Heathrow Terminal 4 tube station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Location
Heathrow Terminal 4
Place	London Heathrow Airport
Local authority	London Borough of Hillingdon
Operations
Managed by	London Underground
Owned by	London Underground
Platforms in use	1
Transport for London
Zone	6
Annual entry/exit	0.831 million †
History
Key dates	Opened 1986
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground \| National Rail
† Data from Transport for London [1]
London Transport Portal

Heathrow Terminal 4 is a London Underground station at Heathrow Airport on the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly Line. The station is situated in Travelcard Zone 6.

The station opened on the 12 April 1986 to serve the recently opened airport terminal 4. It is situated on a unidirectional loop tunnel which was constructed between the existing Hatton Cross and Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3 stations. The station is one of the few on the London Underground to have only one platform. In-service routing took trains from Hatton Cross to Terminal 4 then Terminals 1, 2, 3 and back to Hatton Cross.

On 7 January 2005, both the loop track and the station were closed temporarily in order to allow the construction of a new rail junction to link to the new Heathrow Terminal 5 station. All trains reverted to using the original westbound track from Hatton Cross direct to Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3 which was used prior to the opening of Heathrow Terminal 4. For passengers travelling to or from Heathrow Terminal 4, a shuttle bus was provided from Hatton Cross tube station. This situation continued until 17 September 2006 when the loop line and station were reopened following completion of the construction, and with new security and customer announcement technologies in place at the station.

Part of a Piccadilly route map sign showing the future arrangement of stations at Heathrow

When the new Terminal 5 station opens (probably in March 2008), it is anticipated that the service pattern will be that every other train arriving at Hatton Cross will run via the Heathrow Terminal 4 loop, whilst the alternate trains will run direct to Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3 and then continue down the new branch to Heathrow Terminal 5.

While there is generally a gap of two minutes between underground stations, the loop takes seven minutes to complete, making the times to reach the loop line stations marginally longer than to travel the same number of stations elsewhere on the line.