Gatwick to Make Plane to Train Seamless With $190 Million Upgrade

Gatwick Airport announced a £120.5 million upgrade to its train station, as part of continued enhancements to a seamless rail to air travel experience.

Work on the station is scheduled to start from 2017 with a completion date of 2020. New features and improvements will include doubling the size of the concourse area, adding escalators and lifts to platforms, and a simplified “intuitive” passenger flow for improved way-finding.

Gatwick states these improvements will allow it to manage projected growth in air passengers, with demand at the station increasing by 5 million to 20 million rail passengers a year by 2025.

Guy Stephenson, Gatwick’s Chief Commercial Officer, says of the project: “This new station builds on the ongoing transformation of Gatwick Airport and will deliver a first-class gateway for visitors, air passengers and the 1 million rail commuters who use Gatwick station every year.”

This upgrade runs parallel with projects which increase rail services capacity through Gatwick, including: New Gatwick Express trains by 2016, new Thameslink trains by 2018, connections to Crossrail at Farringdon in 2019, new twice hourly direct connections to Peterborough, and a train to central London every 2.5 minutes by 2025.