On Thu, 3 Jan 2008, Mwmbwls wrote:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/...faceaccess.pdf

I was browsing the surface access study published by BAA for the
building of a third runway at Heathrow.when I came across Table 38 in
Chapter 6 - page 92. which appears to suggest that the premium pricing
models for transport to Heathrow should not be applied to either
Crossrail or Airtrack. Is it not time for all the rail infrastructure
at Heathrow to be handed over to people who understand (a) railways
(b) West London's transport needs rather than the BAA?

Yes. However, it's all owned by BAA, not the crown, and so it'd need to be
compulsorily purchased or otherwise strongarmed into state ownership,
which is a tricky thing to do.

My personal view is that expanding Heathrow displays a blind alley
mentality that tinkers with the symptoms and not the causes. It has
outlived its purpose and that like Paris or Hong Kong the need is to
build a brand new airport that does not impose such environmental
burdens on the community. With the new HS1 route now in place and
Crossrail to be built into the Thames Gateway both north and south of
the river - surely it is time to revisit the case for a new airport to
be built in the Thames estuary.

What, actually in the estuary? I've heard of this idea before, but it's
basically potty. Firstly, building an island in the estuary would be
phenomenally expensive and incredibly damaging to the ecology and
navigation. There's plenty of empty space in Kent and Essex where you
could build an airport, so this is just not necessary. Secondly, the only
place the estuary is wide enough to build an airport is out beyond the
Yantlet line, around Southend or something; the only serious proposal i
could find is for it to be north of the Isle of Sheppey. This is miles
from London, the same kind of distance as Stansted, and so not a good
replacement for Heathrow. If you're happy with that kind of distance, just
expand Stansted. Thirdly, given the geographical constraint, it's going to
be nowhere near HS1, which heads south at Chatham. Fourthly, it's also not
going to be especially close to the Thames Gateway developments, which are
close enough to London that Heathrow is still just as close. Fifthly,
Heathrow serves the home counties to the west of London, so replacing it
with an airport to the east is going to give a lot of people a much longer
journey.

If you were going to build a new airport in the east, the place to do it
would either be on the Hoo peninsula, on the marshes north of Cliffe, from
where about ten miles of track would link it to HS1 and the North Kent
line, and a similar amount of road would link it to the A2/M2, or between
Gravesend and Rochester, south of the A2 and HS1 and north of the Chatham
main line, on top of Cobham, which would take virtually no track and road
outside the airport itself to make the link.

A quick google reveals that the Cliffe site has already been proposed, and
action groups formed to oppose it. In fact, i seem to remember reading
about it in some 70s document about the siting of the London CTRL
terminus. Cobham appears to be a new idea - and probably a fairly bad one,
in terms of approach routes being on top of the Medway towns.

tom

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