In message , at 16:40:06 on Tue, 12 Nov
2019, Recliner remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:04:13 on Mon, 11 Nov
2019, Recliner remarked:
Someone using it as a railhead would be doing so deliberately, because it
was conveniently located.

I don't happen to think it's convenient for very much, other than people
whose destination is Ealing Broadway.

It's very useful for the 112 bus to the Ace Café and the nearby
Travelodge, where we usually stay. Avoids going into zone 1 when coming
from Heathrow T5.

Roland will assure you that you are not in the HEx target market. And, he's
absolutely right: by his definition, almost no-one is.

To an extent that's true. After all, rail only carries 10% [that's a
survey result rounded to the nearest percentage, not just wild stab] of
the passengers.

That's the HEx share.

HEx plus Heathrow Connect, although the split is in the region of nine
percentage points for HEx, and one for Connect. The latter is not nearly
as popular as people here imagine.

The Tube carries about twice as many.

18% according to the survey I was quoting. But that's not the point -
which is that HEx is *not* the choice of 90(+)%, but is still based on a
solid business case. That 9% using HEx have very good reasons for doing
so, even if our "from the 90% (or is that 91%)" correspondents here are
in denial.

Then there's the workers, but rail has a tiny 2% share of that with 54%
in cars, 25% on the bus and 9% on the tube. Most of the 2% is Connect, I
expect.

While we see people here bending over backwards to explain why they are
"part of the 90%", that doesn't explain why HEx has met its targets, nor
why it will fail to do so in future.

Why are you so determined to ignore the attractiveness of Crossrail to many
HEx customers: more frequent, goes to many more useful places without
changing, leaves from the same platforms, and, yes, much cheaper. That
explains why HEx will see a slump in usage 2022.

And you are determined to ignore the reasons why people take the
"airport express" rather than grappling with what they perceive to be
the local commuter services.

33% of passengers use a taxi (or private hire) which is of course the
ultimate default when in a strange country. Not all of those will be
heading towards Central London, but the main reason for HEx was to limit
that percentage as much as possible to reduce road congestion/pollution,
by abstracting those passengers who could be attracted by a fast, sexy,
"airport express", with chuggers selling tickets.

You might dislike the chuggers, but the people who are winning here are
other road users and local residents breathing the air[2]. Significant
numbers of those choosing HEx would not be seen dead on a local commuter
service (or more to the point, might suspect they'd be dead if they were
ever seen on it).

An enquiry by the London Assembly in 2011 (looking at LHR air pollution
and the possibilities of encouraging modal shift) heard evidence that
while it was predicted by the DfT that combined rail+tube passenger
numbers would increase by a whole one percentage point (woo-hoo!) when
Crossrail opens[1], but if Crossrail were to grab HEx paths in order to
increase their frequency above 6tph, then rail's modal share would
shrink three percentage points as a result of losing the "Express"
perception (and delivery) of HEx.

In other words, six percentage points would more or less grudgingly
catch Crossrail instead of HEx, but three percentage points would revert
to taxi.

In summary: your gut feel is contradicted by the people who have a
proper feel for the demographic and the actual numbers at their
fingertips.

[1] This obscures an unstated number of passengers switching from tube
to Crossrail, but obviously Crossrail's gain is the tube's loss.
It's public transport share which they were concentrating on.

[2] And in a completely different space, the airport seeking permission
to increase the number of flights as long as it can encourage most
of the additional passengers to use public transport to the airport.
--
Roland Perry