Heathrow charge £5 for walking through a gate (Thistle to the business parking and thus T5). They charge £5 for a bus service to take you to other hotels too - hotels aren't allowed to run their own (free) shuttles.
The present car park has only been open for a few years. Not sure they would want to relinquish it so soon. Also, people using Luton Station would still need to park somewhere, given that a large section of the former station car park is now a bus station and the remainder not used for very much.
Until recently Heathrow subsidised local bus services so it was free to travel to most local hotels. It's now £1.55 on TfL services and £2.50 on First Slough.
I'd happily pay for this, compared to a scummy experience on a bus with luggage.
It would likely be unlawful to charge for the only method of step free access, yes.
I think it would be fine to charge for use of a lift if any alternatives were also chargeable - there can be no discrimination if all are treated equally.
If your "Staffless" system has ticket gates at both ends, that is at least two staff working whenever the ticket barriers are closed.
Didn't know that! Thanks, I have not looked closely into it but thought it would be similar to Stansted.
In that case about ten extra staff . experts in tug of war , to pull it up.
Presuming it is part of the airport's operating team, those staff may not need to be dedicated to the shuttle - they may be part of the wider airport operations and maintenance team, ditto for the control centre. The only dedicated staff necessary would presumably be at the ticket barriers.
Always count on one person to burst my bubble. And do a load of people out of work. Ashamed at you Bletchleyite.
This sort of thing has a "platform" all the way along so they just get out and walk if necessary.
Presumably, on a system with only 2 exits you can manage with ticket checks at only one end (probably the airport end).
To be pedantic a funicular includes a significant slope and balanced cars at either end of a cable, or a car and a balance weight. This is two parallel independent systems cable hailed systems.
And just the small matter of paying over £225,000,000 for the system to be built... you'd get a lot of buses for that
Oddly passengers seem to manage just fine on mainline rail with ticket barriers at both ends. I'm not sure how much chaos you imagine a simple two-station transit system can create with ticket barriers?
London Underground copes just fine at peak hours with ticket barriers, it's clearly possible for it to be done.
I'd happily pay an extra 50p each way to use the new, faster, more convenient system over the old bus link.
If they have a good level of patronage on the exiting shuttle then clearly the market will support the current pricing and I don't think you can claim they're "clearly overcharging".
I’d agree that’s the most logical. The Rail Station end has lumpy arrivals and lumpy departures; the airport end has lumpy arrivals but non-lumpy departures — so fewer machines and barriers needed on the airport departing side.
That is being very pedantic. I haven't seen exactly how it will operate by I suspect that in full service it will be pretty much indistinguishable from a true funicular. It's certainly only 2 'trains', and it has a significant slope and cables...
But the cables aren’t connected between the two tracks, and there are up and down slopes in both directions, it’s more like a switchback than a slope…
Mexico City Airport has what appears to be a very similar system, and has neither a walking evacuation guideway, nor on-board staff. I wonder what their evacuation procedures are, and why they were not considered suitable for Luton.
Because of being in Mexico, and not the UK?
You don't need to argue the fact. I said "effectively" and "pretty much indistinguishable from" a funicular, not actually a funicular.
I wouldn’t like Mexico’s safety standards in the UK. Strangely enough I used that transit a few times just a couple of weeks ago and wondered how they would evacuate people.
Probably the station end, otherwise the thing will be packed with enthusiasts doing the out and back ride without paying.
It has the important difference that at quiet times one track can be taken out of use for maintenance, with the other providing a service at reduced frequency. The Birmingham one does this, and is a horizontal version of the same technology. I think the one at Gatwick does too, although that's not cable hauled. With a true funicular both tracks have to be operational.
That could easily be prevented (if it were actually seen as a problem - packed with enthusiasts is a slight exaggeration, NYC's AirTrain doesn't prevent enthusiasts from going to Jamaica/Howard Beach and back again for free!) by fencing off the airport side so that arriving passengers must exit and re-enter through gates before being able to re-board.
