Airtrack - is it worthwhile?

Airtrack is a rail project by BAA at Heathrow airport Terminal 5 to run trains along the South West Trains network to Waterloo, Reading and Guildford.The trains would leave Terminal 5 and travel south parallel to the M25, passing over Staines Moor, to join the Windsor line just north of Staines. Here the services would join the South West Trains network to travel on to their destinations.

One service would have stops at Staines, Feltham, Twickenham, Richmond and Clapham Junction before terminating at Waterloo. For the other services a new chord (joining line) would have to be built in the middle of Staines so that the trains can turn south. The Reading service would have intermediate stops at Bracknell and Wokingham while the Guildford service would have intermediate stops at Chertsey and Woking.Some Heathrow Express(HE) trains from Paddington would also be extended from Terminal 5 to Staines to provide a connexion to Paddington and maybe even on to Crossrail.The planned frequency for the three main services would be 2 trains per hour(tph) for each.  

The main idea behind the scheme is to provide better connections to the South West lines and at Clapham Junction and Waterloo to other services south of the Thames. The Reading and Woking services would offer alternative connections to the GWML and SWML (to Southampton etc.). The intermediate stops are planned to offer, for both passengers and airport workers, better oportunities to use public transport thus reducing dependency on the car while at the same time reducing traffic jams and exhaust pollution.

Without doubt BAA is also attracted to the lucrative Railair coach services linking Heathrow to Reading and Woking.  

Initially the proposal looks attractive. This is especially so in these constrained times since the project would be privately funded by BAA thus not affecting the public borrowing requirements of the Treasury.

However, this scheme should be looked at again. There are quite a few factors which make it less attractive than it is painted.

Firstly all the services would leave from Terminal 5 so would not serve the other terminals directly. The only exception to this are the HE services to Paddington which would go through the central terminal area (T1,2 & 3) but not Terminal 4. In the document prepared by BAA Heathrow & Arup for HSR2 Ltd. ("Improving Rail Connectivity to Heathrow" 20-10-09)they looked at the problem of availability and facility of connections in detail. Suffice it to quote one passage from the report . "Each time a passenger has to change between trains at each leg of the journey the total end to end journey time is increased by additional waiting time. The impact of this interchange penalty tends to be greater for passengers who are travelling with luggage, such as air passengers, and is particularly high for foreign travellers and those who are unfamiliar with our transport systems." (Point 4.4 Page 13) In this report it is thus recognised that the advantages of the service is lost to a certain degree when there is no direct connection.

Secondly there are problems with train paths. This means that even if the services were tremendously successful then there would be problems in finding room on the network for additional trains. The Windsor and Reading lines, in particular, are crowded so adding more trains, especially at peak times would only be possible by subtracting trains from other services - and that is definitely a non-starter. 

It has to be added that, especially on the Reading line, there are many level crossings. Even with the programmed additional trains many members of the public are opposed because more trains mean more closing times for the level crossings - and this would result in having an adverse effect of the road traffic in all the towns along the line. Apparently, building bridges or tunnels to substitute the level crossings also presents great difficulty in the space available and the disruption caused. 

We think that the scheme on offer is limited and does take into account the bigger picture of improving transport links in the south and south east of England. In fact we laid out a more detailed argument in our previous blog Fast Trax 2 - The case for a southern high speed alternative (SHSL)(24-02-2010)
Points 5 & 6 refer to our proposals to provide new services between Reading-Heathrow-Gatwick and Ashford as well as Heathrow-Waterloo. We repeat one quote to illustrate the shortcomings of Airtrack as presently laid down.
The report (Review of Business Case for AirTrack Scheme Proposals (Assignment Number 2004/00229)) prepared by  Ove Arup & Partners for the Strategic Rail Authority in July 2005 stated
"The AirTrack services that we have appraised would provide two trains per hour from each of Guildford, Reading and Waterloo to Heathrow Terminal 5. To provide sufficient capacity the introduction of these AirTrack services would necessitate the withdrawal of three trains from Reading to Waterloo in the morning peak period, two trains from Waterloo to Reading in the morning peak period, and 5 trains from Waterloo to Reading in the evening peak period. To compensate for the withdrawn services, additional stops to those assumed in the OBC would be required on some AirTrack services between Reading and Terminal 5."

We view CONNECTVITY as the keyword, not narrow short sighted commercial gain. Airports are to be connected to city centres, airports to airports, main lines to main lines, population clusters to population clusters and so on. That is the only way to provide decent public transport and encourage the public to leave the car at home. We laid out our arguments in FAST TRAX 2

and they are there to see so we will not bore you by repeating them. Basically it shows the case for a new line from the GWML at Reading to Ashford and the Channel Tunnel through the two airports. One of the reasons  would be to provide a relief line south of London so avoiding the capital and directing freight  (and passenger) traffic directly through the Chunnel and not blocking the bottleneck which London would become.

The subsequent benefits are substantial. Not only would BAA get its connecting trains but the possibility of direct inter-city passenger services  to Mainland Europe would also be opened up from BOTH Heathrow and Gatwick. This would result in fewer flights from BOTH airports. Is this not what the present government wants?

In Switzerland the direct connecting rail service between Geneva and Zürich airports has been operational for years. This means that the only intercontinental airport with regular services in that country is Zürich, while Basel and Geneva have been able to absorb the increase in holiday and business traffic - mostly  to/from the UK  and other destinations by Easyjet. 

 London Heathrow Airport from West Drayton to Feltham

As with every project these things will take time so will have to be done in parts. We suggest the start should be made with the line from Terminal 5 (at Heathrow) to the Central Terminal area then the curve south to Terminal 4 from where the line is extended to Feltham. This would provide the connection for the service to Waterloo at low cost. The terminus already exists at T5; a curve would be built at T1,2&3; the extension to Feltham would be new - but better with a new chord both west and east; and the new depot is already programmed for Feltham. Thus the three Airtrack services could be started with less disruption while serving all the terminals at Heathrow. The other elements of the SHSL would fall into place eventually but the main part through Heathrow would be in place from the start. Remember that both the Piccadilly extension to the airport and the HE line had to be expensively modified when T5 was built. Let us not make the same mistakes with short-termism thinking. 

Our politicians should take care with their sound bites and think constructively about problems while looking at private interests with scepticism. The ideas expressed here could provide a better solution to transport problems being part of a bigger picture. However, there is still a problem which has been identified and has still not been addressed. The need for a new runway in South Esat England is real and urgent. The present recession only provides a breathing space but the problem will not go away so we will look at it in the next blog. 

High Speed Rail 2 - White Paper (1)

Now that days have passed since the presentation of the White Paper by the Dept.for Transport for a high speed strategy we can look at it in a cooler fashion. Greengauge21, a strong pressure group, in favour of high speed rail, and Network Rail, who will probably end up being the owner of the tracks, both have given measured responses which are predictably very positive.


With the deluge of information and opinion since the presentation it has proved difficult to extract the wheat from the chaff. However, the proposal has good points and others which are not convincing. Generally speaking there are some interesting solutions to squaring the circle but a lot of questions are left up in the air. With the Dept.for Transport inundating the public with the White Paper, the HSR2 Ltd.´s recommendations, and the consultants´reports there is a tremendous amount of very detailed material to absorb.

In a few words let us say what the White Paper is not - it is not a high speed rail strategy. In that sense it is disappointing and the more it is looked at the more you can see there has been no strategic thinking but more of a political proposal to a growing demand. The Paper is a detailed plan to offer a high speed line from Central London to Central Birmingham. This is an achievement in itself and so welcome, but it is flawed. North of Birmingham we only have two lines drawn on a map - one to Manchester and the other to East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, both with no detail at all and with very vague promises to continue north to Scotland.

In fact it should be noted that it is rather contradictory to say that you cannot have intermediate stops on a high speed line as this would reduce its effectiveness (top speeds well below the capacity) while to Leeds(from Birmingham) two intermediate stops are being offered. This reads like a political sop to local interests.




Let us go back to basics and look at the population density map provided by the DfT. which gives us a easy picture to understand the problems.

All these plans can be seen in greater detail in the command paper (White Paper) published by the DfT 11th March 2010 dealing with HSR2. We publish them courtesy of the DfT.

Even though the communities smaller than 250,000 populace cannot be discerned easily on this map, one can see that the natural axis northwards are London-Leicester-Nottingham-Sheffield-Leeds, and London-Birmingham-North West England. So if the aim is to reduce present and predicted congestion on the WCML then the obvious solution is to follow these axis as we suggested in our blog FAST TRAX 3(18 Feb.´10) (points 1, 4 & 5)


The Chiltern High Speed route to Birmingham - which we call the CHSL - is the prefered route to the West Midlands. About that we have no objections but we do have strong objections to the termini and stoppings places en route. We also insist that our alternative of a high speed route to Manchester and Leeds by using the MML corridor is much better and very probably less expensive.

The White Paper itself is very dismissive of achievements already made which sounds like a self justifying argument for the high speed line.
"Further major upgrades to the existing network would be highly expensive, problematic and disruptive. The West Coast Route Modernisation project cost GBP8.9 billion and took almost a decade. It delivered fewer benefits than originally envisaged and caused serious disruption to travellers and to business at a significant economic and social price in addition to the cost of the project itself."
This is downright false when the line speed is limited to 125mph even though it is technically possible for speeds of up to 140mph(224kph) on certain stetches of the WCML which Virgin trains refuses to identify (we suspect it is along the newly four-tracked Trent Valley Line and shorter sections elsewhere). To quote the engineers "The route has brought numerous benefits to passengers with increased train services and reduced journey times".
At present with that speed limit the fastest time Euston-Glasgow is 4hrs.8mins. - a very respectable time. North West England is also much better served with most services non-stop from Warrington to Euston at 1hr.44mins. These are much improved times on the previous timetable.


We contend that with the points we laid down in FAST-TRAX - CONCLUSIONS (8th March points 1,2,3,4)the criterion are clear enough to satisfy the demand for high speed services in a satisfactory manner without digging up great swathes of the countryside. We have to emphasise that using the same corridor does not necessarily mean running tracks side by side. However, where it is possible to run tracks side by side or next to a motorway then the environmental impact is much less and thus should be made a major consideration.

On the route to Birmingham (CHSL) it has been designed for trains to run at 400kph (250mph) which is faster than any other line anywhere with the aim of being in a position of taking advantage of future improvements in technology. That is laudable but only really in a large country with great empty spaces - which is certainly not the case in Great Britain. A ninety degree turning circle, without slowing, means between 7.2 and 8 kms. to change direction. This is ludicrous - such that the line from London needs a new station called Birmingham Interchange some distance from Birmingham International Airport station to which it is meant to connect. This is ridiculous duplication and waste - the proposed station is not even on the west side of the M42. Approaching the West Midlands conurbation it is logical to reduce speed to stop at such a station so a lower line speed limit can be applied thus aiding the flexibility of the track layout to permit its entry into Birmingham International Airport station. The trains could then continue up to Lichfield as envisagedThe paper gives us to understand that trains into Birmingham and those onwards to places further north would all stop at the Interchange thus making this proposal realistic.


Of course what has been ignored is (a)the noise factor - the higher the speed the greater the noise, and (b) the power factor - the faster the speed the greater the need for electrical power. These points we looked at in our first blog FAST TRAX (13-2-10).


The points to be looked at in greater detail are concerning the two proposed termini at Euston and Birmingham Fazeley Street, and the intermediate station at Old Oak Common. These we will look at in the next blog.

Also what should not be ignored is the possible connection to HSR1. Here again the thinking is limited with the fixation of funnelling more and more traffic through London which would only lead to the creation of bottlenecks. We contend that our proposal for a southern high speed line alternative - Fast Trax 2 (24-2-10) running from Reading to Ashford through Heathrow and Gatwick is a much more beneficial solution offers more alternatives and satisfies the demand for long distance services from the airports. This would also override any demand for a Heathrow hub which, at present is only fraught with shallow thinking and awkward solutions.

To sum up the White Paper should turn Green and just lead to more discussion with more interesting and less entrenched positions to be considered. This is a major infrastructure project and cannot be permitted to be pushed through to satisfy the whims and ambitions of politicians (whatever colour) and engineers.