No doubt from the passenger point of view it is urgently needed but from the council tax payers point of view it is a different story. The figure of 2.82 million passengers is based not on the current passenger figure but at the present maximum permitted cap of 18 million passengers if I have done my calculations correctly.
It would be easy for the protesters to claim that by doubling passenger numbers car journeys would also double but they appear to have done their research. The airport wants to increase the percentage of passengers arriving by train to 36% based on the fact that Gatwick has that figure. If they indeed reach that figure that would mean an additional 75% of car journeys based on a new total of 38 million passengers again based on simple maths.
It remains to be seen if that figure of 36% is every reached but while the dart journey might take 4 minutes passengers buying a second ticket to complete their journey to the terminal will take considerably longer. At the moment through tickets can be bought but many passengers buy tickets to Parkway and not the airport.
The airport is still claiming total journey times to London of under 30 minutes but they did not get their wish of 4 non-stop trains an hour. In fact the hourly service was cut back to remove peak hour trains, which will also impact on passenger numbers arriving by train.