take shape in the six months since the first steel pile was driven into the foundations of the new Canary Wharf station.”

Canary Wharf has been under construction since Mayor of London Boris Johnson drove the first pile into the ground in May. Now draining the dock where the station is being built begins early in the New Year.

Crossrail’s Chairman Terry Morgan said: “Work is now underway at Canary Wharf, Farringdon and Tottenham Court Road with construction at the remaining stations in central London beginning in the Next Year.”

Meanwhile, Crossrail has started the formal tendering process for drilling the 15 miles of new tunnels to run deep beneath Docklands, the City and West End.

London’s new super tube’ will link National Rail’s Great Eastern line at Liverpool Street and Great Western line at Paddington with Canary Wharf in the east and Heathrow Airport in the west. The line going east splits at Whitechapel, one branch to Stratford and Shenfield, the other to Canary Wharf and under the Thames to Abbey Wood.