[title]
If you’ve ever flown from Gatwick, chances are you’ve hopped on the Gatwick Express, bitterly parted with over £20 and been on your merry way. But what if we told you that a lot of the time the fastest, cheapest way to get to the airport by rail isn’t on the Express at all?
That’s the problem Neil Middleton from the independent campaigning organisation Rail Future wants to fix. He wants an end to the ‘fiction’ of the Gatwick Express and is calling for the service to be incorporated into the standard cheaper services.
There are only two Gatwick Express services per hour, and those journeys come with a hefty price tag. Whereas there are six Southern Services from Victoria station doing the same journey only two minutes slower and about £10 cheaper. Then there’s also the Thameslink trains from London Bridge, which further adds to the confusion. The four fastest trains per hour from central London are the Thameslink services from London Bridge.
What this means in practice is there are often empty carriages on the Gatwick Express as savvy customers choose the cheaper services, which are then overcrowded.
With Gatwick Airport set to expand after the government just approved a second runway, much to many environmental groups’ dismay, travelling to the terminal is about to get a lot busier. One condition the government set is that at least 54 per cent of journeys to the airport must be made by public transport. So, by the late 2030s, this could mean over 110,000 passengers on a day. Let’s hope the frequent flight delays at the airport have been sorted out by then.
In a letter sent to the rail minister Lord Hendy, Rail Future laid out their suggestion. The organisation called for the Gatwick Express to be scrapped as a separate operator and incorporated into local services, make every fast train between Victoria and the airport a ‘Gatwick Express’ and charge one simple fare. Oh, and stop at Clapham Junction, which it said would open up easy connections for hundreds more passengers with the over 200 stations served from there and improve connections to Brighton.
A spokesperson for Govia Thameslink Railway, which operates Gatwick Express, said: ‘Gatwick Express is a respected brand that offers a great value, premium, non-stop service between the airport and London Victoria. It operates with modern air-conditioned trains and its onboard staff routinely receive passenger praise.’
‘Subject to DfT and regulatory approvals, we are looking at options to double the frequency of the service to run every 15 minutes. It was only ever reduced to create room for the station redevelopment at Gatwick and then delayed being reinstated because the pandemic suppressed passenger numbers.’
Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel.
Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.