Heathrow Hub railway station

The Heathrow Hub is a proposed railway interchange to serve, principally, future High Speed 2 rail services for Heathrow Airport, England. It was part of a proposal put forward by global engineering, design and consulting firm Arup in 2008, as a means of extending the UK’s high speed rail network from central London to Heathrow Airport.

Proposal
In the late 1980s Arup researched an innovative alternative for the alignment of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The route proposed by the company focused on using the link as a catalyst for regeneration - it was adopted by Government in 1991. It came into being in November 2007, when the first Eurostar arrived via High Speed 1, at St Pancras railway station.

Arup’s proposal would create a high-speed rail station at the airport alongside a future airport terminal, providing it with a direct rail link to continental Europe via Eurostar International services. The new station would have also connect regional rail services on the Great Western Main Line to Heathrow, making the airport more accessible to the West, South West, Wales and the Midlands and provided a direct train service between the Thames Gateway and the Thames Valley.

The new rail link to Heathrow was to offer passengers the choice between different modes of transport. Currently, just 22% of passengers arrive at Heathrow by rail, including the London Underground, while 65% arrive by car.

Evaluations
The cost of the Heathrow Hub project (including the costs of tunnelling a High-Speed Rail line from central London to Heathrow and a rail station with international and regional services) was estimated to be around £4.5 billion. In 2008, Arup met with former Secretary of State for Transport, Ruth Kelly to discuss how this cost could be private sector funded.

When published in February 2009, the Conservative Rail Review, ‘Getting the best for passengers’, confirmed that " a Conservative Government would support proposals along the lines of the plan put forward by engineering firm, Arup, for a new Heathrow rail hub."

Debate sparked by the Heathrow Hub proposal led to the Government’s 2009 decision to set up HS2 Ltd. The organisation is charged with considering the options to extend the UK’s high speed rail network from London to Birmingham and beyond.

In 2010 the incoming Coalition Government favoured a high speed route via a Heathrow hub, rather than an Old Oak Common interchange. In July 2010 plans emerged for a 12 platform station at Iver with services from High Speed 1, 2, Crossrail and the Great Western Main Line. It would be 3½ minutes from Heathrow Terminal 5 and 12 from Euston.