page_title: Heathrow Airport
section_title: New transport proposals
hierarchical_section_title: Heathrow Airport / Future expansion and plans / New transport proposals
caption_attribution_description: English: The proposed Western Rail linkto Heathrow (shown in red) which would allow eastbound trains to run from the Great Western Mainline into Heathrow Airport on their way into London. Route information sourced from Network Rail This map was created from OpenStreetMap project data, collected by the community. This map may be incomplete, and may contain errors. Don't rely solely on it for navigation.
context_page_description: Heathrow Airport, originally called London Airport and now known as London Heathrow, is a major international airport in London, United Kingdom. Heathrow is the second busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic, as well as the busiest airport in Europe by passenger traffic, and the seventh busiest airport in the world by total passenger traffic. It is one of six international airports serving the London region. In 2019, it handled a record 80.8 million passengers, a 0.9% increase from 2018 as well as 475,861 aircraft movements, a decrease of 1,743 from 2018. The airport facility is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings.
  Heathrow lies 14 miles west of Central London, and has two parallel east–west runways along with four operational terminals on a site that covers 12.27 square kilometres. The airport is the primary hub for British Airways and the primary operating base for Virgin Atlantic.
  In September 2012, the Government of the United Kingdom established the Airports Commission, an independent commission chaired by Sir Howard Davies to examine various options for increasing capacity at UK airports.
context_section_description: Currently, all rail connections with Heathrow airport run along an east–west alignment to and from central London, and a number of schemes have been proposed over the years to develop new rail transport links with other parts of London and with stations outside the city. This mainline rail service is due to be extended to central London and Essex when the Elizabeth line, currently under construction, opens.
  A 2009 proposal to create a southern link with London Waterloo via the Waterloo–Reading line was abandoned in 2011 due to lack of funding and difficulties with a high number of level crossings on the route into London, and a plan to link Heathrow to the planned High Speed 2 (HS2) railway line (with a new station, Heathrow Hub) was also dropped from the HS2 plans in March 2015.
  Among other schemes that have been considered is a rapid transport link between Heathrow and Gatwick Airports, known as Heathwick, which would allow the airports to operate jointly as an airline hub; In 2018, the Department for Transport began to invite proposals for privately funded rail links to Heathrow Airport. Projects being considered under this initiative include:
  the Western Rail Approach to Heathrow, a proposal for a spur from the Great Western Main Line to link Heathrow to Reading, Slough, the South West, South Wales and the West Midlands;
  Heathrow Southern Railway, a similar scheme to the abandoned Airtrack proposal, which would connect Terminal 5 station with Chertsey or Virginia Water, Staines, London Waterloo, Guildford and Clapham Junction;
  HS4Air, a proposal for a new high-speed railway line which would link HS2 to the High Speed 1 line and the Channel Tunnel via a southern route, with stations at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.
caption: One of the transport projects being considered is the Western Rail Approach to Heathrow
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