Pttsextra,

Re Isle of Grain..


:: THE ISLE OF GRAIN - The inner estuary site is close enough to London to provide smooth and fast access by public "

Central London to Sheerness 53 miles

Central London to Heathrow 20 miles

Central AMS to Schipol 7 miles

Central Paris to CDG 15 miles

Know Sheerness is other side of Isle of Grain but its still going to be at least 40 -45 miles out to the airport or on a good day nearly an hours drive.

What planet is Boris on !

Nigel

,

Much as I like Boris, I'm afraid he's lost the plot with this one - in pretty well every respect.

Getting back to basics:
Why do people use a particular airport?

• It offers flights to where you need to go
• It is convenient to your home/point of origin

When considering an airport for London, planners need to consider where the passengers are likely to come from. Passengers are likely to be drawn from more affluent areas than less, so more from west London than east. They are likely to originate in areas where local industry is more travel reliant, so more IT, less deep sea port or more west than east London. (and yes, I do realize that other industries exist).

The country as a whole wants to minimise pollution. So, from an aircraft noise point of view a coastal location may be better, but departures from an east coast location will climb out (the noisiest part of a flight) over land for about 70% of the time in the UK, as that is the degree of prevalence of westerly winds.

Possibly more critical is the pollution arising from ground transportation to the airport. Whilst over 50% of journeys to airports are made by car, proximity to the core of the motorway system is a necessity. Heathrow has that (M4, M3, M25, M40, M1); Boris Island never would.

Public transport systems (probably rail-based) are unbelievably expensive, inflexible, and nearly always built by Governments. In Britain that means subject to political will, public sector funding and endless public inquiries. Or, to put it another way, won't ever happen.

Greenfield sites in southern England - west of London, where the demand originates - are as rare as hen's teeth, and proposals to base a Third London Airport at Greenham Common, Fairford, Lyneham, or somewhere else would encounter such opposition as to be politically untenable.

Stansted has already been proposed and rejected, and is a non-starter (as a LHR replacement) due to its geography.

The only answer is the further development of Heathrow - a third runway at Sipson, or the recent Policy Exchange proposal of a wholesale shift a few hundred yards further west.

This is not ideal, but it's the only chance Britain has of creating more capacity where the passengers want to fly from.

WetFeet or wet behind the ears?
Is irony outdated?

LGS, you make a valid point about areas of affluence now but we need to be considering the future and that is why Stansted is extremely viable if Heathrow really is out of the running. The East (of London) is getting ever richer, and has the biggest pockets of land available for development over the next 10-20 years - look up Dagenham Dock and Barking Riverside for example, with rail upgrades and DLR extensions very much on the table.

All Stansted needs is upgraded track into London, and a second rail link into the Liverpool St-Norwich line can be easily constructed by bringing back to use the Braintree - Bishop Stortford line to the south which would improve access to East Anglia via Colchester, Ipswich and Shenfield. Connections north via Cambridge could also be done.

Improved road access to the west to better link in the Midlands and beyond would also be doable.

But ultimately Heathrow is what should be expanded in a sane non-politicised world.

The country as a whole is to blame for this as it was us that put this bunch of clowns in power, the clowns who then cancelled the plan to expand LHR agreed by Labour and decided against making clear there intentions so that they can keep a few voters happy. The morons in power clearly do not have the UK's best interests at heart and they have shown this over and over. The only way LHR can expand is if there is a massive shift of support for expanding otherwise this will just go on and on and on and we will end up out of pocket to the French, Germans or Dutch.:ugh:

sxflyer -

Your conclusion: is absolutely correct.

But your statement about "all" that Stansted needs: ...would cost several billion £££!

LGS, indeed it would cost several billion but also several billion less than the islands would cost. Essentially a new road or further improvements to the A14, two upgraded tracks and the resurrection of a Beeching casualty isn't particularly absurd or unrealistic, all of which would benefit connectivity east-west/north between existing towns without extending to a dead end in the Thames.

Three of them have appeared in various plans over the last few years anyway, it's nothing new, I'm not familiar with the cross-country line to the Midlands but it wouldn't surprise me if some plan existed for that too.

The main thread on the Silver-Boris proposal for a new Thames Airport is here:
http://www.pprune.org/airlines-airpo...london-57.html

Much more information and background information there.

Silver

You have several under utilised long runways in the SE which could be considered for a new London Airport, providing there is a suitable high speed link. One could be the twin airbases of Woodbridge and Bentwaters (if I remember correctly) and there is plenty of land around to build the additional runways and facilities. Instead of building Boris's islands, could we not make better use of these facilities, or Manston or Wethersfield.

If they don't, or won't expand Heathrow there has to be a better solution

It is a frequent assertion that business passengers, who probably provide most profit to the airlines, need rapid access to central London or towns/cities on the M4 corridor. Heathrow obviously provides this. As a sceptic of Boris/Foster Island and Stansted expansion, I just wonder if any surveys have been done to prove this theory.

I was half-tempted by the idea that the focus of business was moving towards the Docklands, making a link between London and Stansted more attractive (though it, and and rail-based schemes to other proposed airports, would cost a fortune and take years to carry out).

BBC News - Heathrow to hand third runway plan to Davies Commission

I thought David Learmount was an expert - NO NO NO! Heathrow IS the only option.

JC -

Data used to be published on the catchment areas of airports, based on population within a 1- and 2-hour travel time of each airport. On this score, LHR had by far the densest catchment area in the UK, followed by LTN.

I understand that additional work was done on those statistics to weight them by propensity to travel, which further enhanced LHR's primacy.

I would be interested to know where on the web these stats are hiding.

Slowly but surely the mind set is turning inexorably to stansted as the way forward with regards to expansion.Heathrow is trapped by urban sprawl,the estuary thing is a joke.Just accept the future is stansted!!!

Take a look at this video..

http://mediacentre.heathrowairport.c...ocMediaId=6408

Was said when the new Norman Foster terminal opened in 2001. The market laughed...... and BAA was forced to take on Ryanair on Mr O'Leary's own terms,
This is typical thinking of people who don't understand how a free market works, STN is the UK's Mirabel. Just accept, Stansted's future is Ryanair.

I always thought the buffon act was just for show, this however tells me he is as dumb as he like to make out.

Lets just forget for a minute the fact that £bn's have or are being spent on T5, T2 Crossrail links to LHR etc.

Suppose you turn LHR into a housing estate, all the people that worked at the airport or in airport related industries such as cargo, hotels etc. (which is tens of thousands) will now be relocating to Kent to go and work at Boris Island International. I think there is some very none-joined up thinking going on.

LHR will not be allowed to close, it will be a political nightmare as thousands of people and businesses will be forced to move or lose out on work. The fact that a few people in Ealing are worried about their house prices will be nothing compared to the backlash of taking away the largest source of income in West London and the Thames corridor.

The politicians know this, it is all just a game, the way to play the game is to pander to those who make the most noise. At the moment this is the homeowners under the proposed new flightpath who are suddenly all concerned over environmental effects of aircraft and nothing to do with their house prices at all.

Should it come to a stage where the government were seriously talking about closing down LHR then the loudest people would be those whose jobs/businesses were affected. Then the politicians would forget their friends in Ealing and try to appease these people and any plans for fantasy Island would be quickly shelved and a new runway given the go ahead.

The problem is we allow them to play these games with our money, why are they allowed to wait until after the next election before publishing the report? Everybody knows why they want to, but why are they allowed to get away with it?

What we need is for a group of businesses to get together and force the government into making a decision without wasting anymore time and more importantly money, on these political delaying tactics. The country needs LHR expansion and that's what we will get. The question is when?

Irrespective of any sensible arguments that reject the scheme on practical and technical terms, a £15 bn scheme to realise 25,000 houses (think £15 M for 25 houses) is costing £600,000 / property.

With the best will in the world, the locale will only support properties with a value of £250 K.

Now logically, it will take another 10 years to completely demolish the site and re-build on it (and that is after the public enquiry). Building the new runway (which I don't support for other reasons) will take about 3 years.

Not a great economic argument for best use of taxpayers money; nor a good argument for avoiding disruption to the lives of 500,000 people.

"the locale will only support properties with a value of £250 K."
Avergae price of houses W london 1-2-3-4-5 bedrooms
W3Acton£246,000(40) £355,000(66) £540,000(41) £740,000(42)

W4Chiswick£353,000(9) £561,000(21) £750,000(9) £1,144,000(10)

W5Ealing£241,000(20) £396,000(58) £534,000(45) £1,103,000(57)

W6Hammersmith£411,000(8) £488,000(14) £1,113,000(9) £1,380,000(7)

W7Hanwell£208,000(5) £313,000(13) £413,000(13) £544,000

Looks like a no brainer - the builders are already lining up

The problem is that they'll continue to squabble for another 30 years about the 3rd rwy, Gatwick this, Stansted that and by the time they realise that nobody connects in London anymore and BA is going bankrupt, then it'll be too late. By then everyone will be connecting in hubs outside of Europe because all the Euro bureaucrats have ruined every airport. Like locusts. Britain will be exactly where it was in the 70's again - no jobs, no future and no business.

Quote: "The main thread on the Silver-Boris proposal for a new Thames Airport is here:
New Thames Airport for London

Much more information and background information there.

Silver"

It's a good read, particularly the scathing comments about the vanity project and why it won't work.

Welcome back Silver!