Originally Posted by
Shed-on-a-Pole
This argument applies equally to all other backlogged infrastructure projects which could share £18Bn of scarce public funding. Many of these offer far better value to the taxpayer than LHR R3.
Since you express dissatisfaction with the surface travel options available to those wishing to access MAN, you no doubt by implication recognise the importance of funding and constructing Northern Powerhouse Rail (formerly known as HS3) and a transpennine motorway linking Sheffield and South Yorkshire with the road network to the West. Both of these proposals deserve funding as a higher priority than LHR R3 and both will benefit UKplc as a whole and not just the immediate region.
Seeing as you are so keen to deal only in facts Shed, I suggest you wait until any kind of business case has been done into these projects before declaring how much value they offer to UK plc, no matter how good your instincts may be.
For all its faults R3 (I do wish they would come up with a better name for it that captures the sheer scale of this project) does at least have a business case that has been subject to some economic modelling.
You also seem to overlook that increasingly TfL will have to fund its own projects so the taxpayers and service users affected will be those living and working (and running businesses) in London, not the rest of the U.K. In that case it is only natural that it will try to lump as much of its future project costs on to the back of any major development that gets put forward. There is no magic £18bn pot of money sat in the Treasury to fund the wish list of those wanting to secure investment for the regions. As you rightly say there are limited resources at the present time so investment will flow to those projects that generate the most growth (principally in the form of GVA and tax revenue).
Airports rightly are expected under State Aid rules to meet the costs of infrastructure from which they directly benefit. So far TfL (I suspect partly driven by their former political master) have been stretching the definition of direct benefit beyond reason and have included any and every project that is linked to Heathrow that might require investment in the next couple of decades.