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Heathrow Gatwick link

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MarlowDonkey

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From the Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...y-takes-just-15-minutes-Gatwick-Heathrow.html

If there's any novelty in this, it's the suggestion that the dead straight line from Redhill to Ashford be used to link up to HS1 and be upgraded in its own right.

The M25-style railway that would take just 15 minutes from Gatwick to Heathrow: Plans reveal £10bn super-fast HS4 line that will create rail loop around London
  • Could cut travel time between Britain's busiest airports from 1 hour and 40 minutes to just 15 minutes
  • Plans for the train line are due to be submitted to the Department of Transport by the end of this month
  • Hyperloop is likely to face fierce opposition from those living in Tory heartlands of the Home Counties
  • Project's architects say it will use pre-existing tracks, go underground and run alongside the M25 to reduce the impact on residents
A proposed £10billion high-speed rail line could cut the travel time from Gatwick to Heathrow to just 15 minutes.

Engineers' plans reveal how AirHS4Air could carve an 87-mile line around south London, run alongside the M25 and connect with other high-speed train lines on either side of the city.

The M25-style line is set to reduce travel time between Britain's two busiest airports down from the current time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.


The proposed HS4Air hyperloop would connect Gatwick and Heathrow and reduce travel time between the UK's two busiest airports from 1 hour and 40 minutes to just 15 minutes.

The railway would connect the HS1, which runs between the Channel Tunnel and London, with the proposed HS2 route, which is planned to initially run between the capital and London.

It would stop at both Heathrow and Gatwick, creating the first direct connection between the two airports.

The line has been dubbed HS4Air and would start at Ashford, Kent, finishing at Denham in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London.

Just under 76 million people passed through Heathrow between February 2016 and March 2017 while Gatwick had 44 million visitors during the same period, according to the Civil Aviation Authority website.

Government officials hope the plan will ease this pressure by creating better access to the south's busiest airports.

The plans are likely to attract criticism from home owners and families in the Home Counties

How HS4 could succeed while controversial HS2 remains stuck in the buffers
While on first glance HS2 and HS4 may appear similar, the two project have less in common than you might think. Beset by problem from the moment it was announced in 2009, HS2 cut through the heart of Tory support in the south - the Home Counties.

David Davis and Andrea Leadsom were among MPs who voted against their own party to rubbish plans for the line, which was even due to pass through David Cameron's constituency of Witney. In July last year it emerged the project has cost almost £2.3billion before a single piece of track has been laid.

If would then fair to ask why HS4Air will be any different. Slicing through the Home Counties, the line will have to contend with the same fierce opposition from home-owners and families.

But architects Weston Williamson claim the new line will be less intrusive than previous projects. About 40 per cent of the high-speed loop will use existing Network Rail railways between Tonbridge and Ashford.

Being flat and straight, this section of the Kent main line can be easily upgraded to suit high speed trains, the group claimed. About 20 per cent of the railway will run in tunnels to avoid natural beauty spots like the Surrey Hills.

To the West of London, HS4Air will run alongside the M25, to make use of an existing transport corridor where complaints are likely to be less likely to complain.

And the high-speed airport link between could also provide the north with better access to the south.

Proponents of the plan claim it would open up a much-needed connection between northern England and the Channel tunnel while bypassing London.

The project's developed said it would cut travel time from Manchester to Heathrow by two thirds - from 3 hours 30 minutes to 1 hour 10 minutes.

They also claim it would create links with the Great Western main line towards south Wales and the West Country.

But the hyperloop line is likely to face fierce opposition from those living in the Home Counties who are likely to be unimpressed by the idea of high-speed trains running nearby.

However, developers claim that the new line will use as much as as 40 per cent of the route would use the existing Kent main train line - which could be easily modified to carry high-speed trains.

Plans for the train line are due to be submitted to the Department of Transport by the end of this month.

The ultra-fast loop line comes as part of a drive by government officials to promote private investment in British railways.

The government has asked private developers for 'market-led' proposals for new rail infrastructure - relieving pressure on a creaking national service while avoiding upfront cost to the taxpayer.

The project is being led by London-based Expedition Engineering, architects Weston Williamson + Partners and and Turley, the planning consultants.

Alistair Lenczer, director of Expedition Engineering said: 'HS4Air will overcome the barrier that historic London represents in terms of rail connectivity between the UK regions and Europe.

'By allowing London to be bypassed at high speed, economic activity between the UK regions and Europe can expect to grow.'

Nick McGough, associate partner at Weston Williamson + Partners, said: 'HS4Air takes the problem of linking HS1 with HS2 and turns it into an opportunity in by-passing London entirely whilst better connecting the UK's two largest airports and the country generally through high speed rail.

This generates huge regeneration potential and much wider economic benefits for the whole country.'
 
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LNW-GW Joint

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Gatwick to Heathrow via Ashford (Kent)? Sounds bonkers to me. Are they mixing it up with Ashford (Middx) - to which there is definitely not a dead straight line?
How much demand is there for an LGW-LHR service? Pretty negligible I would have thought.
A direct Gatwick-Heathrow route paralleling the M25 (partially underground) sounds insanely expensive.
The Redhill-Ashford section may(?) be cheap to upgrade, but it's irrelevant to the interairport link.
Kent-Heathrow will soon be a Crossrail journey with one change at Abbey Wood.
Regeneration? The North will be outraged if a London scheme like this in well-heeled suburbia is preferred to (eg) a transpennine scheme with real regeneration potential.
Heathrow-Manchester? The government has already dropped a Heathrow-HS2 direct link, preferring the Old Oak connection.
 

swt_passenger

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Gatwick to Heathrow via Ashford (Kent)? Sounds bonkers to me. Are they mixing it up with Ashford (Middx) - to which there is definitely not a dead straight line?
HS1 > Ashford > Gatwick > Heathrow > Denham > HS2 seems to be the idea. I think you need to read it again.

But the idea certainly isn’t new, and I reckon it adds to confusion by using the term “hyperloop” which I thought was the name of the pretty much ridiculed American vacuum tube design...
 

BigCj34

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Though I should be excited about Hyperloop I am very cynical about it. I honestly think electric/zero-carbon aviation will come about sooner than a meaningful hyper-loop line, which is probably going to be much more expensive to build than conventional high speed rail.
 

swt_passenger

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Though I should be excited about Hyperloop I am very cynical about it. I honestly think electric/zero-carbon aviation will come about sooner than a meaningful hyper-loop line, which is probably going to be much more expensive to build than conventional high speed rail.
This is nothing to do with “hyperloop”, it’s the media being stupid.
 

Bald Rick

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This is nothing to do with “hyperloop”, it’s the media being stupid.

To demonstrate media stupidity, I think I should offer a prize to the forum member who proposes an outlandishly stupid yet believable* scheme on these pages, and then manages to get a national mainstream newspaper to publish a serious* article about it as a result.

Schemes (or part thereof) already disqualified from the competition:

Aberystwyth - Carmarthen
Carlisle - Tweedbank
Colne - Skipton
Dawlish Avoiding Line
Harrogate - Ripon
Heathrow - Gatwick HS4
Windsor Link Railway
Anything including the word ‘Hyperloop’
Anything including the letters B, M, L, and the digit 2


*as judged by me.
 

bluenoxid

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To demonstrate media stupidity, I think I should offer a prize to the forum member who proposes an outlandishly stupid yet believable* scheme on these pages, and then manages to get a national mainstream newspaper to publish a serious* article about it as a result.

Schemes (or part thereof) already disqualified from the competition:

Aberystwyth - Carmarthen
Carlisle - Tweedbank
Colne - Skipton
Dawlish Avoiding Line
Harrogate - Ripon
Heathrow - Gatwick HS4
Windsor Link Railway
Anything including the word ‘Hyperloop’
Anything including the letters B, M, L, and the digit 2


*as judged by me.

I’m so tempted (and wouldn’t even be bothered about the prize).
 

HowardGWR

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Here’s the March version of this over in the High Speed sub forum:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hs4air-–-“an-m25-for-high-speed-trains”.161683/#post-3367774
Is this going to be yet another unnecessary re-hash thread?
Yes and I was taken in by a 'new' airports scheme that turned out to be an existing one rediscovered by the press! If you look at the HS sub-forum (where at least the scheme belongs as it is a HSL scheme to connect HS2 with HS1) you will see two more versions! I think mods have understandably closed mine down, but this one should be too, as it is the wrong (sub) forum.
 

InterCity:125

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How about “tunnel to Antarctica from Chile to be built”
To demonstrate media stupidity, I think I should offer a prize to the forum member who proposes an outlandishly stupid yet believable* scheme on these pages, and then manages to get a national mainstream newspaper to publish a serious* article about it as a result.
 
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