Even better, develop our second city, BHX, as a hub and link the London-Birmingham-Manchester corridor with high-frequency, high-speed trains (including stops at all three airports). Should be possible to get journey times to London and Manchester close to 1 hour from BHX.
Wasn't that what Prescottgrad was all about?
Could even extend in the other directions to Bristol and Sheffield/ Leeds.
Arrange some integrated ticketing and people might just take the train to the plane.
