On Aug 2, 12:06 pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
Based on any actual news about the funding, or is it just filler?

It's an op-ed, nothing new.

And what's this "high-speed rail link" they're talking about?

Adjective over-enthusiasm.

Secondly, what's the true story about how the route got decided? Not the
details, but the decision to connect Liverpool Street to Paddington?

I believe the rationale is that those are the two terminals that would
get the most congestion relief from such a scheme. There also appears
to be a big helping of "this is the thing we'd like to build", as you
suggest.

Frequency could be increased by improving the terminal layout at Heathrow (AIUI, this is the
bottleneck at present), but again, this could be used to boost Connect
frequency in the same way.

There are no problems at Heathrow itself that I'm aware of. The two
bottlenecks are the layout of Airport Junction (no direct connection
to the slow lines) and congestion at Paddington. Crossrail is the only
scheme on the cards to fix the latter.

The other problem with upgrading Connect without Crossrail is lack of
demand. Crossrail will increase the proportion of passengers taking a
train to Heathrow in a way being kicked out at Paddington can't.

U

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