During 2007, the AirTrack Forum commissioned consultants SDG to undertake a detailed study in to the Wider Economic Benefits of the AirTrack proposal (the WEB study). The objective was to assess benefits which may not have been captured by previous studies, in line with the latest guidance from the Department for Transport.

This work was made possible by generous financial contributions from the SE England Regional Assembly on behalf the SE Regional Transport Board and from the SE England Development Agency.

The initial WEB study results, announced at the Forum's Annual Meeting on 1 November 2007, indicate that the Benefit:Cost Ratio for the project would improve by around 30% if the additional benefits assessed by the study were included. It also found the potential for further additional contribution arising from improved access, additional employment and increased productivity.

Further details can be found on the "Wider Economic Benefits" page of this website.

The WEB study was based on data from work previously undertaken by Atkins for the AirTrack Forum - the "Outline Business Case" (OBC), published in 2004. See below for further information on this and other previous studies.

To view a copy of the final report of the new SDG WEB study, click here

The 2004 Atkins OBC study was commissioned by the AirTrack Forum to reconfirm the practicality and viability of the AirTrack project. It found AirTrack to be a realistic and financially viable business proposition which would bring a wide range of benefits to both Heathrow users and workers and to the wider community. A range of sensitivity tests were undertaken to demonstrate the robustness of the proposal, with the central case generating a healthy Benefit : Cost Ratio of 2.7:1.

The Executive Summary and the full Final Report from that OBC study are available below. Warning - the full Final Report is very large (12.7MB) and may take some time to download.

Click here to download the AirTrack OBC Executive Summary as a pdf document.

click here to download the full report (12.7MB)

Subsequent work completed by Arup in 2005 for the then Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) and the Rail Division of the Department for Transport (DfT), whilst identifying certain variations from the OBC, confirmed the essential conclusions of practicality and viability. The full report of that study is available for download from the DfT's website:

Click here to download the SRA/DfT report

note: you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to download these documents - if you don't have it click on the Adobe icon below