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Today Hoon announced Government support for a third runway at Heathrow, this is not a commercial decision but purely a political one by Gordon Brown with an eye to the next General Election, the reality is that it will never get built and he knows it.

Brown has a simple ‘tribal’ motive in saying that it will under Labour. It is likely that Labour has written off any chance in the “Middle Class” constituencies that will be effected but has some key London seats in the immediate area. As the majority of local jobs are directly or indirectly connected to Heathrow the slogan will be, “Vote Tory or LibDem and you will lose your jobs”. It is as crude and simple as that.

There is No Case

Having lived near Heathrow on three extended occasions and not being a “Bleeding Heart Green”, because I do love planes and flying, the key point as to why this will never be built is being missed. And strangely it doesn’t include Atmospheric or Noise pollution, put quite simply there is no possibility of building the ground level infrastructure to support it.

A high speed rail link to Central London would not solve the increased road traffic. One of the problems with Heathrow is that it is an established car/coach location as far as travelling to and from it, putting in a 6^th Terminal will make matters worse and the current road links are already overloaded.

The Road Links Will Kill It

If anyone has any doubts about this, take a look at the multi lane section of the M25 between the M40 interlink and (one junction only),the M4 interlink by Heathrow. When they widened that, it just filled up, congestion has worsened. Oh sure you can put any amount of lanes on nice new roads around Terminal 6 but it would be pointless because the traffic will still all funnel in to the 2 lane elevated section of the M4 where effectively they are joined by traffic from Heathrow on the A4 and A30 at Chiswick.

A Brand New Airport in the Thames

My personal view would be to build a totally new Airport in the Estuary but, also build it around high speed rail links whether to Continental Europe, “Up North” or into London. On top of that, it will provide the impetus for the Thames Corridor development so conspicuously lacking thus far.

It is not just a “technical decision”, it is a commercial and political decision concerning the future of our economy. A third runway is like the fourth lane on a motorway, it will soon fill up. Boris Johnson got it totally right when he described Heathrow as a “planning mistake”, time to put it right.

A Interesting Objection

On a DT blog, I had some feedback from a chap called Gus who worked in Air Traffic Control and had spent some time on a revue of the requirements for a third runway, he made some interesting points:

“Had the 2003 White Paper been mine, I would have said that in the year 2030 Heathrow will close; it is in the wrong place and for many reasons it is not a good choice; it’s environmental impact is NOT minimal. This would have given us nearly 30 years to build a large, many runway airport in another location and all the infrastructure necessary to service it.

From an ATC perspective an Estuary airport may not work. It is rather close to the boundary with European airspace and may cause interaction with traffic climbing and descending across Dutch flight paths. It is unlikely that they would be willing to possibly mess up the airspace west of Schipol just so that London can have an Estuary airport.”

Well if I assume that he is correct, we are an ingenious people so let’s think laterally, are there other potential solutions ?

London Mainly But, Not Only…

People want to come to London but some who arrive at Heathrow are actually just in ‘transit’ and change planes. It is likely that a lot of people fly in and out of Heathrow just because that is where the planes go and fly from on the ‘main routes’, given a choice, they wouldn’t.

The real problem with the whole of the South East is that there is actually nowhere to build a brand new airport, it is all far too crowded already and the cost of land, exorbitant. There is also a major problem with the way transportation has grown up around London, it is all radial in design, whether from the north, east, south or west, all links go in to and come from, Central London.

Time to Get Radical

I currently live on the Bristol Channel and there is a proposal to build a hydro electric tidal barrage right across it from the Somerset coast to the Welsh coast which could generate, I believe something like 7% of the UK’s electricity. Clearly this is a major engineering project, so why not ‘rack it up’ a bit ?

Why not build an airport in the Bristol Channel with a non-stop rail link into Central London and others also going north to Birmingham, Manchester and further linking in to the West Coast Line and so on, why not ? Keep the existing rail tracks for use as they are, build totally new tracks to run Japanese style “Bullet Trains”. The only impact on the South East will be connecting a new high speed railway coming in from the West.

Flight Check In could be at a London Rail Station as well as at the airport. Personally I would suggest banning all car traffic on the “island airport”, instead have car parking and car rental on the mainland with a free shuttle service to catch a flight. For that matter, why not have Flight Check in facilities in the same place ?

Properly designed from outset, I bet a passenger could arrive at London “Bristol Channel” airport and get to Paddington as quick as getting a taxi from Heathrow into London today.