Date published: 2006/05/29
The BBC says:
Heathrow should be replaced with a new international airport to the east of London, a planning charity claims.
The Town and County Planning Association argues 30,000 homes could be built on the "catastrophically" planned west London site instead.
A Thames Estuary hub would stop plane noise over London and further expansion of Heathrow displacing villages.
Lord Soley, who backs a third Heathrow runway, said moving the airport would mean too many job loses for the area.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The more we move investment to the East - the Thames Estuary or wherever - the greater the problems for the west of London.
"There are 70,000 jobs at Heathrow and another 100,000 dependent on it."
In the planning charity's paper, Heathrow's 60-year history was condemned as "a series of minor planning disasters that together make up one of the country's truly great planning catastrophes."
It also said the swap should happen over the next century.
But Lord Soley said Heathrow should be looking to match the capabilities of other continental airports over the next 10 to 20 years.
"You can fit a third runway in there - everybody accepts that. The argument is 'can you do it within the environmental limits laid down', and the evidence is 'yes, you can'.
"If we don't, then what we have to do is plan for the decline and closure of Heathrow in the next 10 to 20 years, not 40, and that would be a catastrophe for the west London region and profoundly serious for the rest of Britain."
The report also said a high-speed rail link from the new site would be an alternative to "environmentally damaging short-haul flights".
The report's authors, Tony Hall and Sir Peter Hall, said passengers who fumed at the "long taxiing operations culminating in a take-off queue, or at long periods spent in the four holding areas" might well echo Dr Johnson's famous remark about a dog walking on its hind legs.
"It's not that it is done well, but you are surprised to find it is done at all," wrote Dr Johnson.
They also said it would be "logistically impossible" for the airport to be phased out in a short time scale of five or 10 years.
A housing development at Heathrow could be worth more than £6.8bn, they said.
Another pointless report from another pointless quango. Presumably the new Heathrow would have a bigger area than the existing one, so if you can put 30000 houses on the existing Heathrow you can put at least that many houses on any proposed location for the new Heathrow. So that is a pointless argument for moving. And one of the reasons the M4 corridor is so desirable is because of Heathrow. Take Heathrow away and you are left with a location with very poor transport links to the rest of the world. So go ahead Britain and shoot yourself in the head. And if a high-speed rail link can be laid to the new airport it could be laid to Heathrow. Such a rail link would only be useful to cut down on UK transfer flights. Far more useful on that score would be for one or more northern airports to grow in size so that northerners did not have to come south just to fly to the States (or wherever). And although the report's authors seem to be concerned about the villages near Heathrow, they obviously have no such concern for the villages (and towns and cities) near the new airport. All in all it's amazing anyone could waste time, money and effort on such poor quality work. Of course, London already has a major airport which has plenty of room for expansion. It's called Stansted. If anything should be further developed in the London area it should be Stansted rather than creating yet another huge new development.
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