The Anonymous Widower

Heathrow Express And Crossrail

There is an interesting report on the front of the Business section of the Sunday Times entitled Heathrow starts fight over bill for Crossrail link.

Apparently, the airport want to charge passengers using Crossrail to the Airport for using the part of the Airport Rail Link, that was funded by the Airport. The Airport wants to raise a total of £40million every year.

My first reaction is to think this is an story worthy of April the First or someone in the negotiations for the route of Crossrail has made a big mistake.

If I wanted to build a new railway into say a small town, before I started to construct the railway, I would make sure all of the legals were tightly sown up and agreed.

Surely with a fourteen billion pound project like Crossrail, where since 1974, there has been talk of a link to Heathrow, you wouldn’t start construction of the project, unless you had everything nailed before starting construction.

The Crossrail Bill was approved in 2005 and has since been backed by all Governments and most political parties.

According to Wikipedia, Heathrow Airport Holdings,owns or part owns the Heathrow Airport branch of Crossrail. So it would appear that they may have some basis for charging passengers to use the line.

As I said the Crossrail Bill was signed in 2005 and then because of competition concerns, the company was made to divest themselves of most of the other Airports, that it owned. Competition Concerns in the Wikipedia entry for Heathrow Airport Holdings details the competition concerns.

Wikipedia describes Heathrow Airport as being owned like this.

The airport is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings, which itself is owned by FGP TopCo Limited, an international consortium led by the Spanish Ferrovial Group that includes Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

From what I can gather the Spanish group took over the old BAA plc, which had been privatised in 1986, in July 2006. So surely, as the Crossrail Bill had been signed in the previous year, they would have known all about the rail project.

So why just four years before Crossrail opens and everybody in London is getting excited about the project and especially the link to a major airport, should Heathrow Airport come up with a demand for forty million pounds a year?

I think there is a clue in the comments placed on the article, by subscribers to the Sunday Times web site. who are probably a fair cross section of the people who regularly use Heathrow.

There is not one comment, that thinks that Heathrow has a valid case and many are hostile even about the existence of Heathrow.

So has Heathrow just done a bit of research on the Heathrow Express?

They will have found some or all of the following.

• Heathrow Express only goes to Paddington.
• Passengers for Heathrow come from all parts of London and the South-East and don’t use Heathrow Express because getting to Paddington is difficult.
• Many of the workers at the airport, take public transport to get to the Airport and few use Heathrow Express.
• Crossrail will serve Central London and other important districts like Canary Wharf, Reading and South Essex.
• Crossrail links directly to Thameslink and the services out of Liverpool Street.
• Many passengers will use Crossrail instead of driving to and from the Airport.
• Crossrail will run all night.
• Londoners see London Overground and Underground as theirs and use them.
• Crossrail will be part of Transport for London’s system.
• Crossrail will use hassle-free contactless ticketing. Most travellers will just use a bank card and expect no waiting time.
• There will be a big row, if pensioners can’t use their Freedom Passes on Crossrail to Heathrow.
• No Mayoral candidate in next May’s election will back Heathrow over Transport for London.
• Gatwick Airport will introduce contactless ticketing in a few months.
• Paddington to Terminal One takes fifteen minutes on Heathrow Express and will take only nine minutes longer on Crossrail.
• A big enthusiasm for Crossrail
• As seen in the Sunday Times comments, deep resentment for Heathrow and Heathrow Express.

They will also probably have had some very forthright comments about the cost of tickets for Heathrow Express.

At the moment Heathrow Express is the only fast and comfortable train service to get between Heathrow and Central London.

But Crossrail will be a game-changer, as it will be not much slower, spacious, frequent, more convenient and hopefully comfortable.

For a few years, Crossrail will also have the new factor and passengers will at least give it a try.

I think that all this means there will be a massive shift of passengers away from Heathrow Express to Crossrail.

So seeing this projected loss of revenue, they have come to the conclusion that they must get another income stream to make up the losses.

But travellers are not stupid any more and unless their company is paying, now chose the most convenient route to their ultimate destination at the best price.

I may not be typical, but I have five convenient local airports, so on many flights, I have a choice of airport. Unfortunately for Heathrow, more and more of their possible travellers, have this luxury of choice.

All this leads to my view, that Heathrow will be forced to apply the-if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em principle, as I think Heathrow possibly needs Crossrail, more than Crossrail needs Heathrow.

Consider the following.

• Crossrail links at Farringdon to Thameslink, which serves Luton and Gatwick Airports.
• Crossrail links directly to the City and Canary Wharf.
• Crossrail avoids the bottleneck at Paddington.
• Crossrail will link Heathrow to the West Coast Main Line and the future HS2 at Old Oak Common.
• Crossrail will expand in the next few years to give better connectivity to many more places.
• Heathrow needs to build a direct link to Reading.
• Heathrow needs to link Crossrail to Terminal 5.
• Routes are possible, that could link Crossrail 2 to Heathrow.
• Heathrow will lose credibility and passengers, if it is not just seen as a stop on London’s transport network.

If Crossrail didn’t serve Heathrow for the first few years after it opened, I don’t think that Transport for London would get the blame!

In some ways, Heathrow’s best policy might be to cut their losses and sell the Heathrow Airport Links and its stations to Crossrail, after agreeing extensions to the Airport Rail Links.

But that would give in the eyes of some, London’s Mayor too much control over airports policy for the South East! Surely, he or she would know more about Heathrow and the problems the airport causes, than a faceless multi-national.

December 27, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Crossrail, Heathrow Airport, Politics