The terminal expansions at Heathrow are also going to miss the third runway opening. Which means flight (and hence passenger) capacity will only expand marginally in 2026 and beyond. The terminal expansions are slated IIRC for early to mid 2030s, which is when HSR is envisaged to open. So it may not matter that much that HSR is “delayed”. Though it will stifle pax from the southwest getting to the HS2 interchange at OOC.
The Network Rail site for Western Access has that opening in 2028, again after R3 but before significant air pax increase.
Source is the Heathrow Masterplan, which I can’t easily find and link to as I’m on mobile.
Getting to OOC on current trains from South of Basingstoke would be easy enough, although the Southern Approach would improve the fastest journey time frequency and would significantly improve things for South Of Woking (i.e. Guildford, Petersfield, Portsmouth, etc.).
There's also an argument that due to development proposals that the Basingstoke services should run as follows:
- Manydown (new station on the WofE line between Oakley and Basingstoke, development of 3,500 homes/8,400 people)
- Basingstoke
- Hook
- Winchfield for Shapley Heath (new garden village, was due early 2020's but due to local plan inspection more likely early 2030's. Due to add 5,000 homes/12,000 people)
- Elvetham Heath/Edenbrook (West of Fleet)
- Fleet
- Southwood (between Fleet and Farnborough, which has a lot of employment land near it)
- Farnborough
- Brookwood
- Woking & then onto Heathrow
That would pick up 2 new fairly large developments as well as two established developments which are some distance from their nearest train station, one of which has a significant amount of employment development nearby. All four stations (3 new and Winchfeild) would have the potential to add 1/2 million to 1 million extra people to the rail network in top of what already uses the network by bringing a lot more people within walking and cycling distances of train stations as well as freeing up car parking spaces at existing stations.
Yes it would slow down the services (the current proposal is for Basingstoke, Farnborough and Woking), however it's unlike to loose many people from:
- Basingstoke, as by changing at Woking you gain a choice of 4tph, whilst those for whom a change is unacceptable it would add about 18 minutes to their journey which isn't so much that that it would put many off. However would gain loads of local passengers.
- Farnborough would be almost unaffected as the delay would be 3 minutes, but would gain loads of local passengers.
- everywhere else would see loads now passengers
They would also be on the slow lines meaning patching them could be easier than on the fasts.
