Ben Nunn wrote:
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.

We can have anything we like as long as we are prepared to pay for it, and
most people aren't.