HEATHROW

[anothertyke]

public transport at heathrow

Fairdeal

I don't see how without spending an ocean of public money public transport at Heathrow can be 'ultra-reliable'. Via Feltham, via Piccadilly Line, via Paddington all have their downsides. Major improvements are required but people will always have to leave a safety margin. Like everyone, I have sweated on stationary trains (not) going to the airport in various cities, it comes with the territory. Once you are committed, if something goes seriously wrong you are stuck.

I do agree with you re the western rail chord though. Even one an hour to Birmingham for the next twelve years and after HS2 one an hour to Bristol would make a big difference and I have been told the timetable and layout at Heathrow allow for that. Bizarre not to have done that.

Could I ask you and DaveReid in particular as knowledgeable people. Suppose that Boris's Island is a non-starter and suppose that in the end the politics is just too difficult or if you prefer the next Govt is just too feeble at Heathrow. What is Plan B? Would a second runway at Gatwick and send one of the alliances there en masse, ie split the hub, be remotely conceivable?

[PAXboy]

anothertyke

What is Plan B?

You mean - there actually IS a Plan A???!!!
I fear that no such plan exists.

[anothertyke]

Plan A

Yes very good you are probably right. But to clarify let's say an obvious contender for Plan A is a third runway at LHR and keep the hub operations located in one place where billions of existing investment are sunk. That must be a strong runner with numerous option variations (runway location, allow for future fourth runway or not....). Then my question is---suppose that's ruled out by politics,Zak, Justine,HACAN etc, the impossibility of getting things done in this great society of ours, what then?

[jabird]

I believe it's only pedestrians that are banned from the tunnel - they can of course travel free through it on local buses.

In which case they are not pedestrians. I only got that same map - dated 2008, but also talking of 400+ cycle parking spaces around the site, including the central area.

I doubt they'd be able to just ban all cyclists from coming in - there's be a forum thread on that somewhere, we're an angry bunch when we get shut out!

Also, there's the Equality Act, under which someone could argue that if they (through disability, health condition etc) were unable to drive a car, they had a basic right to the next most flexible means of getting around, which is the bike.

The "left turn" issue has been discussed before, either on this thread or others (Fantasy Island & so on). There are two key problems:

1) The entire airport complex is in tunnels and not designed for diesel stock. Therefore the left turn is a non-starter until the line is electrified - now under way.
2) Long distance trains have traditionally been 8-10 coaches long. The HX is 5-coach, does anyone know the platform length at each of the 3 stations?

My understanding is that the current Vomiter, sorry, Voyager fleet will be lengthened by adding on a coach with pantograph, so this would take the super-voyagers to 6. I think most of the HST replacements are also 7+.

So a regional service would be more likely in the interim, perhaps terminating at Oxford?

After that, is there not supposed to be a direct link from the GW line into T5, enabling a continuation from there in to Paddington? Announced a few months ago, not seen any details. This would presumably allow for full length (10-11 coaches?) trains.

Beyond this is the prospect of an HS2 link, but only in Phase 2. Frankly, even though I admit to being sceptical about the whole HS2 deal (who wouldn't be with another £10bn on last week), I really can't see the link into LHR happening.

For these trains, you are talking double length, even double height. The tunnelling requirements would be huge, so the talk is just of serving T5. Then you have the issue of track paths - the most important destination from LHR is central London, which is served by 4x5 coaches hourly. The West Midlands are what - 2-5% of volume? So you are already spread very thin. Brum's trumpeting of HS2 blows up in their face if there's a direct link sucking more people into LHR, but would these trains be viable? Even if there is a business case - based on £4bn for an hourly service, v £20bn+ for Phase 1, but an eventual capacity of 18 trains / hour, what would Beardie / Delta / Star / basically all the other airlines say about the unfair advantage going to BA?

Maybe they wouldn't be bothered because that's balanced out by T5 already being further from London than the other terminals. Maybe they wouldn't be bothered because they just wouldn't see a threat.

Either way, none of the "obvious" rail answers are as obvious as they seem when you deal with UK rail economics.

[c52]

Wonder if anyone has a notion what One World might pay one of the other alliances to quit Heathrow, or what might be demanded - say it happens after another runway is built at LGW or STN.

[jabird]

what One World might pay one of the other alliances to quit Heathrow, or what might be demanded

I think that would be deemed a bribe by the various competition powers.

The only hope would be that a dual runway LGW could offer one of the networks (assuming VS are fully in Skyteam by then) a huge midfield hub to their own specifications - but even if they gave it away (say for 10 years), LHR is where they want to be, and reducing hub costs wouldn't make up for lost yield.

[DaveReidUK]

In which case they are not pedestrians.

I knew some clever clogs would say that. Well they become pedestrians again when they get off the bus ...

I doubt they'd be able to just ban all cyclists from coming in - there's be a forum thread on that somewhere, we're an angry bunch when we get shut out!

It's many years since I cycled through the tunnel, and even longer since I last walked through it. It's mainly taxis and car drivers in the know who use it nowadays.

I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to cycle through, though reportedly most drivers are considerate, and bikes are encouraged to use the middle of the road to dissuade them from overtaking:

[jabird]

I knew some clever clogs would say that. Well they become pedestrians again when they get off the bus ...

No seriously, they are two quite different concepts in transport terms.

Also, for any kind of modelling, the most "senior" type of transport tends to get the credit - so if you cycle to the station to catch a train, that's a train journey. Bus to station - train gets credit, and if you fly somewhere, well, you don't need me to tell you that one.

Transport bigwigs tend to forget just how important walking is in its own right. Every journey - from a trip to the shops to a honeymoon down-under, starts with a walk.

I might be a fully paid up lycra lout, but the fittest and slimmest people I know are the ones who walk. They don't just go to the closest shops, they walk across town or between towns / village and town or they walk across London. If they have to get on a bus, that defeats the whole point.

I know we're talking about a very exceptional case here, but Heathrow is a place of work as well as a transport hub. By definition, you should be able to walk into and out of it. I understand that there's a free shuttle bus, but that is still a failure on the walkability front.

The CTA may be a lost cause, but if a third runway is going to have any hope of being passed, there has to be a massive reduction in air pollution in the area around the airport, and this has to come through providing genuine improvements in the way the streets are configured. Also, this can't just be imposed on these areas, otherwise they will object to the measures meant to mitigate their objections!

It all has to be done through consultation and through best practice design, and this is why TfL are so key. That is perhaps the lost tragedy in them going on the "Boris Island" promotion tour. We all know the island airport is a regurgitated fantasy, but instead of making LHR R3 look positively rosy in comparison, it is drawing attention away from genuine mitigation methods.

[Fairdealfrank]

Quote: “If that's the case, BAA don't seem to have cottoned on to it - they are still showing cycle access to Terminals 1-3 on their website:

http://www.heathrowairport.com/stati...Motorcycle.pdf

I believe it's only pedestrians that are banned from the tunnel - they can of course travel free through it on local buses.”

OK point taken, cyclists are now on the roads with the heavy traffic as their former segregated tunnels (shared with pedestrians) have now been turned over to traffic.
　
　
Quote: “Fairdeal

I don't see how without spending an ocean of public money public transport at Heathrow can be 'ultra-reliable'. Via Feltham, via Piccadilly Line, via Paddington all have their downsides. Major improvements are required but people will always have to leave a safety margin. Like everyone, I have sweated on stationary trains (not) going to the airport in various cities, it comes with the territory. Once you are committed, if something goes seriously wrong you are stuck.”

You are right, anothertyke, we either have to attempt to emulate the best or accept that most road journeys to/from LHR will be by car.

Quote: “I do agree with you re the western rail chord though. Even one an hour to Birmingham for the next twelve years and after HS2 one an hour to Bristol would make a big difference and I have been told the timetable and layout at Heathrow allow for that. Bizarre not to have done that.”

Just trains to Reading would help, there’s a wealth of connections available there. Failing that, having some of the West Country/South Wales long distance trains stop at Hayes would have been beneficial.

Think we can forget about HS2, this is not France. There the TGV serves the airports on “through routes” while the city bound services eventually join the "conventional" tracks to serve existing city centre stations for interchange opportunities. A couple of examples that come to mind are airport stations at CDG and LYS on the “through” lines and Paris-Lyon/Paris-Nord and Lyon-Partdieu/Lyon-Perrache for the city services.

Quote: “Could I ask you and DaveReid in particular as knowledgeable people. Suppose that Boris's Island is a non-starter and suppose that in the end the politics is just too difficult or if you prefer the next Govt is just too feeble at Heathrow. What is Plan B? Would a second runway at Gatwick and send one of the alliances there en masse, ie split the hub, be remotely conceivable?”

Thanks for the comment, think there's many more knowlegable than me on this forum!

Boris Island remains a complete non-starter and a diversion (sorry Silver!), there is no question.

The danger is that the Government will be feeble over LHR. Plan B is probably the very unsatisfactory option: “do nothing”, and more carriers unable to acquire LHR slots at affordable rates would be off to AMS, CDG, FRA, etc.. On the other hand, that appears to be Plan A as well!

No alliance or even a single airline can be “sent” to LGW from LHR. Major UK airports are in the private sector so no one can “direct” airlines to use certain airports. Any attempts to do so would result in years of litigation.

It’s all based on commercial considerations. For any airline to leave LHR for LGW would be commercial suicide, there's not enough premium business or sufficient connectivity at LGW.
　
　
Quote: “The only hope would be that a dual runway LGW could offer one of the networks (assuming VS are fully in Skyteam by then) a huge midfield hub to their own specifications - but even if they gave it away (say for 10 years), LHR is where they want to be, and reducing hub costs wouldn't make up for lost yield.”

Exactly, never going to happen, certainly not for VS. VS’s move from LGW to LHR in the 1980s saved it from following BUA, BCAL, Laker, etc., down the tubes. VS won’t leave LHR, and it’s not clear cut that it will join Skyteam.



Quote: "It all has to be done through consultation and through best practice design, and this is why TfL are so key. That is perhaps the lost tragedy in them going on the "Boris Island" promotion tour. We all know the island airport is a regurgitated fantasy, but instead of making LHR R3 look positively rosy in comparison, it is drawing attention away from genuine mitigation methods."

As mentioned above, major UK airports are not publicly owned, not by central government and not by local government, also, Boris Island is well beyond TFL's geographical remit.

The ""Boris Island" promotion tour" sounds like a "jolly boy's" outing and yet another typical waste of public money.

[DaveReidUK]

OK point taken, cyclists are now on the roads with the heavy traffic as their former segregated tunnels (shared with pedestrians) have now been turned over to traffic.

Hardly "heavy traffic", the side tunnels are shared between cycles and cars/taxis. Anything that's much bigger won't fit.

And, as I pointed out in my previous post (which has mysteriously disappeared), cyclists have priority anyway:

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pics/...mall/hell?v=9G

[jabird]

Hardly "heavy traffic", the side tunnels are shared between cycles and cars/taxis. Anything that's much bigger won't fit.

Well this looks like the first UK example I've seen of what our Dutch friends call a "fietsstraat" or bike street. The concept is quite well used there, but the circumstances are quite different.

In both cases, the bike lane goes down the centre, and cars are not allowed to overtake bikes, but that's where the similarities end.

In the Dutch cases, the street might typically have a VERY high number of bikes on it - even by Dutch standards, as it might form part of a through route for bikes, but it is only used by cars to access properties on that street.

So let's say, for example, there was a north-south cycle route instead of the foot path which runs along the River Crane, and it then connected towards Bath Road via Waye Ave. If this formed part of a busy cycle route (fat chance at the moment, but say this was just to the east of Schiphol) - you might get as much as 90% of traffic on that road being bicycles, as there's no through road traffic.

So some bright spark has taken this concept and said - let's change a traffic free route and allow cars on it. Except that these cars want to get to an airport. Fast. I've only glanced a few comments in cycle forums and views seem to be mixed - some say the cars / taxis "behave", others say it is very intimidating.

If I was a driver with a flight to catch and the main tunnels were moving like treacle, then I'd see the "left" tunnel as a bit of a gamble. We used to have a level crossing like this - cut through and it will save you 3 minutes, but every now and then you'd get fast then local westbound and local then fast east, with the station being just to the west of the crossing, and that combo could cost you 25 minutes.

Either way - non-motorised access to Heathrow is a dog's breakfast.

And, as I pointed out in my previous post (which has mysteriously disappeared), cyclists have priority anyway:

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pics/...mall/hell?v=9G

That link seems to have vanished too.

[DaveReidUK]

Stanwell Moor braces itself

BBC News is reporting that Heathrow has agreed to brief the residents of Stanwell Moor re the southern R3 option on 18th July, the day after the proposals are to be formally published.

In the meantime, still no indication of how the proposed runway is to be shoehorned in between the existing 09R/27L and the reservoirs.

BBC News - Stanwell Moor meeting over Heathrow 'blight fears'

[DaveReidUK]

And Boris has been busy, too

The Mayor of London yesterday submitted his response to the Airport Commission, arguing that anything less than a four-runway hub would still leave many important business destinations and emerging markets without direct flights from the UK.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...l-response.pdf

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...dence-base.pdf

[Skipness One Echo]

The Mayor of London yesterday submitted his response to the Airport Commission, arguing that anything less than a four-runway hub would still leave many important business destinations and emerging markets without direct flights from the UK.

He's actually making the case for LHR in spite of himself. The eventual reult will be we need a four runway hub airport but we can't afford to concrete over Essex or the Thames estuary, lose tens of thousands of blue collar jobs in West London, close LHR and move the centre of business focus to the other side of London. Clever chap Bojo in spite of himself. Cripes! Time for whif whaf

[jabird]

Since when did TfL have an airports directorate? Mass transport executives should be there to provide the links to the airports, not to decide where these airports should be. TfL deserve a lot of respect for a lot of what they do, but they are clearly well out of their depth (or more like wading in sinking sands) on this one.


Well it is quite a wordy report, but it seems to be focussed on the case for creating extra demand, rather than satisfying latent demand. Of course, more transfer traffic is good business for the airline(s) that handle(s) it, but I just don't get the virtuous cycle.

Sure, a leads to be which in turns leads back to more of a, but there doesn't seem to be any appreciation of how the additional costs and declining yields of this model would lead to an economic case.

Let's just say, for argument's sake that LHR max (no new runways) can expand out to 90m ppa, and a third runway takes this to 120m. Let's give Fantasy Boris Island 150m pppa. So net gain for R3 is 30m, but the problem with FBI is that you need to build out for the 90m just to replace what LHR can handle anyway. So the net gain for FBI is actually just 30m ppa, albeit with shiny new facilities and a smoother layout.

Problem is, Boris has already said FBI is going to come in at £80bn (+?), compared to around £8bn for R3, the latter still likely to be largely from private sources.

So the net gain using my very crude back of an E-Lites packet maths is that FBI is going to cost you 10x as much for twice the net gain in passengers.

Then you weigh in that many flights which aren't dealt with by LHR will still take place, but just from LGW instead. So Gatters gets the crums - those services which are largely leisure, and mainly O&D. So the diminishing returns from providing extra capacity over and above what could be done at LHR just make the case for FBI even weaker.

[Fairdealfrank]

TFL do not have an airports brief, it's simply a renamed LRT (London Regional Transport).

jabird, your analysis is spot on. A 4-rwy LHR makes rwy expansion at LGW unnecessary in the short-medium term, so "Gatters can deal with the crumbs" quite adequately.

Exactly right, Skipness One Echo, Boris has made the case for a 4-rwy LHR. Indeed the first 19 pages or so are a good-ish analysis, but the last 7 pages lose it big time.

A few examples:

The idea that if BA and/or VS won't leave LHR for Fantasy Island then a foreign airline will move in is nonsense: if BA stays at LHR, so will all the other airlines so as (1) not to lose competitive advantage, and (2) not to get stung by airport charges even more eye-wateringly high than those at LHR.

It maintains that Fantasy Island would be in an unpoulated area. For how long do they imagine it would remain so? Airport workers have to live somewhere nearby, they won't be commuting from Middlesex for Pete's sake!

It rightly criticises the New York airports system for too many rwys too close to eachother and, consequently, too many delays. Fantasy Island (intended to be much bigger and busier than LHR) would replicate this because of the relative closeness of LCY, MSE, SEN and STN. This means 8 rwys in the area (not all parallel) rather than 4 at present. Air traffic have stated that this is untenable.

Any attempts to "run down" or close LHR as suggested in the report (or SEN, MSE, LCY or STN for that matter) would certainly be very expensive and probably illegal. It would doubtless result in years of litigation and so will probably never happen, and that means that Fantasy Island is unviable.


Silver, what do you think?

[jabird]

Any attempts to "run down" or close LHR as suggested in the report (or SEN, MSE, LCY or STN for that matter) would certainly be very expensive and probably illegal.

I can accept close, as was first suggested, but with all the problems you mention. I just don't get how this has now been watered down to "reduce", as some kind of acceptance that the FBI argument is nonsense.

How exactly would you pay BAA/FV to "tone down" their business operations? How exactly do you calculate the net present value of fees lost by halving their movements?

Then you have the nonsense idea that BA might accept a reduction in volumes there too, or perhaps even have 3 hubs (LHR, LGW & STN)? On top of this, you'd have the reverse nimby "close fights over my back yard" argument between the two approach paths, resulting in another legal battle over who is affected most, and almost certainly a legal fudge which actually kept both runways open.


Also, how exactly do you redevelop half an airport site? This becomes even more of a fantasy than FBI itself. So either LHR stays open, in which case the case for FBI is completely undermined by its lack of anchor tennant and increased distance from key passengers' homes/offices, or LHR is forced to close through some lengthy legal process. At least by the latter option you get some "cash back" on the development site, but not the £10bn+ Silver has previously suggested, as LHR is already an extremely compact airport form, worth far more open than it would be closed.

Meanwhile, TfL talk (correctly) of there being little by way of a model for a twin hub, but then fail to mention that opening new airports tends to leave the original one open (KUL, YUL, NRT, PVG, ICN, TPE, CDG and so on...............) far more often than it closes it (HKG, DEN, MUC, JED still waiting on BER). In fact, as we all know too well, in Montreal, it was the NEW airport (Mirabel) that closed, not Trudeau.

[nigel osborne]

Fairdealfrank.

Boris Island is surely unviable for many reasons, firstly many of the LHR workers live around the West . Wouldn't be too far for many to travel if its way east ?.

Perhaps the only viable option would be to have a 4 runway airport to the west or north west of London. You already have road and rail connections close by and the workers could stay put.

However Im not from the London area and have no idea if there is such a location with enough land free ??

Nigel

[jabird]

Wouldn't be too far for many to travel if its way east ?.

I don't think distance is problem per se. I do see too issues:

1) The sheer scale - no airport has been closed and moved on this scale before - biggest to date being HKG? At time, Kai-Tak was just under the 30m mark, LHR broke the 70m mark last year, and T2/"Queens" is still a big shell.

2) The movement through central London. One advantage of airports in transport terms is that they are often moving people against the flows - ie morning departures are going away from the city centre. For FBI, you'd be bringing people by train into the middle of London, often making them change at already very busy stations, and then on out to the new terminal.

Perhaps the only viable option would be to have a 4 runway airport to the west or north west of London.

Between the 2003 White Paper and the weekly have-a-go-architect stories that have been all over the place this year, I think we've seen enough options. Part of the problem here is that architects are the ones who create the buildings, most of the ones that have commented on the airport issue, Foster included, really aren't up to speed on the masterplanning issues.

[WK622]

It's no big deal going through the tunnels on a bike; there are rubber speed bumps every 30 ft or so, with a wide slot right in the middle for your two wheels to pass through `unbumped'. Mind you, if you get a head start and are mid tunnel before the traffic lights release the traffic behind you, it can be tad disconcerting to hear the bump-bumps steadilly getting closer to your back wheel! But the tunnel is simply not wide enough for a car to pass a bike so inevitably, when you pop out the other end, you are leading a convoy.

It has to be said that while around T4 & T5 there are good cycle paths that is not the case for most of the airport. On the Northside the T5 paths just fizzle out and you are left mixing it with everyone else, with the added hazard of a tired road surface with many cracks and holes. Aside from a pamphlet showing the routes, Heathrow actually does little for the cyclist - probably because they can't find a way to make money out of us.