As a resident of one of the outermost southern London boroughs (Sutton), I’ve long since had a gripe with T5's accessibility via public transport.

There is no rail option that I know of, and the nearest tube option would translate into a bus ride to Morden, with long ride into London and then back out west again after changing at Green Park or thereabouts.

There is a very good direct bus service (X26) which takes you to the central bus station, and really, T2 is literally there. To get to T5 from the central bus station, I could go to the T2/3 underground and then go one stop down. I’ve been quite unlucky every time I’ve tried that, with waits averaging about 10 minutes. There was this one time that I was told that the next Piccadilly train would be 25 (!) minutes. Moving between terminals via HEX is out as it involves a bit more walking.

I could change from the X26 at Hatton Cross and get on to another bus to T5 from there, but this goes to T4 first and you’re looking at another 20 minutes at best while making all the glamorous stops down the Southern Perimeter road. I once spent 45 minutes on the way to T5 from Hatton Cross as the roads around T4 were positively rammed.

Outside rush hour, the X26 and whatever option I choose onwards takes just a bit less than two hours to get me to T5. A taxi ride is 40-45 minutes, and this has been my preferred option, especially during the early hours of the morning when I know traffic won’t be an issue.

I will definitely give Crossrail a go once it’s all up and running for comparison purposes, as on paper, it may be able to get me there in about an hour and 10 minutes if I were to get to Farrigdon via thameslink and then onwards to T5, which would be perfectly acceptable (but I may be overly optimistic in my calculations).

My long preferred solution for the southern belt folk, would be a rail connection from Clapham Junction. I’m pretty sure that would suit a lot of people…

For comparison, it’s faster for me to get to LCY and LGW via public transport, than LHR, but the latter is actually, my closest airport in terms of distance…

Go figure.