Jollisticks
How about doing something clever like linking it all together into a new Thames Barrier, road/rail bridge, and airport? Three or four budgets into one...?
That is exactly what has been proposed.
London needs a new Thames barrier anyway, costing about £20 billion, and the current Dartford crossing is just a mess, so throw all of these into the same melting-pot.
If you divide it up, you get:
Thames barrier £20 bn
Thames hydro project £5 bn
Road crossing £5 bn
Rail crossing £5 bn
Thames port facility £5 bn
Thames Airport £10 bn
Expenditure £50 bn
less sale of LHR £40 bn
Total expenditure £10 bn
Airport (saving) £40 bn
Sale of LHR £40 bn
Total savings £80 bn
But the last thing we need is for Boris to kick it all into the long grass, once more. Where would Paris be, if everything was still crunched up into Orly?
Prophead:
So building new runways, terminals, baggage transfer tunnels etc. wont solve the problem of an airport running at capacity?Not sure I understand the logic there.
Heathrow still has a lack of taxi space, stands, and decent terminals. Plus, it is still limited in arrivals/departures (even on a good day) and it has a long night curfew.
Even another commuter/domestic runway and terminal will not help, as that will simply add to the number of passengers interlining onto international flights - which the main airport and runways simply cannot cope with.
Heathrow needs two new international runways, plus a couple of domestic/commuter runways, to cope with its true potential. And even if you could do some radical bulldozing to the south, to put another runway there, there are no stands available - and there would still be a night curfew, and the west of London would still be blighted by the noise and emissions.
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