Improve Heathrow before expanding it
Fraser Nelson 12:25pm
If the Tories really didn’t want a third runway at Heathrow they should have called for one. That would have stopped Gordon Brown. He is only going ahead because he thinks it will draw a dividing line between the supposedly pro-business Labour and naïve tree-hugging Tories. And I confess that I started out being in favour of it, so fatuous were the environmental arguments against it. Farting cows produce more greenhouse gas than aircraft (or cars), as does rice production – and do we see Greenpeace activists campaigning outside Aberdeen Angus steakhouses or Chinese restaurants’?
But the debacle over Terminal Five brought home to me a more important point. Britain needs and deserves a flagship airport, yet Heathrow is a national disgrace. Sir Thomas Harris, vice chairman of Standard Chartered Markets, put it well recently when he said that after its ridiculous hand luggage limitations “The result is an experience so unpleasant that many international executives I meet will do almost anything to avoid travelling through Heathrow.” The queues are disgraceful, especially when you reach security and realise they are caused not by lack of scanning equipment – but the failure of BAA to staff the equipment.
The Heathrow hassle factor is getting worse, as I found recently flying to Edinburgh (where, deplorably, BAA have erected an advertising billboard in front of a Spitfire there to commemorate its role in the war). They now send you around this retail maze, taking a picture of your child on the way in to make sure you don’t try and swap it later on. New bureaucracy. New queues.
This isn’t about the environment. It is, as Boris Johnson says, about refusing to reinforce a 1940s planning error – Heathrow should never have been built where it was. Having more people change at Heathrow may mean more profits for BAA, but it’s hardly a burning priority for the UK economy. A far better help would be improving the airport (and the links to it) so people are more not disinclined to visit London.
Heathrow - with its tattiness, its scant resources, its overcrowding, its strikes, its cattle-herding approach to passengers - needs to change its ways. To start to look like a flagship airport that represents rather than embarrasses this country. Then – and only then – should it ask for a third runway.
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TrevorsDen
January 15th, 2009 1:08pm Report this commentWell said Fraser - see? credit where credits due.
But quite frankly cattle get treated better than airport passengers.
Roger Thornhill
January 15th, 2009 1:13pm Report this commentImprove Heathrow? The best answer is to build anew in the Thames Estuary.
Heathrow is on the wrong side of London because of the prevailing winds, which force planes and pollution over the city. To keep it there is to invite disaster.
The existing terminals and the transport links are a disaster. I'd like to find someone able to place the rail and tube platforms further away from the terminal buildings than they have already been or to select fewer, slower and less reliable lifts than have been put in place. T3 has 2 lifts to take everyone up from Arrivals to the car park. Pathetic. A queue forms. Nice and Socialist. Why drive? See my comments about the rail interchange, which is an embarrassment.
No, the real answer is the Estuary. A new airport with room to grow connected to Eurostar and the rest of Britain with satellite check-in facilities so people need not drive all the way but check their luggage in at a rail station then relax, just as I do at Hong Kong. The railway there is a dream. You arrive swiftly and when you get off the train you can see the departure check-ins. When you land you pass through immigration and customs then you walk into a vast bright space and can see the train waiting for you in what appears to be the same atrium across a single, flat, carpeted space.
Heathrow? Slow, unreliable lifts, narrow dark passages, travellators, outdoor temperatures and a warren. It shows poverty of ambition.
I am sure the British Architect who built Chep Lap Kok in Hong Kong could be persuaded to lend a hand to the new London Airport.
Chris, Baildon
January 15th, 2009 1:13pm Report this commentIts not farting cows it's belching cows that give off the C02.
My standard position on this type of situation is to be on the opposite side of the argument of Greenpeace.
CG
January 15th, 2009 1:19pm Report this commentThe vast majority of the arguments pro & con a 3rd runway at Heathrow ignore the main issue that should dictate whether it is built; namely the amount of space available for future expansion of the airport.
The simple fact is that Heathrow is and always will be too small to be an efficient 'hub' airport.
To fulfill that role it needs 5+ full size runways (the proposed 3rd runway will not be long enough to take all aircraft), including one dedicated to freight traffic. That requires a site with a footprint at least twice as big as the land available at Heathrow. A hub also requires minimal restrictions on landing and takeoffs, something Heathrow will always have with the proximity of housing to the (immovable) flight paths.
Even if a third runway was built tomorrow all it would do is delay the inevitable, which is that Heathrow would eventually be outstripped by airports elsewhere that have more space for expansion. As it is by the time its finished sometime after 2015 Heathrow may very well have already been superseded by Schipol or CDG or Frankfurt as Europe's primary hub airport.
The only viable long term solution is a new hub airport in the Thames estuary followed by closure or downsizing of Heathrow & Gatwick, or the massive expansion of Stansted. Everything else is pointless.
Nick
January 15th, 2009 1:24pm Report this commentI think it's cows belching that produces greenhouse gases rather than them farting.
Agree with rest of article though.
Ken
January 15th, 2009 1:24pm Report this commentI think we might be about to hear that the idea of shifting Heathrow offshore is technically and economically viable, and that this will be a Conservative policy. What a vote winner this would become.
biggestaspidistra
January 15th, 2009 1:26pm Report this commentTerminal 5 is a monument to bad planning. It will never function. The malfunctioning technology, the miniscule over-written signage, the counter-intuitive design have reduced its staff to inert onlookers. It is a long corridor to a wall behind which a staircase may be hidden. "You may find the lift is quicker than the staircase". An arrow would have done nicely, thank you.
Forlornehope
January 15th, 2009 1:40pm Report this commentAn alternative would be to link Heathrow, Gatwick and possibly Stansted with a high speed maglev. This would allow all three to be operated as a single airport, from the point of view of the passengers, with reliable transfer times. With four full length runways the combined airport would match any of the other major European hubs. A fifth full length runway at either Gatwick or Stansted would then make sense.
The global warming argument about air travel is purely a campaign issue and has little to do with the environment. Even if you accept the overall argument, aviation will be a premium user having, along with shipping, the final claim on fossil fuels. There have now been several trials running commercial airliners on bio-fuels, the latest using second generation algae derived hydrocarbons. Add to that the relatively small percentage of greenhouse gases emitted by aviation and you have as Laurence Sterne might have said "a lot of cock and a lot of bull."
Barnaby Trubble
January 15th, 2009 1:44pm Report this commentRoger T, nice to have an airport convenient for Eurostar, so the French can get to it, but shouldn't it be in a place where the English can reach it without having to to round or through London? The Estuary is not the answer to all problems, it merely swaps them for others. Heathrow does indeed fail on every level, and I don't believe there is a good solution.
FFSCotland
January 15th, 2009 1:53pm Report this commentPeople just aren't facing the issues head-on.
Some people say the airport's in the wrong place. Fair point: get building on a new one in the Thames Estuary. In the meantime, we're stuck with Heathrow.
Heathrow has two runways, which is two fewer than comparable airports. It needs the the third runway to service current demand efficiently. Without it, Heathrow can never be the flagship airport Fraser is looking for.
The principal objection to a third runway is noise. But runways don't generate noise, aircraft do. In that case, build the runway but restrict flight movements to the current number. That way you get an efficient slot-limited airport instead of an inefficient one.
Aidan
January 15th, 2009 2:34pm Report this commentWhy build another airport in London at all? Why not just build a spur off the London-Paris railway so that Eurostar can go straight to CDG? Let the French have the benefit and costs of all the extra air traffic?
Gannet
January 15th, 2009 2:59pm Report this commentCG is very right in many respects. The expansion will not work because the relevant rail, road, and overall networks do not work well at the moment, and the general chaos in the area is only set to get worse before the runway opens. But why one mega airpot when the South is littered with half used runways? A good deal of the existing network could be fixed to create a network that would not only serve the needs of air travel but also the population of the south east. More to the point it would disperse the traffic load across a far wider area. An expanded Heathrow will simply create the biggest permanent traffic jam in the world. To be view from space by all the lucky ones avoiding to go to other airports across the channel.
J H Holloway
January 15th, 2009 4:22pm Report this commentEver been through the X-ray machines at T5?
There's no room at all. Utterly pathetic for a new building. The left-hand security check has you getting re-dressed in the main aisle of the terminal, just a few feet from the Sony franchise.
As usual with this country - big public works are pathetically bad.
Nicholas
January 15th, 2009 4:41pm Report this comment"I am sure the British Architect who built Chep Lap Kok in Hong Kong could be persuaded to lend a hand to the new London Airport."
Maybe. But you would need a dynamic, savvy, laissez-faire government to drive such a project, not the dreadful combination of 1930's soviet politburo, Little Snoringwater parish council, 1960's East German wannabes and student union nutters we are saddled with here.
Also, at the time of Chep Lap Kok planning (pre-1997) there were environmental issues too.
THX1138
January 15th, 2009 4:50pm Report this commentAlong with my Tory mate Zac Goldsmith I just bought my parcel of land in the middle of the new runway.
I intend to follow all the appeals procedures to fight the CPO and the third runway.
Cato
January 15th, 2009 5:08pm Report this commentWhat is generally forgotten is that Heathrow had, until the building of T4, three runways. Admittedly one of them ran diagonally across the two main runways but that was a legacy of the war. Even so, I can remember its being used.
I have a distinct feeling that the government has bitten off slightly more than it can chew as regards this issue. I sense this will become a polarising factor and there'll be plenty like me, a life long Tory and anti Green (generally) who'll move heaven and earth to consign this plan to the dustbin of eternity.
Fergus Pickering
January 15th, 2009 5:58pm Report this commentCan the energy of belching cows be harnessed for humankind? Greener than windmills eh? I see Boris is right again! I knew he would be. Like everyone else, I hate Heathrow.
Rex Burr
January 15th, 2009 6:43pm Report this commentHeathrow - with its tattiness, its scant resources, its overcrowding, its strikes, its cattle-herding approach to passengers - needs to change its ways.
The government’s answer to this type of organisation is to privatise it. Oh, just a minute, it is a private organisation, like the rail track operation was.
Bodes well for the private involvement in the Royal Mail.
Hysteria
January 15th, 2009 7:11pm Report this commentKen - hope you are right on Tory Policy
Aidan - are you familar with CDG - it's even worse than Heathrow
Schipol is the real competition in my view - and the Estuary answer seems a good soltion to me - high speed rail links need to be part of the build.
Forlonehope - I guess on a spreadhseet the capacity of London runways looks ok - but a hub really does need to be hat - I don't think a distributed approach would work in practice.
THX - good luck with that !!
Tankus
January 15th, 2009 7:16pm Report this commentThames estuary ...its the only sensible option.
Let norman foster do it ...make a bloody great big world statement . Kick BAA out of the mix , and reduce heathrow to local and euroland.
Gordon lurves signing cheques for billions ...gets off on it methinks
"Getting on with the JOB , A GLOBAL response , to a GLOBAL situation, a CHANGE in airport thinking , unlike THE DO NOTHING PARTY, BRITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS" ..et bloody cetra
I would vote for it , even though I'm under one of the queuing stacks...
DM
January 15th, 2009 9:53pm Report this commentTHX Hope you didn't need to try and get a mortgage.
Verity
January 16th, 2009 12:39am Report this commentHysteria - Charles de Gaulle is a nightmare of smarty-pants cuteness. The only airport in the world that doesn't have directional signs. Gate 39? Guess!
Are we too chic for words?
God, I hate CdG! And the way they have the escalators arranged from the station from Le Train de Grand Vitesse (snigger)... you can't get up them with luggage.
The British and Europeans should try to keep up with Asia.
hadrian
January 16th, 2009 11:38am Report this commentThe wholesale destruction of villages and communities by big government to achieve this dubious goal is itself the prime disgrace of this project.
On that ground alone I'd resist it might and main.
Forlornehope
January 16th, 2009 11:59am Report this commentHysteria, a maglev would connect Gatwick and Heathrow in under 15 minutes. This is about the same time as it takes to move between the existing terminals; it takes that long to get between the two terminals at Frankfurt or between terminals at Chicago O'Hare. I know wherof I write! In short using the right technology could change the way the airports operate. Siemens put in the Dutch high speed rail connection on a turnkey build and operate contract at no capital cost to the Dutch taxpayer. There's a thought.
Paul B
January 17th, 2009 4:26pm Report this commentMcDonnell grabbing the mace and showing some genuine passion and emotion. They (the authorities) have tried to keep this away from our screens.
http://tinyurl.com/6tf2xk
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