But Heathrow is an enormous beast (too big, in my opinion, but, hey, that's not what this post is about), and while rail links to and from central London were now pretty good, rail links from anywhere else were appalling. Car remains the main way of accessing the airport, via the M25 and M4.
So a cunning scheme was devised -- and called Airtrack -- utilising mostly existing railway lines but, with a few gaps filled-in, providing proper connections from the airport to the south and southwest (the yellow lines in this diagram):
Private airport owner BAA has now announced that it is scrapping the Airtrack scheme. It can't be bothered to fund it when it has "other priorities" (doubtless the construction of more hideous "retail opportunities" at its wretchedly inefficient airport), despite having a logo designed for Airtrack (which means a substantial part of the budget must already have been spent?):
Instead, apparently, Heathrow is going to concentrate on ensuring proper connections to HS2, the proposed new high speed railway from London to the West Midlands and, ultimately, maybe, to the North-West and West Yorkshire. Maybe.
One positive result of proper integration to the north would be linking Heathrow into the Overground network at Old Oak Common, which would enable very handy passenger dispersal without going through over-clogged central London.
Still, no problem for me: I live on the Piccadilly line. (Well, not literally on it, obviously. That would be silly.)
PS: Perhaps I should mention that the current Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond, is a local MP who, before becoming SoS, led local political opposition to Airtrack. I'm sure he wouldn't allow his own parochial political concerns to affect any opinion he may have as one of our great Secretaries of State. Oh, no. It's purely coincidental that this project has now been scrapped.
3 comments:
Are you really going to leave us once this blog fills up? It gives me anxiety to think about losing you.
Blimey: had I known I would become responsible for people teetering on the brink of panic attacks I would never have started blogging!
Or do you mean you'll be anxious about what I'll be getting up to if I'm not being diverted by the relatively harmless tidal wave of filth I post into cyberspace...?
Of course, if you want me to continue there is always the option of offering me money. I clearly have no moral concerns about prostitution and it would be utterly hypocritical of me not to be willing to prostitute myself. So make me an offer!
Surely its all about the level crossings. The routes that Airtrack would use were built with many level crossings as a way of reducing initial construction costs. The extra trains for airtrack would mean that the locals would have to book a level crossing passage three weeks ahead! Well, something like that.
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