The Windsor Observer has reported on the Windsor Link Railway and the options for a westerly link to Heathrow.
They reported, “Last week, Secretary of State for transport Patrick McLoughlin agreed to look into speeding up the delivery of WRatH at the request of Slough MP Fiona Mactaggart”.
WLR is grateful that he has not agreed to short-cut the due process. The rail industry is tasked not only with delivering specific outcomes but also with improving its efficiency and value-for-money, which in turn reduces fares for travellers. If projects are rushed or improperly pressured at the behest of politicians then it becomes more difficult to deliver the latter.
Often rushing can be slower than doing it properly and considering the wider issues as well as the narrower ones. This is what happened with the ill-fated Heathrow Airtrack project, providing a south-west link to Heathrow, where they spent forty years failing to build anything, and the importance of this link was again emphasised by the Airports Commission a few weeks ago. WLR is concerned that the lessons of this failure have not been learnt.
