Welsh Rail link to Heathrow

[Aviador]

Plans for £500m Welsh train link to Heathrow

Plans for a £500m rail scheme linking Wales directly to Heathrow Airport are being drawn up by the Government, the Western Mail reports. Transport Secretary Philip Hammond is reported to be in the early stages of developing a new railway station at Heathrow that would bring the Great Western Mainline and the new High Speed Two line – set to connect London to the north of England – together to form a major new transport hub.

A branch of the Great Western Mainline takes passengers from London Paddington to Swansea, via Newport, Bridgend and Cardiff. Under the new plans, passengers would be able to travel directly to the airport – slashing journey times and avoiding the need to travel into London first. The link could take more than 30 minutes off travel times from South Wales to the airport.

Preliminary work by Network Rail reportedly suggests that the new line could accommodate four shuttle services an hour between Reading and the airport – and could also handle direct trains from Cardiff and Bristol. The hub system would also give passengers travelling from Wales to the Midlands, northern England or Scotland the option of joining the high-speed line from Heathrow.

The new hub would be based at the airport and connected to one or more terminals to minimise disruption for travellers moving around the airport. Network Rail were informed of the scheme only a week ago, but despite the plans being in their early stages, the Department for Transport believes the hub and link could be up and operational by 2021.

A 'Whitehall source' told the newspaper: ‘Together with the Crossrail project and the addition of a high-speed rail link with services from Heathrow to Scotland, the north and the Midlands, as part of the second phase of the proposed High Speed Two network, this would transform Heathrow into a truly international transport hub.’

http://www.uk-airport-news.info/heathro ... 50911.html

What's the local feeling regarding the idea of a new fast rail link to Heathrow? I can't see this being a popular idea locally given the desire to progress Cardiff airport. It would arguably create the potential for faster worldwide connections but would it also lead to air services being further drained from Cardiff?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

This has surfaced following an article in a Sunday newspaper at the weekend (Sunday Times?) and has not been confirmed by the government.

South Wales would be affected because of a suggested spur running into LHR from the Great Western main line. In fact, it's not just Wales, it's the entire south west of England as well because both the Bristol main line (Brunel's original) and the line from Exeter and Plymouth all follow the same track between Reading and Paddington, hence a spur at Heathrow would affect them all.

More likely is a rail shuttle from Reading to Heathrow.

With the electrification of the line from Paddington to both Bristol and Cardiff due for completion by 2017 I can't imagine for an instant that they would divert the trains into Heathrow because it would, at a stroke, slow the journeys from the West of England and South Wales to Paddington, one of the selling points of electrification being a reduction of journey time into the capital.

LHR is pretty easy to reach already from South Wales and the West of England. From Bristol, for example, there are frequent National Express coach journeys to the airport and trains leave Bristol's two main station for Paddington at the rate of four an hour for most of the day and evening. Connections can then be made at Reading Station for bus transfer to LHR or from Paddington by rail on the Heathrow Express or Heathrow Connect.

Inevitably some comments have been made in Wales that it would be better to spend money on CWL than on this, but of course spending public money on airports is not straightforward.

I believe increased connectivity with the West and South Wales is a minor component of the scheme, if it ever goes ahead.

 

[pug]

I did a dissertation on the very subject of the Governments' response to the growth in air travel post-war, and concentrated on chapter on London airports.

I went into it believing that regional airports should have been encouraged to grow over the London airports, however on research I found out that most of the passengers using the London airports have o&d's in the South East, therefore it would be difficult (and hugely expensive in most cases) to make airlines switch to the regions.

In context, people seem to believe that because Cardiff is a capital city, that it instantly needs the kind of air services enjoyed at other airports. The truth is that the UK is so small geographically, and south Wales is not that highly populated, that it could never hope to attract the services many of its supporters seem to believe should be a given. It struggles to compete with BRS.

Cardiff would benefit from a swift train service to LHR, and also from CWL keeping its hub airport services (like KLM). They can throw all the money they like at it, but in the end I dont see the Welsh Assembly passing a PSO for routes to JFK or DXB.

 

[Aviador]

Given the seniority of Bristol airport in the South West region, surely a rail link to Bristol airport would benefit Cardiff and the South Wales principality more than a rail link to Heathrow. Bristol airport may have a relatively short runway but many of the destinations that Cardiff seeks are achievable from BRS airport especially now the Boeing Dreamliner is starting to come off the production line. Bristol seems to have the much talked about critical mass required to operate many routes that simply wouldn't work from Cardiff.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

In context, people seem to believe that because Cardiff is a capital city, that it instantly needs the kind of air services enjoyed at other airports.

This point has been made by some surprising (to me) people in Wales. Some people who work in the industry or have worked in it seem to think that CWL's status as the airport serving the Principality's capital city should give it an automatic edge over English regional airports that don't enjoy such a cachet.

At least one former fairly senior figure at CWL holds such a view and I can't think it helps the airport's cause if there is a feeling amongst some of the management (or was anyway) that its position ought to automatically attract airlines.

The reality is that the rest of the world regards CWL as a UK regional airport serving, as pug rightly points out, a relatively small population which is also not economically vibrant, the Cardiff city region excepted.

JFK and DXB from CWL are certanly not routes that would come within the scope of PSO.

As for a rail link to Bristol Airport, it will never happen. The civil engineering works would be massive for starters, having to climb 400-500 feet in 3-4 miles from a junction on the Bristol-Exeter main railway line.

Given that BRS is now capped at 10 mppa by its planning consents* (it could change in the future but the site is too small to go significantly higher in passenger numbers) the building costs would not stack up and the government would never find the money either.

The BRS Flyer bus is a very good substitute running every ten minutes in each direction (airport to city rail station and bus station) from early morning till mid evening and then through the night at longer intervals and allowing through rail and National Express booking. It carried 600,000 passengers in the past year, around ten per cent of air passenger numbers.

* If the economy does a u-turn in the coming years and airlines expand in the way they did in the first few years of this century then BRS might reach that total, in which case CWL could directly benefit because it would almost certainly take much of the overspill beyond 10 mppa.