Heathrow Expansion 2019

Today Heathrow Airport has opened its ‘Airport Expansion Consultation‘.  It incorporates a number of ‘Surface Access Proposals: Travelling To & From The Airport‘ which also covers taxi and private hire services.

Heathrow Airport’s outline objective, and accompanying methods, are as follows-

“We want to ensure that taxis and private hire vehicles can continue to fulfil this role but with greater efficiency, minimising the number of vehicle trips being made and providing benefits to drivers through reducing empty mileage.

To do this, we want to increase ‘backfilling’. This means that rather than a taxi or private hire vehicle arriving empty to pick up a passenger or leaving empty after dropping a passenger off, passengers are matched to drivers so that vehicles are full in both directions.

We will also encourage measures to promote taxi sharing, increasing the number of passengers each vehicle carries.“

Feedback is being welcomed on these proposals through, primarily, completion of an online survey.  The consultation will close on 13th September 2019.