Boris Johnson: New London Airport Proposal

[Malcolm of Kent]

Originally Posted by iranair777

... with FREE train travel ... Crossrail runnels can be doubled from 2 to 4 and these extra tunnels to be attached ... massive problem needs such drastic measures. Cost shouldn't be an issue ....

Let's not get carried away. 76500 is a lot of workers. But in and around a city of 10 million people, it's not quite that earth-shattering. Yes, of course how they will get to work, where they will live and so on are questions which must be addressed. But don't let's panic quite yet!

[WtS]

Even if the Hub happens Heathrow will still be needed I don't see why they keep saying it won't.

[iranair777]

Originally Posted by Malcolm of Kent

Let's not get carried away. 76500 is a lot of workers. But in and around a city of 10 million people, it's not quite that earth-shattering. Yes, of course how they will get to work, where they will live and so on are questions which must be addressed. But don't let's panic quite yet!

I suggest the extra tunnels as more direct capacity can be given to the new airport (considering its in a remote location) from the London mainlines, including the 'old' Heathrow, surrounding area and GWML

[Malcolm of Kent]

Originally Posted by WtS

Even if the Hub happens Heathrow will still be needed I don't see why they keep saying it won't.

Needed for what?

[WatcherZero]

On the plus side, moving 100,000 people out of London would solve Londons housing shortage for a couple of years. We are in Newtown territory except there would effectivley be two, the new site and the vacant site left behind (which would probably see a massive inward rush to acquire cheap property)

[SO143]

New airport for London: Boris Island lift-off: New move to back airport in Thames Estuary

An airport in the Thames Estuary has moved a step closer with the Government set to include the plans in a consultation.The airport has been nicknamed Boris Island because it has been championed by London Mayor Boris Johnson, and would be built on an artificial island made of landfill.It would become Britain’s main international hub, handling 300,000 passengers a day. Having ruled out a third runway at Heathrow after opposition from locals and environmental groups, the Government is ‘increasingly interested’ in the idea. It will be included in a consultation on the future of UK aviation which will begin in March.However, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is said to be opposed to the scheme, which he believes has not been thought through.And critics yesterday said the proposal was too expensive and would be bad for the environment.







The scheme is expected to cost between £40billion and £70billion. Mr Johnson has also praised separate designs by architect Lord Foster for a £50billion airport on a sparse strip of land on the Isle of Grain in Kent, which juts out into the estuary.But it is the plan for an airport built on an artificial island that is to be part of the consultation.The airport would have four runways, with space to build two more. Ferries, a road and a railway bridge would link the site to Kent and Essex. Planes would descend over the North Sea rather than densely populated parts of London, as many do when coming in to Heathrow. Mr Johnson said yesterday: ‘The Government is increasingly interested in this idea.





You can’t go on expecting Britain to compete economically with France and Germany and other European countries when we simply can’t supply the flights to growth destinations such as China and Latin America. We are now being left badly behind.’But British Airways and its parent company IAG said the Boris Island airport would sound the death knell for Heathrow. ‘A Thames Estuary hub airport would be an extremely complex project with many technical, operational, environmental and financial hurdles to overcome,’ they said.Colin Matthews, chief executive of airport operator BAA, which runs Heathrow, said: ‘An island airport is very expensive. Even if it is agreed, it will be decades away. We need jobs and we need growth in this economy today.’ Downing Street said no decisions had been made but ministers wanted to explore all options.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-Johnson.html

[iranair777]

Having a terminal on land and the being shuttled to your aircraft is the worse suggestion ever. they dont realise passengers want to get from 'kerb' to plane as smoothly and efficiently as possible, not go from home>train>terminal>train>plane

Oh yeah, and btw the last pic is of a Iran air A300 :p

[SmartCity]

I don't understand this government. They refuse Heathrow's third runway (a couple of miles long by around 46m width) on environmental grounds. At the same time they give the go-ahead for £32bn HS2 ripping up 200 miles of green fields and now consider building a whole new airport in the Themes estuary at a cost of in the region of £70bn.

It's a ridiculous idea. We keep on being told the country is broke, £16bn on Cross Rail, £32bn on HS2 and now £70bn on Borris Island, complete madness and London centric, when does building commence...?

[progressing nicely]

Originally Posted by SmartCity

I don't understand this government. They refuse Heathrow's third runway (a couple of miles long by around 46m width) on environmental grounds. At the same time they give the go-ahead for £32bn HS2 ripping up 200 miles of green fields and now consider building a whole new airport in the Themes estuary at a cost of in the region of £70bn.

It's a ridiculous idea. We keep on being told the country is broke, £16bn on Cross Rail, £32bn on HS2 and now £70bn on Borris Island, complete madness and London centric, when does building commence...?

Crossrail is indeed London focused and has a large proportion of its cost paid for by the private sector and a specific business tax on London businesses.

HS2 is hardly London centric. It will greatly benefit the cities it links. It will likely be sold like HS1 and recover a great deal of the costs.

I can't see a new airport being government funded though the infrastructure to link it may be.

I really don't understand why there is such an anti London sentiment. It has been and continues to be the goose that lays the golden egg that subsidises many other regions despite London having some of the most deprived areas in the country.

I am glad that we are spending on infrastructure that lays the foundation on which the wealth of the country can be built on rather than waste it on a growing inefficient public sector, social benefits and red tape that only breed dependency and destroy the wealth generating capacity of the country.

[mr_jrt]

Originally Posted by SmartCity

I don't understand this government. They refuse Heathrow's third runway (a couple of miles long by around 46m width) on environmental grounds. At the same time they give the go-ahead for £32bn HS2 ripping up 200 miles of green fields and now consider building a whole new airport in the Themes estuary at a cost of in the region of £70bn.

It's a ridiculous idea. We keep on being told the country is broke, £16bn on Cross Rail, £32bn on HS2 and now £70bn on Borris Island, complete madness and London centric, when does building commence...?

...the point being that if you built the estuary airport you can either close Stansted, Heathrow, maybe Luton and London City and and concentrate the operations in a single location, or at the very least shrink them right down. A large chunk of the massive air and noise pollution will be over the estuary, not the populated areas where the current airports currently are. Additionally, the redevelopment of said airports would likely raise a significant chunk of the change required to build the estuary.

You also have the economies of scale that comes from concentrating operations, reducing the energy expenditure on inter-airport transfers. Additionally, having the terminals on land and the runways on islands linked by mass transit isn't exactly a bad thing, is it? Again, it's going to have the economies of scale that will justify tube-like frequencies...probably with multiple lines all going in the same direction! I'd argue it's potentially an improvement on traipsing the length of the damn terminal to get to your departure gate! Not to mention, the bird issue becomes a lot less problematic when the planes will be further out from the coast...though this aspect is more the old proposals, not Lord Foster's (which has the runways built adjacent to the terminals).

...and do try not to consider things as black and white. All factors are interlinked in a giant interdependency web. You argue the environmental costs of HS2, but then disregard the freed capacity on the electrified WCML that can then accommodate more passengers on local trips nor the increased capacity for more freight, both taking pollution-generating traffic off the roads.

[SmartCity]

Originally Posted by mr_jrt

...the point being that if you built the estuary airport you can either close Stansted, Heathrow, maybe Luton and London City and and concentrate the operations in a single location.

And how is that value for money? Heathrow Terminal 5 only recently opened and now Terminal East is under construction. The money has already been spent.

Look at how much money has been spent over the last decade at Heathrow, Stansted, Luton, Gatwick and London City airports? All the airports are all operated by private companies as businesses. On top of that this whimsical idea of an airport in the Themes estuary will only even get built with public taxpayers money....don't get me started.

[mr_jrt]

Originally Posted by SmartCity

And how is that value for money? Heathrow Terminal 5 only recently opened and now Terminal East is under construction. The money has already been spent.

They're big, square buildings with excellent transport links. Given that a large chunk of them is already given over to retail, converting the rest to turn them into giant shopping centres isn't exactly a stretch of the imagination. Perhaps converting one of them into a office complex for small businesses would be a good way of using the structures. Once you build homes etc over the runways et al you then have large numbers of workers living close to their place of work and all the benefits that brings. It would be an amazing way of solving the modern problems of long-distance commuting whilst simultaneously creating an innovation hub. they're only buildings...and can easily be re-purposed. The transport links won't go to waste.

Originally Posted by SmartCity

Look at how much money has been spent over the last decade at Heathrow, Stansted, Luton, Gatwick and London City airports? All the airports are all operated by private companies as businesses. On top of that this whimsical idea of an airport in the Themes estuary will only even get built with public taxpayers money....don't get me started.

At one point the Arab sovereign funds apparently suggested they'd be more than happy to invest the full among in the estuary airport. If you build it, they will come think about it...being able to own Europe's premier aviation hub...that's a good investment when you consider what all the other airports bring in then, say, multiplied over the next 50 years or so plus compound growth.

[pricemazda]

Originally Posted by larven

I'm surprised Willie Walsh sees this as a problem, its certainly not beyond the realms of possibility and there are numerous examples from around the world where this has been done successfully.

It would be interesting to know what the value of the site would be if Heathrow was closed and the land put up for redevelopment.

I want it to happen to listen to those NIMBYs NEAR Heathrow moan when they realise the value of their homes is plummeting because there's no work in the local area.

[WtS]

Originally Posted by Malcolm of Kent

Needed for what?

Erm as an airport? By the time this is built, late 2020's Heathrow will still be needed even if it is downsized.

[Glom]

Originally Posted by WtS

Erm as an airport? By the time this is built, late 2020's Heathrow will still be needed even if it is downsized.

If Heathrow City is to be the new El Dorado of West London, then one runway could always be kept open to be a kind of London City while the other gets built on.

[TedStriker]

Originally Posted by WtS

Erm as an airport? By the time this is built, late 2020's Heathrow will still be needed even if it is downsized.

Why do you say this, given that if the Lord Foster Thames Estuary airport gets built - with a 150 million per year passenger capacity, twice that of Heathrow - there quite literally would be no need to keep Heathrow open as an airport?

[SmartCity]

I'm no NIMBY but seen as though the UK has signed up to the Co2 offsetting scheme, how do we keep within our target if this airport is ever built? All said, there will be no need for any additional airport capacity at the rate the Government keep raising the APD!

[johnb78]

SmartCity: if all current LHR flights were moved to an uncongested new airport, there'd be a significant reduction in carbon emissions compared to the 45 minute stacking that's often required to get into LHR.

[maccoinnich]

Heathrow won't close. These are just a few of the number of reasons:

a) The Conservatives privatised the British Airport Authority and British Airways, and with that, destroyed any chance of the government being able to implement a national aviation policy. If you make your bed, you have to lie in it.

b) BAA would have no interest in closing Heathrow, unless they were able to operate the new airport, and handsomely compensated for closing Heathrow. They have put a lot of investment into the airport in recent years: the new Terminal 5; Terminal 2; refurbished Terminal 4; Heathrow Express; etc. There, I've just increased the bill for the new airport by £billions.

c) Heathrow, slowly but surely, actually has pretty decent transport links, between buses, the tube, Heathrow Express, Heathrow connect. And these are due to get better with Crossrail. The new airport, by contrast, would be starting from scratch. I see a lot of images of trains beneath the airport in the style of Schiphol, but not a lot of analysis about how this would fit into the national rail network.

d) The low cost carriers won't move there. There's just no way that the landing fees would be low enough to attract them.

e) The network carriers (especially the One World carriers) won't be willing to move there unless BA does, and BA has been pretty ambivalent about it).

f) It's the wrong side of London for many businesses that grown up around Heathrow.

g) It's the wrong side of London for residents of West London who aren't willing to go to Gatwick right now.

h) It would cost a fortune, and be in public inquiry for decades.

[Tallsmurf]

All of the above arguments against Heathrow closing can be easily solved with a carrot and stick
Stick: Government simply places more restrictions on Heathrow usage - no flights before 0800 - no flights after 2200 then reducing to 2000 and then 1800.
Carrot: LHR designated a development zone with unlimited planning permission for offices, homes, retail, business parks etc in place of existing site.

I would suggest retaining one runway at Heathrow for cargo and busines flights only - using Terminal 4 - with Terminal 5 becoming a shopping Mall, and CTA becoming a business centre making maximum use of existing trasnport links.

BAA could make a fortune out of it - BA will make more money out of a new airport once they have gotten through the initial upheaval.