Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, for Monday the 23rd of October.

I left you on Friday at Heathrow. Well, let me pick up again at Heathrow because today is all about the appalling public transport that connects

the UK's biggest airport with the city that it is supposed to serve. I'm at Heathrow Railway Station.

This is the hub for the very expensive and very efficient Heathrow Express, but I'm not

travelling on that. I'm using the much cheaper Elizabeth line, except that the Elizabeth line is

messed up. And so, well, there is no sign of the train anywhere. Can you believe even though this is the busiest

airport terminal in the UK, there's only one train every half hour on this line. It goes into the

central area, Heathrow Terminal 2 and 3, and then on into central London. And the great

advantage compared with the Heathrow Express is that it goes further than Paddington, where

actually not many people want to go. It goes to Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon,

Liverpool Street in the city of London, out to Canary Wharf. So it's a great piece of

transport infrastructure, in theory at least, but there are none.

And I have no idea why they haven't actually told us that.

But, well, we are merely passengers, of course.

But at least the Elizabeth line gives you an alternative to the tube.

The Piccadilly alternative to the tube.

The Piccadilly line of the tube is absolutely awful in my experience.

It was almost 50 years ago and there goes the overpriced T-Therow Express with hopefully lots of happy passengers on it.

The, yeah, almost half a century ago,

the Piccadilly line was extended from Hounslow West

all the way through to Heathrow Airport at the time.

There was just Terminal 1, 2 and 3.

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