Originally Posted by
dbromle
"It actually takes longer on public transport to get to Yeadon than it does to get to church fenton from Bradford city centre."
That's not actually true though is it? The bus will drop you outside the Yeadon door in 40 minutes. The train will get you to Church Fenton station in 44 minutes, then you have to find your way to wherever the terminal might be, which is unlikely to be close to the railway station.
The cost of building a new "A" road from the M1/AI link to Church Fenton would be many millions. The only thing Church Fenton offers is some old runways in the middle of nowhere. I cant see you avoiding having to spend a lot on upgrading/extending to say nothing of providing a terminal etc. It would probably be cheaper to build something completely new closer to the Motorway.
The journey I looked at was 5 minutes quicker than the bus on a train with no changes but I am sure during the day there is slight variation. Aren't you rather splitting hairs though? The point is cf will be vastly more attractive and easier to get to by all means than Yeadon is and to much more people. If Yeadon had a motorway to its front door yes it would be used by many more people but after 50+ years it's still a nightmare. Then there is the airport itself too high no space too short wrong direction on a bumpy field. If the link road gets built for x million pounds how many extra passengers will come before the airport is full again? 2 million? Still far below what an airport that serves Yorkshire should be doing. Long range flights are out of the question on that runway as the margins alone are just too small and nobody is going to build a runway extension. Runway extensions at cf would be a fraction of the cost on a runway pointing in exactly the right direction.
I completely disagree with you about cf. It is very difficult to pick anywhere with more potential (check my initial post). As for a brand new road this would not be required to begin with as the B roads would be upgraded. As the airport gained more passengers then there would be more pressure to make it even better connected - more stopping and quicker rail services and wider quicker road. Everybody in aviation knows that this is extremely unlikely to happen at Yeadon as for so many reasons the airport is not upto scratch.
An airport that allows the Yorkshire public to spend in Yorkshire rather than over the boarder would create 1000s upon 1000s of jobs in an area decimated by the collapse of the mining industry and boost the Leeds and Yorkshire economy by millions of pounds. It would create vastly more wealth for the region than the cost to develop the airfield as most of the infrastructure and connections are basically in place.