Popular gripes about Heathrow Airport
Heathrow airport is every traveller’s favourite whipping boy. Many gripe about the facilities, the overcrowding and the practically guaranteed take-off delays, but the major problem with Heathrow for all but the lucky few is getting there.
Poor connections
Forget the lost baggage and the debate over whether to get another runway – the real national disgrace is how poorly connected 99% of the country is to what is supposedly an international transport hub. Hubs need spokes. Heathrow is severely lacking in them.
Distance versus time
I hate having to fly from Heathrow. It’s quicker for me to get to any number of airports – including some which are further away, such as Gatwick. And, absurdly, Exeter. This is because no-one has ever bothered to hook Heathrow up to the national public transport network properly.
Piccadilly Line or Heathrow Express?
Coming by rail, you essentially have two options – trundle along the Piccadilly Line for well over an hour or pay an extortionate fee to use the Heathrow Express. The latter, of course, only leaves from Paddington, and is entirely useless to anyone whose connecting train doesn’t arrive at Paddington station (ie. The entire north of England, Scotland and most of the South too).
Out on a limb
Quite why nothing has ever been done about this, I can’t understand. An airport the size of Heathrow shouldn’t be stuck out on a limb, tacked on to the transport network – it should be an integral part of the transport network.
Airports on major lines
The best airports, for me, are the ones where the railway station is on a major line on the way from somewhere to somewhere else. Copenhagen airport is a great example. The trains going to it are going down the Danish coast, through Copenhagen, across the Oresund to Malmo and up through western Sweden.
Hassle-free Copenhagen airport
Copenhagen is hassle-free to get to whether you’re coming from Helsingor, Copenhagen, Malmo or Gothenburg. And if you’re not on that line, you can connect to it at any point along it – not just a solitary station in a big city that doesn’t have all that many connections itself.
Cologne airport transport connections
It happens in Germany too – Cologne airport’s station is on a line that connects big cities (certainly Cologne and Bonn – I can’t remember where else off hand).
Manchester airport: Britain’s best connected?
It even happens to a certain extent in the UK. I’d argue that Manchester airport is the best connected. It’s at the end of a line and all trains to it go through Manchester, but it is possible to get a direct train to the airport from all over the north of England. And for those without direct services, you can change in Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, York – even Cleethorpes – depending on which is most convenient.
Connect Heathrow to the main railway lines
This is what should have happened with Heathrow. It should have been built on to the end of the main lines. Trains from Sheffield shouldn’t terminate at St Pancras, trains from Manchester shouldn’t terminate at Euston and trains from Edinburgh shouldn’t terminate at Kings Cross. Track should sweep through from the London mainline stations out to the west of the city and through an adequate station at Heathrow. And if it can swing round to join the major lines to Bristol, Cardiff or the South Coast, then even better.
Expense
This should, of course, have happened when Heathrow was originally opened. To make things work now would be unfathomably expensive once the track reroutings and compulsory purchase orders are taken into account. But if we’re going to spend unfathomable amounts on high speed rail anyway, then surely we should be making sure everything connects up properly.
Forward thinking
Having only the Piccadilly Line and the Heathrow Express is hugely embarrassing. Getting to Heathrow is an utter nuisance for just about everybody and politicians should be clambering over themselves to offer solutions to this problem. As it stands, it takes almost as long for me to get from St Pancras to Heathrow as it does for me to get from Sheffield to St Pancras. This is clearly an absurd state of affairs. A bit of forward thinking amongst out transport planners would not go amiss.
/
You can get to Heathrow on the tube from places other than Paddington, it just takes a little longer and you may have to change a couple of times, but the savings are worth it. Last May, we got there starting at the High Street Kensington tube stop. Can’t remember exactly how long it took, but it seems to me it was an hour or less.
When we landed at Heathrow, we immediately went to the National Express/Coach stop, and hopped an express bus to Birmingham — those senior citizens discounts are really nice! This was really smooth. We were using frequent flyer tickets, and flying into Birmingham wasn’t an option due to the reduced mileage special.
I have other complaints about Heathrow, but they don’t include getting to the airport or leaving from it.
Indeed. I always think of it the other way round… what tourists must think when they arrive at Heathrow…their first impressions must be awful.
I’m with you, David. Using Zurich, Amsterdam, even lord help us Milan highlights just how poor Heathrow’s transport connections are. But it’s a function of our Victorian transport system – and our tragic 1950s car-obsession. Rail lines (and motorways) zero in on London, as if there were no reason for anyone to travel anywhere else. Try going from, say, Oxford to Cambridge, or Northampton to Norwich. It takes hours and hours.
But we’re not even learning lessons now. Look at Crossrail – an excellent scheme, apart from the fact that it, too, puts Heathrow on a spur instead of a main line. See map here:
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/img.....map_lg.jpg
As if Maidenhead matters more than Heathrow! It’s madness. Crossrail SHOULD have made it possible to get a direct train to Heathrow from Bristol, Bath, Swindon – but no. Of course only people starting their journey in London truly matter.
I live less than 60 miles north of Heathrow, but the easiest way for me to get there by public transport is by National Express coach – it’s so 1970s. Just by chance, my town has a direct nonstop link down the M40. But, of course, National Express’s timetables were devised by their inhouse team of monkeys with typewriters: roughly hourly buses between 1am and 6am, followed by gaps of 2-3hrs during the day, and the last bus in the evening is at 7.30pm – with nothing until after midnight. Doh!
Heathrow is an utter disgrace in every way. Never mind more investment. It should be bulldozed forthwith, the ruins sown with salt… and sod the wetland birds of Essex – build a new airport in the Thames Estuary and make it snappy.