Mr or Ms Onyx
I am sorry someone was rude enough to abuse you for making a reasonable suggestion-I do not understand why people get so emotive on here on what is meant to be a friendly discussion on a project
With high Speed rail the problem is not so much time as cost, this also applies to the rail link from the LHR catchment area west of the airport to Boris Island.
At present the LHR express is £21 one way to go about 12 miles. If you were to have a hub built around East Midlands a central for the country you would need two southern termini-one in London and one in Reading- joining up somewhere en route to the airport line -maybe somewhere like Northampton. The route to the south then needs two new lines as existing tracks have neither cap city nor capability- probably as much real estate involved as expansion of LHR and probably a similar number of people affected.
Now comes the real killer , the journey length is 116 miles which to all intents and purposes is ten times the Heathrow Express length.-that makes the SINGLE FARE , certainly by the time its built, £200. And that kills it in one