London Banter - View Single Post - Heathrow Express slashes fares (so it says!)

Recliner[_4_] · November 9th 19, 09:01 PM posted to uk.transport.london

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:09:04 on Sat, 9 Nov
2019, remarked:
Even if you're going somewhere in north london on the piccadilly line it
would probably still be considerably quicker to take crossrail and change
in central london twice. As for KX - Farringdon then 1 stop on the met or
thameslink, finsbury park - farringdon then 2 stops on thameslink (if they
can be bothered to run their trains on time just for once).

Crossrail might be quicker, but the trains will be less frequent than the
Piccadilly, and people with luggage don't like changing trains. Overall,
the Piccadilly is more convenient, and probably hardly slower end-to-end.

Well until we see a crossrail timetable there's no way to tell, but having
commuted all the way to hatton cross and back each day for 9 months on that
line I would be very surprised if it was the same end to end. It is utterly
hopeless especially in the rush hour - it literally crawls through west london
and only once past hammersmith does it reach anything approaching a reasonable
speed. And then there'd usually be some pointless delay at Acton. I actually
terminated the contract early because I couldn't stand it any longer, almost
2 hours each way door to door on a bad day (which was most of them).

While you have a point about luggage, a lot of the time in the rush hour there
was often nowhere left for more heathrow bound passengers to put theirs and
they ended up sitting on their cases in the middle of the vestibule.

I'm forced to agree about the crowding/standing, having taken the
Piccadilly from Kings Cross to Heathrow T4 and back earlier this year.
And not even during a rush hour (it was Saturday mid-morning and
mid-evening). The attraction, rather than using HEx/Connect, was only
having to change trains once, at Kings Cross.

Exactly. It's an easy, if protracted, journey.