[xedarius]

It is great and should be celebrated. For me the big win is no longer having to hand over high-way robbery amounts of money for the Heathrow express. Having a better and cheaper service to Heathrow terminals is brilliant. Byeeeee Heathrow express!

[joshvm]

Yes, I'm also curious what will happen there. The Express is still faster (20 vs 30 mins), but costs twice as much. And you have to get it from Paddington. It sits in a weird niche where the alternative rail routes weren't that much longer, but if you really had to get to the airport in a hurry (especially connecting from the West Country) it was a nice emergency option.

Now you also have the option of doing Reading > Hayes > Heathrow entirely on the Elizabeth Line.

My biggest gripe is that despite the high price, you spend the entire journey being force-fed live news on the TV and PR fluff about how it's the best rated line in the UK (no surprise, it goes between two stations).

[cannam]

Heathrow Express has long been a bit lost. The original idea was that you would check in for your flight - including baggage drop - at Paddington before taking the Express. When the "lawn" area at Paddington was opened in 1999, the back wall (now a row of shops, from Boots to Fat Face) was a row of check-in desks with baggage facilities.

I never used these and I kind of wish I had, because after 9/11 they closed and never reopened.

[edit: Wikipedia tells me the check-in service ran until 2003 and "was withdrawn due to low usage and high cost of operation", nothing to do with 9/11. My mind must have filled in the more dramatic memory]

Then a few years later the Heathrow Connect service opened, a slightly slower, much cheaper alternative to the Express (it changed names a few times but I believe is the same service as now constitutes the Elizabeth Line on that stretch) - so nobody who was coming from Paddington, planning ahead, and paying their own fare had much reason to take the Express any more.

[likpok]

You can take the tube to heathrow today, and it’s not too bad an experience. Going to soho it’s only 20 minutes longer than heathrow express (and no train change!).

It is a bit annoying to take from terminal 3 — they really push you to the express. But easy enough and I’ve done it a couple times when traveling on my own dime.

Total price ends up around £4-5.

[OJFord]

There was already the Picadilly line? I'm sure Heathrow Express is faster (depending exactly where you want to go/change for of course) but if your problem with it was the price, it wasn't mandatory.

[orev]

Heathrow Express is likely used mostly by business travelers, who expense everything to their company. So the price doesn’t matter.

[mFixman]

Don't forget confused tourists.

There are ads and ticket sellers points of the Heathrow Express all over Heathrow's terminals. It's easy to accidentally pay for an overpriced train if you don't know there is an alternative that costs half the money and arrived in almost the same amount of time.

The last time I was in Heathrow I befriended a poor couple of Italians who bought a £25 Heathrow Express ticket because they thought they needed it to ride the £2.50 Picadilly Line.

[hakfoo]

And tourists with rail passes that cover it. When I visited the UK in 2019, I splashed out over $300 for an 8-day pass, because I wanted to be able to treat the entire national system as my personal hop-on-hop-off service. I will definitely recommend that aspect.

The Heathrow Express was one of the worst legs of the system; having just regurgitated my airline breakfast, I was delighted to be sitting in a coach with no air conditioning in August.

I agree that the alternatives are woefully underdocumented. I recall the choice being framed as "well, you can go to the taxi stand, spend 75GBP to go the whole way to the hotel, or use the rail option and spend 20GBP on a taxi from Paddington.

In retrospect, what I should have done is taken the Underground from near Paddington to where I was staying (100 metres from Euston, so I think it involves about 8 train changes within 75m) and saved the difference.

[Doctor_Fegg]

But given that many of those business travellers will be going to/from the City (Liverpool Street) or Canary Wharf, the Elizabeth Line is going to be a much more attractive proposition even disregarding the price difference.

I expect Heathrow Express to be quietly abandoned in a few years' time. Network Rail and GWR would quite like the trains off the GWML fast lines.

[likpok]

Yeah, I’ve traveled to London a lot and the new office is a short walk from the Elizabeth line. It’s an even shorter walk than the tube! The new line would have to be quite bad for me to stick with heathrow express (once the Elizabeth line finally shows up at heathrow…)

[ghaff]

That's always been my expectation. It can make sense on your own to just pony up if you're leaving from near Paddington anyway, especially if you have luggage. But I usually stay near Trafalgar Square and just take the Piccadilly Line.