Great Western Coffee Shop

The Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (with its members: Bracknell Forest, Reading, and Wokingham Councils) has commissioned an Economic Impact Study on "Reading Waterloo Line and Southwest Rail Access to
Heathrow" (http://thamesvalleyberkshire.co.uk/Portals/0/FileStore/StrategicInfrastructure/Reading-Waterloo%20Economic%20Impact%20Report.pdf). This was released, coincidentally, just before the Crossrail to Reading announcement.

It's purely economic - it estimates benefits, but not costs. it's the choice of options that I find a bit odd. This summarises the results, in terms of the capital equivalent of the supposed general economic benefit:

Scenario Description	Maximum Benefits (^million)	Low Benefits (^million)	Magnitude of Capital Investment (^million)
Scenario B1 -25% JT	1,742	1,262	625 ^ 875
Scenario B2 -15% JT	1,017	742	375 ^ 500
Scenario C1 4tph	1,365	828	425 - 675
Scenario C2 3tph	771	482	250 - 375
Scenario D1 -25% JT / 4tph	3,487	2,322	1,150 ^ 1,750
Scenario D2 -15% JT / 3tph	1,713	1,262	625 ^ 850

The options are two levels of journey time reduction, and two levels of service frequency increase. There are also some options for access to Heathrow:

Scenario Description	Maximum Benefits (^million)	Low Benefits (^million)	Magnitude of Capital Investment (^million)
Scenario E1 Heathrow Loop	508	297	150 ^ 250
Scenario E2 Heathrow Spur - without rail service improvement	(352) * (-605)	(211) * (-348)	n/a (no gain)
Scenario F1 Loop + 2tph	3,059	2,041	1,025 ^ 1,525
Scenario F2 Spur + 2tph	1,683	1,102	550 ^ 850
Scenario G1 F1 + Guildford Link	3,150	2,081	1,050 ^ 1,550

They looked at two kinds of link - spur and loop - but without defining where these lines would be. Then the current 2 tph are routed via Heathrow, unless there are additional trains in which case the current ones go direct. They do not consider just extending Heathrow trains to Staines.

There is a mention of the level crossing issue that Airtrack never solved, but it is not part of the assessment - presumably it comes on the engineering/infractructure cost side of the equation that they have not estimated at all.