Greenfield Airports - who's idea?

[Flightmapping]

Someting I've been wondering about for a while, especially as the anti-CVT nimbys still keep trying to take the credit for defeating it:

Just exactly who came up with the idea of Rugby Airport?

As I understand it, the consultation document had to look at all options for the next 30 years. They looked at various other sites before putting Rugby in.

But why did they have to consider greenfield sites at all? Proposals for Cliffe & the Thames Estuary had been seen before, but suggestions for sites such as Rugby, Plymouth, Central Scotland etc came from nowhere.

IF there was ever an intention (or market conditions) to build these airport, THEN it would have been fair game to put them in. The white paper says the policy is now "to reject new airports on greenfield sites". All the consultation did was get hundreds of thousands of predictable responses saying "we don't want our country lanes turned into runways".

So why include them in the first place? There must have been someone in some government office wanting to push them. Conspiracy theorists would suggest:

a) The consultants for the report (Arups?) were paid on the volume of documents distributed, not on the quality of the document (which seemed to think Dubai was in India, according to the maps).
b) Some novice civil servant who's daddy ran lots of local papers.
c) It was simply a deliberate ploy to make approval of new runways at STN & LHR seem like a benign option compared to new mega-airports.

(c) Just seems to blatant. Could anyone else shed any more light on it?

[LGS6753]

The reason greenfield sites were included in the White Paper was so that the Government would look good when they rejected them.
The plans for Cliffe, Rugby, Severnside et al were poorly researched and never entered the starting grid. A lesson in New Labour politics.
The eventual outcome was utterly predictable, and was probably decided before edition one of the White Paper was even written.
Interestingly, the 'options' for Luton were put together by the consulting engineers company that works for BAA so both options (re-aligned runway and new runway 200 metres south of 08/26) were commercially impractical from the outset. TBI had no input to the original document as I understand it, but BAA's fingerprints are all over it.

Don't vote for Bliar

[Flightmapping]

Why have local MPs King and Plaskitt managed to take so much credit for their opposition to Rugby and Coventry airports? King has always made out that he was genuinely surprised by the Rugby proposal, and had no idea it was coming until the document was released. But then Plaskitt claimes he had no idea Coventry wanted passenger flights until the TOM ads started!

Just how low would they go with their spin? I find it ironic that the nimbys are heaping piles of support on these two, yet New Labour also reduced APD, the one factor which might reduce some of the growth in demand for cheap flights.

So were there vested interests wanting to get Birmingham's second runway through (or STN 2/ LHR 3 in London etc). OR are they even more cyncial than this? Rugby & Kenilworth was recently pointed out as one of the most marginal seats in the country. King is being hailed as a hero for fighting the Goliath that "was" Rugby airport, but we all knew Goliath was never going to show up for the fight....

My MP is Geoffrey Robinson, who has asked several questions about the costs of this consultation. I am going to see him tomorrow, so if anyone can add any more to this, I'd be happy to present it to him.

[twostroke]

The midlands site search and ranking was done by Scott Wilson Consultants

site search reports (http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_control/documents/contentservertemplate/dft_index.hcst?n=5567&l=5)

Sites which ranked highest were:

�� Church Lawford Located between Rugby and Coventry.
�� Grandborough Located between Rugby and Daventry
�� Hampton-in-Arden Located close to the SE quadrant of the M42
�� RAF Cosford Located between Birmingham and Telford
�� Rugby Radio Station Located to the east of Rugby
�� Berkswell Located to the west of Coventry
�� Yelvertoft Located east of Rugby
�� Worcester Located to the south east of Worcester


The Church Lawford site quite clearly received the highest ranking

[Flightmapping]

I think some of that got into the Consultation Document, but there is some interesting stuff here I hadn't seen before.

Just scanning through:

The basis of the study remains totally flawed "new runway at BHX needs more land than a new airport with 2-3 runways". Short 2nd runway as proposed by BHX not part of original report (seems similar to the way LTN was treated in the SE). Para 2 "it was considered prudent...." - did Gordon Brown write this?

Assuming no expansion at EMA & ignoring CVT in whole process was also totally flawed. Ditto closing BHX - I know there are precedents (DEN, MUC, OSL etc), but did any of these have such key facilities close by - afaik, none of the above had integrated rail access, or a major exhibition centre nearby. DEN has become a major hub (now #10 in world?), and MUC a key second base for LH. There just never was the market for this in the Midlands, so I am still miffed as to why they went ahead with publicising this daft proposal, UNLESS there was a clear political motive behind it.

If this was the case, this needs to be exposed before the elections next year, so voters know how they have been badly led up the garden path for reasons of pure cynicism.

1) It gives safety as the #1 issue. Wouldn't the possibility of birdstrikes at Draycote be the "showstopper" they talked about. They say they used lots of maps - surely a big reservoir shows up on such a map pretty well? Or was the birdstrike issue another nimby diversion?

2) How much jargon can you get into such a small space? It is certainly full of doublespeak / New Labourspeak - whatever you want to call it. My favourite is the "SCAM" method used by the DTLR to predict future growth. Also all those "Zoos" they keep talking about - surely that's where the consultants should be locked up?

3) The "Zoo" score for Yelvertoft and Church Lawford were the same. What made Rugby get selected, and Yelvertoft rejected? Is it because Yelvertoft has a tory mp, who they didn't want to give the glory to?