Accessibility

Easier airport access? A new study quantifes and compares the impact of on the number of people within easy reach of Heathrow and Gatwick airports by public transport, writes Jo Dorrington Ward

rossrail will signifcantly ing, providing four trains hourly to transport, and allows a mixture of improve the accessibility the airport in addition to the cur- these to be used within a calculation. of from Heathrow rent service. The public transport modes used Ca wide range of destina- Te r m i n a l s 1 - 3 in this study included: bus, coach, tions, according to a new study. and 4 will On TRACC , light rail, Tube and This is important if any decision experience The study was conducted using tram. The frst step was to import to build new runway capacity in the greatest Basemap’s Visography TRACC, a mul- timetable data, which were sourced the South East goes in Heathrow’s ti-modal accessibility planning tool. from Basemap’s latest NPTDR dataset favour, and from the standpoint of improvements This sofware can be used to quickly (January 2015). For the road network the airport’s sustainability policy. in accessibility and accurately calculate travel time Meridian 2, a vector map dataset, was The aim of the study was to analyse using a multitude of public trans- imported. This is an Ordnance Survey how Crossrail, when fully operational, port and road travel modes to give OpenData product, allowing walking will afect travel times to both Heath- accurate journey times from many access throughout the network and row and Gatwick airports. Both are on origins to many destinations in one between various stops to be includ- the Airports Commission’s shortlist as calculation. The calculation engine ed if an interchange was required. possible sites for new runway capacity and advanced database design are Origins, the point at which a cal- in the South East, with a decision due able to fully utilise national datasets culation starts, can be created from afer the election. Heathrow in partic- within a calculation, allowing analysis postcode centroids, addresses, or as ular is keen to increase the proportion of results across the whole country. a grid across an area. For this study a of passengers travelling to the airport TRACC also provides the ability to 350m standardised grid was selected. by public transport, seeking to reduce focus on specifc geographical areas, in The grid consisted of over 1 million emissions and improve sustainability. this case the areas surrounding the two origin points, extending across the Crossrail will run across airports. Visography TRACC covers a Midlands, the whole of the south of and from 2019 its western section full range of transport modes including England and throughout Wales. will run to Heathrow and Read- walking, cycling, driving and public Crossrail will run directly into

24 Transport Times March 2015 Accessibility

Heathrow Airport, thus potentially Similarly, areas north of Horsham Left: Map shows The Gatwick experience improving accessibility. Heathrow’s and Crawley have short travel times travel times TRACC shows that Gatwick is un- to Heathrow ambition to build a new runway to to an airport of up to 20 minutes, and Gatwick in likely to experience any improvement increase capacity makes an assessment which is most likely Gatwick. 20-minute bands in accessibility within the 30- and of whether travel times to the airport The latest census data from 2011 was after Crossrail 60-minute time bands due to Crossrail. will improve, and how many people imported into TRACC to produce de- is operational. However, accessibility to Gatwick this may afect, extremely pertinent. mographic data reports, assessing the Below: The route does improve when looking at travel taken by Crossrail Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 total population afected by Crossrail. Bottom: The table times of up to 90 and 120 minutes, were considered as one destination The table below shows that once shows the increase particularly for the South terminal, point – they are close together and Crossrail is fully operational, Heath- in populations which is closer to served by one Tube station. Terminals row Terminals 1-3 and 4, which both within the given railway station than the North termi- travel times of 4 and 5 were considered separately as have Crossrail stops, will experience both airports nal. This refects the fact that Cross- travel times and travel routes would the greatest improvements in acces- rail can be used by people located difer. Gatwick Airport was selected sibility, particularly within a 30-min- east and west of London and in the Home Counties to travel to London to access hubs such as Victoria (via BRENTWOOD Route Map the Underground) to reach Gatwick. Showing rail and air connections Shenfield

Brentwood HS2 plans also show a spur into Surface line

Tunnel Harold Wood Heathrow, which has the potential Portal (tunnel entrance and exit)

National Rail connection REDBRIDGE Romford Airport connection Chadwell Gidea Seven Heath Park to further improve accessibility. It is Airports not on the Crossrail route - to travel to these Kings airports passengers will need to travel on other Ilford Goodmayes connecting rail services. Step-free travel is possible but SOUTH BUCKS Forest assistance will be required to get on and of some trains. HILLINGDON ISLINGTON Gate Maryland HAVERING planned to increase the accessibility Travel from Parkway Station to CAMDEN Circle Luton Airport is via an accessible bus. Metropolitan Manor Park Hammersmith & City Hammersmith & City Stratford BARKING & Central Luton District TOWER Central EALING District Central DAGENHAM Taplow Burnham Gatwick Overground HAMLETS Jubilee Jubilee of Gatwick through separate improve- DLR WESTMINSTER Whitechapel Ealing Bond Farringdon Overground West Broadway KENSINGTON & Street NEWHAM HAMMERSMITH & Drayton Hanwell CITY OF Maidenhead Langley Iver CHELSEA Hayes & Southall LONDON Liverpool SLOUGH Harlington Acton Tottenham West FULHAM Street ments to main line rail services, includ- Slough Main Line Paddington Court Road Ealing Circle Circle Custom Northern Canary Hammersmith Metropolitan House & City Central Hammersmith Wharf DLR Bakerloo & City Jubilee District Northern DLR Abbey Wood Central Woolwich ing Gatwick Express and the continu- Twyford Stansted DLR WINDSOR & MAIDENHEAD Southend T1,2,3 Heathrow GREENWICH ing programme, aiming T4 BEXLEY Reading Piccadilly WOKINGHAM Heathrow to double rail capacity by 2020. These READING were outside the scope of this study. Plans are also under consideration for comparative purposes, looking ute period (9.8% and 15.7% increase for , which will improve at the North and South terminals respectively). Terminal 5 experiences accessibility into Surrey, with potential separately. Though Crossrail will a much smaller increase of 0.8% in the to improve accessibility to Gatwick not directly serve Gatwick, it was population that can reach it within 30 (by interchanging at Clapham Junc- considered worth assessing wheth- minutes, because there will not be a tion). However, plans for Crossrail 2 er it improves accessibility at all. Crossrail stop there, so passengers will do not focus specifcally on accessi- The destinations were ploted have to change on to the Piccadilly bility to Gatwick, highlighting that using the draw tool within Vi- Line. Nevertheless, the overall im- Jo Dorrington the airport should be considered sography TRACC at the approxi- provements in travel times are highly Ward is a product closely in future infrastructure mate terminal entrance points. relevant given the proposals for addi- specialist at plans, particularly if it is chosen as Visography TRACC was used to tional runway capacity at Heathrow. Basemap the site of an additional runway. conduct an analysis of the journey time from each origin point to all Terminal Total Journey Time Total Total Additional % Change in destinations on a Tuesday between Population Population Population Population 10am and 2pm, showing current Before After accessibility to both airports. Heathrow T1, T2, T3 30 minutes 240261 263776 23515 9.8 Impact 60 minutes 3527834 3624989 97155 2.8 Visography TRACC was then used to model the Crossrail route and its ser- 90 minutes 9036534 9164589 128055 1.4 vices, in order to see its impact on travel 120 minutes 13740065 13751735 11670 0.1 times to both airports. Crossrail provid- Heathrow T4 30 minutes 229911 265906 35995 15.7 ed station to station transit times which were entered as a new rail service into 60 minutes 2788401 2933550 145149 5.2 TRACC along with the various routes, 90 minutes 8143252 8273792 130540 1.6 including the spur of to Heathrow. Aa frequency of four trains an hour was 120 minutes 12658716 12694379 35663 0.3 assumed during the peak times and Heathrow T5 30 minutes 207388 208954 1566 0.8 two an hour during the of-peak, as 60 minutes 2808362 2829417 21054 0.7 stated on the Crossrail website. Afer the creation of the new route, this was 90 minutes 8543897 8642864 98967 1.2 run through TRACC using the same 120 minutes 13207212 13211877 4666 0 time period (Tuesday 10 am to 2pm). The map shows travel times to both Gatwick North 30 minutes 28472 28472 0 0 airports using six time bands of 20 60 minutes 725208 725208 0 0 minute intervals afer Crossrail opens. This represents the total travel time 90 minutes 5848755 5854989 6235 0.1 taking into account any walking time, 120 minutes 113058 47 11315852 10005 0.1 interchanges between stops and time Gatwick South 30 minutes 81819 81819 0 0 spent on public transport. Central London, west London and areas 60 minutes 1471406 1471406 0 0 surrounding Slough have the short- 90 minutes 7312703 7323591 10888 0.1 est travel times to an airport, most likely Heathrow, of up to 20 minutes. 120 minutes 12311728 12338419 26691 0.2

Transport Times March 2015 25