There is no shortage of competitors for the strangest site on the internet. ‘The Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics’, for instance. Or gooseduds.com — an essential website (essential, that is, if you have ornamental garden geese and feel the urge to dress them in seasonal clothes). Or hatsofmeat.com, a website that shows exactly what its name suggests.
But, after 18 years of surfing the web, last week I stumbled on a page more ridiculous than any of these.
I live in Kent. Getting to Heathrow is a nuisance. The south-western stretch of the M25 is often congested, and the journey is made slower by Surrey’s habit of imposing random and gratuitous temporary speed limits on its section of the M25 to boost speed-camera revenues. Never mind, I thought. Crossrail will solve that problem one day.
Crossrail will connect Shenfield in Essex with Maidenhead in Berkshire via the centre of London. An additional western leg of Crossrail will end at Heathrow. Hostile as I am to grand projects, London does need a decent railway running east-west. And I naively assumed that since Crossrail twice crosses the M25, Europe’s busiest road, someone would have the wit to build a station near the M25 at each end. You know, with a car park, or something radical like that.
So I expectantly searched the Crossrail site to see where I could go to catch a train to Heathrow in 2018. I found this.
1.1 This Information Paper outlines the Promoter’s approach to passenger car parking at and around Crossrail stations [Good start. I don’t know who ‘The Promoter’ is — Frank Warren? Don King? — but hopes were rising at this point].
1.2 Additional passengers arising from the introduction of Crossrail will affect the demand for modes used to access the stations.
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