MAN777,
Yes, good point. SS had obviously been listening to the Shamen's 'Move any Mountain' - yet he denies there are any mountains, or any kind of contours in the Thames Estuary!
The other problem with this is that articifial islands are subject to sinking (Kansai). I can just about get my head round a £20bn airport generating a return for investors - although this seems wildly optimistic as the land based Rugby option was pencilled at £6bn in 2003. When costs start to rise, do the investors chip in more, or do they get a government bailout? Even Kansai is still blighted commercially as ITM remains both open and busier.
SS,
Are there any documented cases of aircraft even going into terminals
To the best of my knowledge, there are no documented cases of aircraft leaving the runway out of control and then impacting either a terminal or other structure nearby, hence the oil and gas terminal adjacent to the runways should not be a problem if there is a suitable barrier. Yet your relocated 'Foster's Folly' might involve aircraft overflying the facility, and therefore it
would be a risk.
It is also much closer to established transport links, like the Channel tunnel link and Cross-rail, and would join easier onto the motorway network.
Exactly the comparison I made yesterday between Foster's Island and Silver Island!
The residents of Gravesend might not be too pleased either. Perhaps they could be bought off with cash. I am not sure how many houses there are in Gravesend, but at £20,000 a household, you would only be talking £40 million or so.
Why don't you do a little research before proposing such a ridiculous figure!
The population of Gravesend is around 50,000 - so if you wanted to move houses and commercial premises, I suggest a figure of £100k per head, or £5bn would be closer.
Now did you also suggest £40bn for LCY? This is an extremely thin wafer of land, so, like LHR, its usage as an airport in terms of revenue generated per acre is actually very efficient. Has it not occured to you that, just maybe all those sharks working in the city would have long since stripped it out by now if they thought the land was better off as offices? Consider that such a move might also involve a consortium of Docklands land owners who would then have less restrictions on building heights - and that a 2% shareholding to Tower Hamlets residents' associations might assure a smooth run through the planning process? City types might like their fast access to the ski slopes of Davos via ZRH, but if one of them had smelled the cash, they would have pounced by now!