Unless I'm very much mistaken, it was Cast_Iron
), in message
who said:

Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same width, it is
only the height that is different. When deciding which line should
serve the airport (or any other location) account has to be taken of
where the people will actually want to travel to. There's not a lot
of point in having the District serve Heathrow when people want to
get to hotels in Russell Square is there?

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am
however quite sure that if it had been decided to build the Heathrow
extension to surface stock loading gauge the whingers would have been
complaining about the additional expenditure and little use.


I think the problem is that all the connections to Heathrow seem to be aimed
at getting people into central London, which is fundamentally flawed in two
respects.


1) Around half the passengers coming into Heathrow are British people
returning from their holidays, not tourists visiting.

2) Central London hotel prices have led to a vast expansion of the tourist
catchment area in recent years. It's now not unusual for 'ordinary' people
who aren't made of money to visit the capital and stay in zone 2 or 3,
because that's where the affordable accomodation is getting built.


Can't we have rail links from Heathrow to anywhere else?

When I go from Tooting to Heathrow to go on holiday, both the Picc and the
Express seem extremely inconvenient and time-consuming prospects (and the
Express is pricey to boot), so I get a taxi every time.

BTN