 In the early 1990s the number of passengers using the branch stabilised at about 800 people each weekday. In 2009 the Chesham branch saw 427,000 journeys each year. The proposal to close the Aylesbury – Marylebone route was dropped, and instead the line was upgraded and equipped with fast British Rail Class 165 trains in the early 1990s. These reduced the travel time between Chalfont & Latimer and Marylebone to 33 minutes, increasing usage of the line as a commuter route. The Chesham branch was proposed as a terminus for the original Crossrail scheme, which would have seen Crossrail trains running from Paddington to serve the stations between Rickmansworth and Aylesbury and the Chesham branch, allowing London Transport to withdraw from Buckinghamshire and cut the Metropolitan line back to serve only the branches to Watford and Uxbridge. The bill proposing the scheme was defeated in Parliament and abandoned in 1995, and the revived scheme authorised by the Crossrail Act 2008 did not include the branches to Aylesbury and Chesham. By this time the little-used Central line branch from Epping to Ongar had closed, with the last services running on 30 September 1994, leaving Chesham — already the westernmost point of the London Underground network since 1961's withdrawal from Aylesbury — as the northernmost point on the London Underground.
