By Handsfree:
"I don't think there is any chance of an HS2 station serving the airport as Toton (the intended station to serve Derby and Nottingham) is only 6 miles away. There is a railway spur from the Sheet Stores freight loop planned to the northern boundary of the airport but this will be freight only to serve the envisaged industrial development."
If distance from another rail station was the criteria Toton would not be developed at all given that there are already stations with 1hr 30-1hr 45 min access to London already at Nottingham, Derbt, Long Eaton, East Midlands Parkway and Loughborough, and all of which are within a few miles of EMA.
No, the point is that this Govt is supposed to be promoting multi-modal alternatives to road transport and as the proposed HS2 line is to be tunnelled under EMA then I would have thought it would have made sense to have a station there to allow people to access the airport from a wider catchment area without having to use a car.
In any case, I strongly suspect that the High Speed element of HS2 will actually diminish over the next few years as people realise that the business case is flawed with just 5 stations between London and Leeds.
There is a freight only line being discussed (planning application not submitted yet) on the northern boundary of EMA, however this is nothing to do with EMA and the boundary between the two remains in place as far as published proposals suggest. This new development is being touted as an "inland port" to bring containers directly from Harwich and to then distribute them by road from the new hub.
With respect to Flybe at EMA, I am surprised that they do not make more of their links to Air France - KLM and offer daily (and price competitive) flights to Paris and Amsterdam to link up with their intercontinental routes from there. If I was flying abroad I would rather do that than travel to Heathrow/ Gatwick