Reply to: General rant

[Mordac]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Estuary_Airport

Paris "built a new main airport" but at least they had to good sense to keep the old one - Orly.
Singapore - the new main airport is still only 15 miles from the main centre.
Munich - can't comment on the old one, but the new one is pretty good, and easy to get to, in about 25 mins from the centre of Munich.
Hong Kong - looked that up on google maps, wouldn't expect to the journey from the new one to downtown in anything less than 4 or 5 hours in reasonably heavy traffic. One road in and out? Serious?
All the others you mention are small beer by comparison, so not even worth researching.
Train ticket to London price? Are you serious? A 60 mile journey to London would cost similar to the existing fare from LHR to London? And why the hell would I lug suitcases up and down platforms and staircases to get on the train? I'd want to get a cab, and for many journeys that could well be be more the flight cost.
Environmental cost - Extremely neutral, probably worse in the estuary. Especially if the new airport was bigger, therefore more env impact. Agree on that one, totally.
London Southend would have to close. Quite bloody right, if any tourist booked a flight to Southend, thinking they were anywhere near London, they would feel mightily pissed off - and rightly so.
Tunnels under the Thames, new rail links, you reckon that's within the £25bn budget? I thinkee notee...Not even f@@king almost...
It all comes down to people, how and where are you going to build an infrastructure that can handle circa 1m people, which is my estimate of how many people would be involved (having lived close to LHR for 16 yrs, and worked for some of the companies involved who would definitely have to move, inc. British Airways).
The more I look at it, the more stupid it looks...

[PurpleGorilla]

General rant

As Gatwick can't operate as having two runways they only officially have one.

Same as Heathrow only having two.

It's like counting bridges across the Thames. There are lots of bridges but since some are railway bridges and don't take people on foot they don't count.

Rubbish. Gatwick officially has two runways but only operates using one at a time.

The first runway is 08R 26L

The second runway is 08L 27R

The L and R is a clue to the fact Gatwick has two runways.

So stop talking tulip about bridges and listen to someone who knows what they are talking about.

[scooterscot]

Plus you'll have a seat on HS2.

£170 return "anytime" ticket price right now on fast train from Bham to London.

One hundred and Seventy quid FFS!!!

£250 is first class.

I thought you were in jest - I can actually get you a flight to new york this week for that.

[scooterscot]

Plus you'll have a seat on HS2.

£170 return "anytime" ticket price right now on fast train from Bham to London.

One hundred and Seventy quid FFS!!!

£250 is first class.

Seriously?

Last journey I took up to Berlin (from München) was about €110 1st class.

[scooterscot]

Still digesting your previous post, looks pretty out of date (at least a lot of it does), where did it come from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Estuary_Airport

[AtW]

although if you had the misfortune to have to travel to Birmingham for any reason, you'd at least be home 15 mins quicker.

Plus you'll have a seat on HS2.

£170 return "anytime" ticket price right now on fast train from Bham to London.

One hundred and Seventy quid FFS!!!

£250 is first class.

[Mordac]

The project was cost around £25 billion. We gave the banks the number overnight some years ago.

And now we're considering spending three times that to build a train line to Birmingham to gain a extra 15mins on the train to London.

Utter contempt for those idiots in our government.

1: If it's govt project, quadruple your £25m
2: Agree, HS2 is utterly pointless, although if you had the misfortune to have to travel to Birmingham for any reason, you'd at least be home 15 mins quicker. I always thought HS2 should go up to Sheffield (and eventually beyond) via the East Midlands, roughly along the route of the current Midland Mainline, which is pretty crap. Didn't the WCML get a £15m upgrade a while back?
3: Now you're talking, something we can truly agree on

Still digesting your previous post, looks pretty out of date (at least a lot of it does), where did it come from?

[scooterscot]

The project was cost around £25 billion. We gave the banks the number overnight some years ago.

And now we're considering spending three times that to build a train line to Birmingham to gain a extra 15mins on the train to London.

Utter contempt for those idiots in our government.

[scooterscot]

Back of a fag packet calculation, they would have to build a large city fairly close by. Circa 50k people work directly at Heathrow now, so if the new one is bigger, that number would raise, approximately proportionately.
Factor in all the off-site operations, catering, freight, other suppliers etc. and you could easily treble that number.
Then there's all the bizness parks located nearby purely because of their proximity to LHR. Include the M3 / M4 corridor etc. and you have to be talking 250k+, quite possibly a lot more than that. Assuming perhaps only a quarter or so of those would need / wish to de-camp to be closer to the airport, that's maybe 50-75k.
So without much difficulty, we're at around 250-300k. Think the M25 will be able to cope with that lot? Plus all the freight vehicles? Plus all the passengers? If you think "Yes, no problem" I'd have to refer you for serious therapy.
So assuming the infrastructure around LHR will need to be recreated, plus allowing for the expanded new airport, that's a city for around 250-300k people plus their families. I'd reckon around 800k-1m total. How many new schools, hospitals, industrial parks, retail centres, business parks, you fill in the rest of the fairly endless list would that lot need?
It adds up to a stupid idea, the only sensible and cost effective option is to expand LHR, IMHO.
Rant over.

A number of other cities around the work, Hong Kong, Singapore, have successfully relocated their main airports to a hub outside of the city. They din't lack foresight.

Here are the official disadvantages (excuses more like)

• It would require major investment in local infrastructure (roads, railways, schools, hospitals) in order to service the tens of thousands of employees at a major airport.
• There would be considerable upheaval involved in moving London's main airport to a new location, though other major cities have successfully moved their main airports, including Paris (1974), Singapore (1981), Jakarta (1985), Munich (1992), Denver (1995), Oslo (1998), Hong Kong (1998), Kuala Lumpur–International (1998), Athens (2001),Bangkok, (2006) Doha(2013) .[17] (Other cities, such as Montréal, have had difficulty with such a transition).
• There would be significant job losses at Heathrow, and knock-on impacts to the economy of west London.
• Fog would be a key difficulty to overcome for a possible hub airport. In 2012, the Met Office concluded that the Thames Estuary was 'three times' more foggy than Heathrow.[31] Fog and snow frequently affect flights at Heathrow, forcing aircraft to leave more space for take-off and landing due to low visibility.[32] Whereas a Thames estuary airport could transfer travellers by Eurostar and new fog guidance systems can be used to overcome these issues, however Heathrow has not yet installed them.
• The construction costs of the airport alone would be large, estimated at £11.5 billion for Cliffe, and £3.5 billion more for an offshore island scheme.
• There would be large costs for constructing road and rail access to the airport. These were estimated at £1.8 billion for Cliffe, including two rail connections to High Speed 1, a road tunnel under the Thames to Benfleet, largely to access the south east Essex labour market, and other road and rail connections. Heathrow rely on public transport and funding for transport infrastructure; major upgrades are also required and need to be considered for rail and motorways.
• Proposals rely on using capacity on High Speed 1; however, it currently only uses under 10% of its full potential.
• Building an artificial offshore island can be expanded; however is time-consuming, adding 3 to 5 years to the construction time.
• There is a risk of bird strike, higher for coastal sites, lower for offshore sites.
• The level of demand for an airport in the Thames estuary is uncertain, and may require government intervention to force airlines to use it.
• Building a major new airport to expand capacity may encourage more flights, and thereby increase emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, unless a channel tunnel is connected to replace many flights.
• The presence of the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, which has around 1,400 tons of explosives on board. A safe way to remove the wreck, present since 1944, has not yet been found.
• It would require a radical upgrade to the current flight patterns which are based on 1970s patterns, and the proximity to Dutch and Belgian airspace may cause knock-on effects in other countries if not planned properly like Heathrow.
• The South East of England (SE) is already highly developed, with a population density reported (in 2011) as the third (or sixth, by other criteria) most dense in the world. Many areas of the SE already have three or four layers of audible air traffic over them.
• The location would be more difficult to access from the rest of the country compared to Heathrow.
• Building the airport would destroy the habitat of thousands of wetland birds.
• The airport would be placed in the flight path of four of London's five major airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and London-City).
• London Southend Airport would have to close down. Due to its close proximity from the planned airport sites.
• A 2012 report by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership prepared by Parsons Brinckerhoff concluded that they "do not believe that [the Thames Estuary Airport] is a viable solution to the capacity issues facing the SE." in the short term, but "applaud the fact that a long term solution is being seriously discussed".[33]
• Infrastructure - building of new main airport may be very costly, especially to achieve the same position and size of terminals and technologies like in case of Heathrow or Dubai ports, where, despite cheap sand start place, the cost of all was very big.
• Travel to London ticket price. Unknown is how much the ticket may cost, and if the airport would be at position of London tariff schemes. The position of Heathrow as part of the London underground system is often cited as a cost and time difference. For an average traveller usually the time and cost to travel into city centre would be main reason of choosing. Location in the deep sea may be treated as an advantage for most people, only if the travel time (at least by public transport) would be faster or similar that from LHR, and would cost less, or for e.g. be fared like usual Zone 1 ticket.[34][35][36][37]

[Mordac]

No they should expand Gatwick.

They should also extend Gatwick, I agree.

There are less queues getting to and from Gatwick by road and they are already extending the trains.

I don't agree there are less queues on the roads, all you need is a small prang on the M23, and it's utter gridlock.
And have you ever tried getting to LGW by train, OK if you have hand luggage only, but try lugging a couple of suitcases (and some kiddies in push-chairs, although thankfully that doesn't apply in my case) up and down the stairs at the connecting stations? Clapham Jn is by far the worst, particularly at peak-ish times. And if there's a problem with the trains (and with Southern there often is) it's a friggin nightmare.
I always get a cab, and hope for the best.

[SueEllen]

No they should expand Gatwick.

They were actually going to do it at the end of the last century but Blair's government bottled it and pushed it back into the long grass.

There are less queues getting to and from Gatwick by road and they are already extending the trains.

[Mordac]

Chronic lack of investment. The amount of years spent procrastinating over a third runway for Heathrow.. .they could have built a major hub in the Thames estuary by now.

Back of a fag packet calculation, they would have to build a large city fairly close by. Circa 50k people work directly at Heathrow now, so if the new one is bigger, that number would raise, approximately proportionately.
Factor in all the off-site operations, catering, freight, other suppliers etc. and you could easily treble that number.
Then there's all the bizness parks located nearby purely because of their proximity to LHR. Include the M3 / M4 corridor etc. and you have to be talking 250k+, quite possibly a lot more than that. Assuming perhaps only a quarter or so of those would need / wish to de-camp to be closer to the airport, that's maybe 50-75k.
So without much difficulty, we're at around 250-300k. Think the M25 will be able to cope with that lot? Plus all the freight vehicles? Plus all the passengers? If you think "Yes, no problem" I'd have to refer you for serious therapy.
So assuming the infrastructure around LHR will need to be recreated, plus allowing for the expanded new airport, that's a city for around 250-300k people plus their families. I'd reckon around 800k-1m total. How many new schools, hospitals, industrial parks, retail centres, business parks, you fill in the rest of the fairly endless list would that lot need?
It adds up to a stupid idea, the only sensible and cost effective option is to expand LHR, IMHO.
Rant over.

[SueEllen]

Ok, let's be clear;

Gatwick operates with a single runway. But it does in fact have two runways in parallel very close to one another. They are too close to operate as separate runways so it is one or the other. The main runway has all the kit and ground taxi ways optimised to service it. The standby runway (used very rarely) has less kit, and the taxi ways are not designed for it. So the standby runway operates rarely, in special conditions, with NOTAMS issued in advance. So in a nut shell, Gatwick has two runways.

Manchester airport has two runways, and operates as a two runway airfield.

Schipol has 5 main runways [emoji33]

As Gatwick can't operate as having two runways they only officially have one.

Same as Heathrow only having two.

It's like counting bridges across the Thames. There are lots of bridges but since some are railway bridges and don't take people on foot they don't count.

[scooterscot]

Chronic lack of investment. The amount of years spent procrastinating over a third runway for Heathrow.. .they could have built a major hub in the Thames estuary by now.

That's what happens when you've got a parliament full of career politicians. All talk no action.

[PurpleGorilla]

General rant

It's called "safety" hence the extra ones don't count. All airports have them.

Ok, let's be clear;

Gatwick operates with a single runway. But it does in fact have two runways in parallel very close to one another. They are too close to operate as separate runways so it is one or the other. The main runway has all the kit and ground taxi ways optimised to service it. The standby runway (used very rarely) has less kit, and the taxi ways are not designed for it. So the standby runway operates rarely, in special conditions, with NOTAMS issued in advance. So in a nut shell, Gatwick has two runways.

Manchester airport has two runways, and operates as a two runway airfield.

Schipol has 5 main runways [emoji33]