Originally Posted by
pabely
Seems a logical move to me. Considering they can push for this based on aircraft upguaging alone, coupled with the £1.1bn investment as part of the 43mppa plan already approved, and within the current aircraft movement limit.
The main consideration for this is local traffic. There really is no other environmental challenge against this proposal since the airport already has the permission to go to 274k annual aircraft movements anyway.
There needs to be sound case for public transportation and STN is in a pretty good position for this anyway with already close to half of passengers using public transport. The Stansted Express has already seen a big uplift in seat availability with the new 12-carriage trains, so that is already futureproofed for additional passenger numbers, and bus/coach services have a lot of potential to expand further. They inevitably would have to upgrade Bassingbourn roundabout to a full split level junction to allow continuous flow from the A120/M11 and make Thremhall Ave a dual-carriageway, both of which have long been safeguarded to implement when needed.
LGW for instance I think have a harder hill to climb actually with public transport use as part of their expansion plans. The problem there is they're very dependent on the train as road infrastructure to central London is fairly poor since the M23 ends just inside the M25 circle, with very congested urban routes from there and limited ability to change that. So that puts even greater pressure on the trains and there isn't the capacity currently to increase that provision either.
The biggest constraint on additional trains to STN is the single-track tunnel that goes underneath the runway and the current platform availability at the station itself. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the airport were to look at helping in some way to fund boring a tunnel for a second track and station upgrades to increase provision in the future. This, according to Greater Anglia, along with some anticipated line-speed improvements from signalling upgrades en-route would reduce Stansted Express journey times to about 40 minutes, as well as put additional trains through to the airport. This is before you consider multi-billion pound projects like Crossrail 2 or upgrading the West Anglia line to 4-tracking. If that were to ever happen, the Stansted Express full journey could be done in 30 minutes.