London Banter - View Single Post - Crossrail access to Heathrow still not settled

Recliner[_3_] · May 23rd 17, 10:37 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Tue, 23 May 2017 11:27:47 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at
02:46:34 on Tue, 23 May 2017, remarked:
"Lots of people fly into Heathrow wanting to visit ExCel? Really??"
During major exhibitions - yes - absolutely. For example, World Travel
Mart (held at Excel) is a "must attend" event in the travel business -
there are loads of people who fly in specifically to attend it. City
airport is much handier for Excel, but there are loads of places
(especially long haul) which don't have flights into City.

I'm aware of that show, and even have friends in that business (from
overseas) who exhibit. They fly in and out of Luton, incidentally.

It is, however, a tiny number of people compared to the million a day
who are predicted to use Crossrail, or the 80,000 a day who use
Heathrow.

Like other shows at Excel, it attracts about 15-20,000 a day, of whom
3,000 a day are actual travel buyers.

Out of that lot if more than 1,000 each of the three days have flown in
through Heathrow, rather than being based in the UK or using other
airports, E* etc to arrive from abroad, I'll eat my hat.

Of course, 1,000 top quality buyers is plenty if you have a selling
booth at WTM, but it's not a number to build a railway timetable around.

No, but we were discussing the attractions of Crossrail vs HEx. Any of
those visitors who currently use Heathrow and HEx will certainly
switch to Crossrail. And some who previously flew to Luton may switch
to LHR and Crossrail, too. Or they can change at Farringdon to
Crossrail.

It's just one example of the many flows that will use Crossrail rather
than HEx.