Do you truly believe that potential investors do not have their own methods of working out the ROI?
I'm sure they can crunch the numbers if they're given correct data to put into their models.
A large chunk of which will come straight back in taxes on the wages and VAT on the suppliers and materials.
As is the case for regional projects of merit left unfunded for the past 30 years and counting.
Pretty much everyone I know back home couldn't care less about LHR.
Yes, because it is in London and has negligible effect on their daily lives. But do they care less about the public amenities in the area where they do live? I rather suspect they might ...
Those that have an opinion are all for it due to the easier access to flights worldwide and also the potential for work on the project.
And in reaching this opinion, have they given careful consideration to just how much £10Bn public funding actually is and how it could be much better used close to home? Creating jobs near them? Making their own area more attractive to investors? Meanwhile, on the subject of easy access to worldwide flights. How easy do they find the queues and double security search which comes with changing flights Domestic-International at LHR? Do they love the transfer from T5 to T2, T3, T4? Has their domestic Shuttle ever been cancelled? Or is it perhaps easier for them (if they're in the North, as you mentioned) to fly MAN-DXB-SYD or NCL-EWR-CVG for example?
LHR is nothing to do with the lack of construction up north and I really don't know why it has become part of this debate.
Then let me explain. If £10Bn of public money is allocated to LHR support works (and more for Crossrail 2?), that money cannot then be deployed elsewhere. The sum involved is so very large that it will cause a public-investment famine for other deserving projects for years to come. And many of those regional priorities have been stuck in the waiting room for 30 years already.
The problems at LHR are political not financial.
Oh WOW!!! Your best line yet. The CEO of British Airways / IAG - LHR's biggest customer by far - profoundly disagrees with you. As does John Holland-Kaye (CEO Heathrow). Their comments on matters financial are summarised in post No.3662. Not that I wish to downplay the political challenges, of course.