Luton Airport Goes For Light Rail
This article in The Guardian is entitled Luton airport to replace bus transfers with £200m light rail link.
Passengers will take the light rail link between Luton Airport and Luton Airport Parkway station, where they will use Thameslink and Midland Main Line trains to travel North and South.
This Google Map shows the area, where the rail link will run.
Luton Airport And Luton Airport Parkway Station
The Midland main Line and the station are close to the end of the runway.
A few months ago, an article in Railway Technology was entitled Luton Airport reveals plans for new direct rail service.
What isn’t shown from the map, but is very much obvious if you’ve piloted an aircraft out of Luton Airport, is that the end of the runway is on top of a hill and the railway is at the bottom.
I said this in Will Bombardier Develop The Ultimate Airport Train? about running trains into a Luton Airport station.
I think that railway engineers can create an elegant junction here, where trains can easily go in both directions between London and the Airport. Designing a line connecting the North and the Airport could be more difficult, but even so given the terrain and that some of the junction will be inside the airport boundary, a solution must be possible.
One thing that could help, is that if Class 387/2 IPEMUs were to be used on all Luton Airport services, then the branch would not need to be electrified.
If it was decided to run it in a tunnel under the car parks, then surely a tunnel without overhead wiring would be a smaller, simpler and more affordable proposition.
As the Railway Technology article was only published in July 2015, after promising results from the IPEMU train, could it be that this rail link is not possible with conventionally-powered electric trains?
But I now think that there are other problems with a direct rail link into the airport, even with the help of IPEMU and other recently-developed technology.
- In other documents, it is stated that Luton Airport wants four trains an hour to the capital and it has to be asked if there are enough paths available to the South.
- It probably is more difficult than I thought to run trains to and from the North to the airport.
I also wonder, if after Luton Airport Parkway station has been rebuilt for the light rail link, that this might open up other possibilities for development in this part of Luton.
I also found the original press release about the link. This is said.
The light rail link is part of a broader rail connectivity improvement plan, which aims to introduce a 20 minute express rail service with four fast trains per hour between LLA and central London as part of the upcoming East Midlands rail franchise. LLA is also currently working with Transport for London to add the airport to the Oyster network which will help ensure smooth connections for passengers travelling by rail.
Everything will hopefully become clearer, when the full plans for the link are published.
In a few months time, when Luton and Gatwick have contactless ticketing, who will be next in the queue; Heathrow or Stansted?
Transport for London have certainly started the game of contactless cards, by playing two powerful aces.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Stansted and Southend accept contactless ticketing before the end of 2016, leaving Heathrow as the odd one out!
The Anonymous Widower 
[…] The airport says it won’t need any new infrastructure, but they are planning a fast link from Luton Airport Parkway station, which I wrote about in Luton Airport Goes For Light Rail. […]
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