Originally Posted by
Kettering Northants QC
I don't even find Heathrow that Easy to drive to. I've driven from the Parking Express depot dozens of times and still almost always get on the wrong road.
Any hassle on the M4 and it just makes getting to and from the airport a nightmare. Oh and there are roadworks on the airport approach at the moment.
As for the Heathrow Express, Why Paddington? It serves the lines out to the West - save your money (and time) and get the bus to Reading and pick your train up from there! They should have engineered it either to the city centre or Euston or Kings Cross for connections to the Midlands and North of England.
A little bit of imagination, I don't know what they could have done. If Crossrail had got off the ground sooner, it could have run through to the East. Maybe they could have had it join the H&C line at Paddington and run through to Euston, King's Cross and Liverpool St (those tunnels are full gauge). Maybe they could have diverted the entire GWR route to call at Heathrow, like they did at Schiphol, Zurich, Frankfurt... Maybe they could have made the junction capable of running trains through to Reading. Maybe they could have extended the tunnel to meet the SWT lines at Feltham.
But they didn't.
Maybe if they'd built a decent high-speed line (Gardermoen or KUL style) out to STN, instead of letting it languish for years before the LCCs moved in en masse. Imagine, a full, modern, Norman Foster designed airport just 15 minutes from the heart of the City! But no...