And now Stansted has thrown its hat into the ring, by outlining plans for a 4-runway airport.
BBC News - Stansted Airport expansion plans revealed
Nice idea Stansted, but if Silver-Boris is remote, then Stansted is even worse. It just as far from London as Silver-Boris, and it has no northwesterly surface transport, neither in rail or road links. (The A14 is a cr@p road, while there is no easy way of linking Stansted to London, BHX, MAN and the near continent in one easy system).
At least with Silver-Boris one could imaging a sweeping HS rail system passing through Dover and Ashford, gliding into Silver-Boris, onto the main stop at London, and then onwards and upwards to Birmingham and Manch.
Yes, I know that our esteemed planners will make such an imagined rail line pass 5km from Silver Boris, and never join them up. And I know that that same idealistic rail system will have the daftest ever 2km gap between King's Cross and Euston,** but that is UK joined up thinking for you.
** You know I think, just to get us into the mindset of post-modernist UK planning, they should close the M25 between junctions 20 and 21, and route all the traffic through Abbots Langley. Yup - that, is how stupid our rail planning really is.
Silver