London Assembly hears ideas that could improve rail journeys for Surrey
One option is to extend the Elizabeth Line down into Staines
The government has pledged support for a third runway at Heathrow but new and improved rail links would be required to cope with any surge in passenger numbers, the London Assembly has been told.
The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, officially opened to passengers in 2022 and has helped widen the airport’s “catchment” from the capital.
However, access to Heathrow remains hampered, particularly from Surrey by a lack of rail connections to the south and west, the Assembly’s transport committee heard last week
Christina Calderato, TfL’s director of transport strategy and policy, said: “Rail connections into central London are great, but the lack of them in any other direction is definitely a problem.”
She added: “Any expansion of that nature… means we would definitely need to be looking at significant investment, particularly in rail.”
Anthony Smith chairs the Heathrow Area Transport Forum, a partnership of organisations working to boost accessibility to the airport. He told the meeting the T5 building was designed to accommodate new rail links.
He said: “There’s a quite extraordinary sort of hole in the wall at Terminal 5.
“You go through this door and there’s this huge, cavernous box ready to go, and provision was made for the future of extending those services.”
In terms of providing a rail link to the south, he said there were two options, one of which would involve extending the Elizabeth line down to Staines, “which would be an absolute game-changer”.
The other possibility would see the South Western Railway linked up with Terminal 5, providing “a huge range of travel options, which go way beyond the airport”.
Mr Smith added: “We are waiting for the funding, we’re waiting for what might happen with the future expansion of the airport or not, but I think the current rate of passenger growth argues very strongly for getting thinking about these schemes going now, because even if we all rushed out today and started digging, it would be about seven years before anything actually ran.”
Marcus Jones, Network Rail’s western route director, told the committee that there was a strong business case connecting Heathrow to Langley, dubbed the Western Rail Link, calling it a “good option for us in the future”.
Sophie Chapman, the airport’s surface access director, said ministers “have made it clear that there is no Government money for either of those schemes”.
She added: “We support both the schemes. We need to do our work on expanding Heathrow first, to understand what we need to achieve in terms of mode share of passengers travelling to the airport.”