Reducing journey times between Stansted Airport and central London to 30 minutes and creating a new link to Crossrail could attract an extra 1.4 million passengers a year, airport bosses have said.
Launching the airport’s rail vision today (November 23) at Stansted’s annual Transport Forum event, managing director Nick Barton also outlined aims to improve reliability by 95 per cent by 2015 and work with train operators to improve links with Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
London Stansted Airport is the fourth largest airport in the UK, handling around 17.5 million passengers a year.
Stansted Express, which is part of Greater Anglia, provides a direct rail service from the airport to London’s Liverpool Street.
The service currently runs every 15 minutes, with off-peak journey times of around 45 minutes.
We have the spare capacity and infrastructure in place to support 35 million passengers a year and with faster rail links we can attract the airlines whose passengers value quick and reliable links to London.
In the future, Stansted bosses hope to introduce a 24-hour rail service to the airport.
In his speech to delegates, Barton said: “We have the spare capacity and infrastructure in place to support 35 million passengers a year and with faster rail links we can attract the airlines whose passengers value quick and reliable links to London.
“Stansted is proud to be the leading major UK airport for public transport use, with now 50 per cent of passengers using train, bus and coach to travel to and from Stansted. But we want to build on this success, so that is why we also want to see more frequent trains to Cambridge, East Anglia and beyond opening up the airport to new communities.
“We believe there is a strong case to link the airport to high-speed rail and support the proposals to extend Crossrail to Stansted.
Ruud Haket, managing director of Greater Anglia, also called for improvements to the rail access to Stansted. He said: “Passengers are already seeing the benefits of high quality new trains on airport services, but to achieve future aspirations such as quicker journey times, more capacity on the route and more late night and early morning trains, will require significant investment in additional infrastructure.”
